The Top 10 Brochure Blunders — and How to Avoid Them

Introduction

I scrutinized hundreds of brochures. The companies in question ranged from one-person startups to big-budget national firms. As you might expect, I found some correlation between the size or wealth of the company and the graphic quality of a marketing piece. But I found no correlation -- no relationship whatsoever -- between the resources available to the company and the marketing effectiveness of the brochure text.

Whether your marketing budget consists of thousands or millions of dollars, you may be spending much of it in vain. The most common marketing mistakes in brochures simply aren’t visible to the untrained eye.

Once you know what to look for, though, you can make changes that boost the effectiveness of a brochure up to 100 percent or more. Instead of tossing your piece in the wastebasket, prospects read it, contact you and turn into paying customers. Or they file it until the need arises for your particular services. Sometimes they even pass a first-class brochure on to their colleagues, friends and relatives!

Use the guidelines below and on the following pages to develop, redo or undo (see Blunder #10) a brochure for your business.

Blunder #1. Wasting the cover panel or headline position with your company name.

Although almost everyone does this, your company name prominently placed in big letters simply is not an attention grabber. Instead think of a phrase that will lure exactly the target audience you’re aiming at, and stimulate them to read on.

Computer consultant B.F. Boudreau of Waltham, Massachusetts, heads her brochure, "Puzzled by computers?" If I’m an appropriate prospect for her services, I’ll think "yes!" and look inside. Similarly, I noticed and saved a flyer headed "Allow me to trash your home," with a picture of a dump truck, from Dennis Does Disposal of Stoneham, Massachusetts. Rather than a big, boring "Frank Fenn Faxes, in business since 1985," try "Why take a chance with your link to customers?"

Blunder #2. Unclear expectations for the purpose of the brochure.

Many firms create a brochure simply because they think they’re expected to have one. They don’t think first about the marketing situation in which they’re going to use it, and thus it does a poor job.

Will you be handing out your brochure at trade shows? Then it should include intrinsically valuable non-promotional information that prospects will want to keep on file. Will you be using it to fax back in response to phone or fax inquiries? Then you need an 8-1/2" by 11" format, clean background and simplified graphics, not a trifold brochure in a bright color with photographs. Will you be mailing it out to strangers to generate leads? Then a tear-off, mail-back postcard as your last brochure panel might be appropriate.

The content you need changes along with different purposes, too. If you’re selling a standard service to people who don’t know you, you want to stress your advantages over the competition. If your typical prospect not only doesn’t know you but also doesn’t realize they need your service, you have to include more copy that explains what they gain by having the service performed at all.

Blunder #3. Ignoring the reader’s paramount question: "What’s in this for me?"

Too many brochures stress "me me me" or "us us us," without establishing a connection with the reader. Hard as this is to swallow, the prospect scanning your brochure is always on the verge of dismissing it with "Who cares?" Prevent this reaction by translating the features of your company and of your product or service into what the buyer gets -- the benefits.

Suppose you’re a mortgage broker, for instance. Features would be the kinds of mortgages you arrange; a benefit -- always more powerful -- would be that you help people finance the house of their dreams. Instead of simply presenting your qualifications, explain why your credentials make a difference: "Because of my 22 years of experience and extensive banking contacts, I can put together attractive deals even for so-called problem buyers."

Spell out what you sell or do for people in language that makes sense to your customers, not your own jargon.
Someone who is indeed puzzled by computers responds more readily to
"We patiently get you past the frustration of learning your software"
than to "Specializing in Windows applications and RDBS’s."

A homeowner needing trash disposal should encounter,
"We get rid of it safely and legally,"
not "We comply with all 5.4893 regulations."

Blunder #4. Trying to include too much.

If your scope of business is wide, or if you serve multiple markets, you often water down the effectiveness of the brochure by trying to cover everything for everyone in your brochure. Either create an umbrella concept that makes sense of diverse offerings or create multiple marketing materials.

In the meetings industry, high-priced speakers have a separate one-page fax sheet for each topic they speak on, to avoid distracting meeting planners. Dan Poynter of Para Publishing in Santa Barbara, California, has entirely separate product brochures for skydivers and for publishers, two non-overlapping markets that he serves. You’d likewise be better off partitioning your marketing if you were an image consultant who helped clients look their best and helped other image consultants grow their business.

