How to Write Copy for a Business Brochure
What you write on your marketing material matters and on a brochure? Where you put what you've written matters more. Learn about writing copy for a business brochure today.
With advertising still commanding a market share of over $70 billion a year, marketing continues to work on us even when we think we're immune.
When you're writing copy for your business brochure, you need to be persuasive but it's more than just talking about how great you are. It's what's behind those words that matters.
Here are 7 essential tips for creating great copy.
1. Know Your Identity
Before you start working on your business brochure, you need to get to know the DNA of your business. Your business has a particular voice, a particular audience, and a particular style. If you don't know these aspects of your brand's identity intimately, you won't be able to communicate clearly with your audience.
You need to start off every brochure with a couple of words that define your brand. Even if you don't use those words or that phrase, you need to make sure that every sentence and every image on your brochure comes from that perspective. Your identity is who you are to your audience and what defines you.
There needs to be a very particular voice that you use when you're working on your brochure. It needs to be authoritative but unique. Saying that you're the best XYZ in your industry isn't enough.
You need to offer something different.
Sit down with the people who built your brand from the ground up. Talk to the people who created your logo and who defined what your company is about. They'll be able to offer insight into who your brand should speak