Blunder #5. Sloppy appearance.

A good number of do-it-yourselfers make do with unevenly spaced type, smudged ink or crooked printing. Demand professional-looking typesetting, consistent ink coverage, straight alignment and folding, sharp images and proper correlation of color accents from yourself, the copy shop or the printer.

Blunder #6. Poor grammar and spelling.

If you’re not 100 percent certain about when to use "it’s" and when "its" (the most common brochure mistake I see), or if you say things like "between him and I" (incorrect), get someone with a rigorous eye and impeccable English to examine your text. About one-third of the brochures I inspected for my book fell short on this score.

Blunder #7. Typos, contradictions and omissions.

Leave a digit off your telephone number -- or forget it altogether -- and the payback from your brochure investment plummets. Similarly, you ruin your credibility when you list the price of your priority service as $15 on one page, and $16 on the order form, or if you refer to yourself as treasurer of the "Mortgage Association of America" in one place and to it as the "American Mortgage Association" a page later.

For me, errors have crept in when I’m in a rush or have assumed that because the previous version of a piece was right, the next version automatically got everything too. I once sent out a January press release with the previous year in the dateline, and another time discovered when I looked at a printed piece that my desktop publishing program had mysteriously left off all the hyphens that had been there when I last looked. Oops!

Try to allow enough time to have a fresh, harsh look at what you’ve done before you finalize it. You’re most likely to catch bloopers if you use a checklist for inclusions, consistency and accuracy.

Blunder #8. Forgetting to include a call for action.

Brochures don’t accomplish much for you when they simply convey the message, here’s who we are and what we do. You’ll get a bigger response if you end by telling the reader something to do -- such as, "Call now for your free, no-obligation assessment of your home’s current market value" or "Call 213-XXX-XXXX from your fax machine for a catalog of free legal reports available through our fax-on-demand system." We human beings must be obedient creatures, because this kind of parting gesture makes an enormous difference.

Blunder #9. Confusing order forms.

A dependable rule is that whenever you think instructions are crystal-clear, people will misinterpret what you wrote or overlook plain black-and-white clarifications. The only way to learn whether customers will really include the sales tax and shipping charges as directed or specify the color or performance date as required is to have people who did not design the form fill it out. Many times changing the location on the page or adding boldface to important directions solves this problem. But don’t assume -- test.

Blunder #10. Overlooking brochure alternatives -- often more inexpensive and convenient.

A traditional folded paper brochure or booklet may not be the best way to present yourself. For high-tech prospects, a self-running computer presentation on disk might be more impressive. An audiotape introduction to your firm which can be listened to while driving works well for high-priced services where clients need to feel they know you.

Many consultants use a pocketed folder into which they slip customized proposals and bios printed out on their regular business stationery. If you own a deli, faxable lunch order forms or a sales letter with a Rolodex card enclosed could be your ticket to riches. Sculptors Harvey Rattey and Pamela Harr of Bozeman, Montana, sell a lot of work via a video catalog, for which they charge $15, refundable upon the return of the video. Ilise Benun of Hoboken, New Jersey, sends out a copy of her newsletter, The Art of Self-Promotion, along with a letter whenever someone requests her brochure.

Never assume a traditional brochure is the answer just because everyone else seems to be producing them!

All 10 guidelines, one more time

To recap, here are the guidelines stated positively:

1. Use the opening panel or headline for a statement or question that piques the interest of your best prospects.

2. Design the brochure for the marketing situations it’s most likely to be used for -- with "cold" prospects, people who already know of you, for the mail, for pick-up-and-take-home, etc.

3. Write about the benefits of your service or product in the language of your customers.

4. Wherever possible, design a separate brochure for each target market.

5. Insist that it’s crisply printed, unsmudged, straight and attractive.

6. Run the brochure by someone with impeccable spelling and grammar before printing.

7. Proofread and use a checklist to be sure you’ve included all the little details potential customers or clients need to know.

8. Always incorporate a specific call to action.

9. Test the order form to make sure it can be filled out easily.

10. Try alternatives to the traditional three-fold brochure where appropriate.






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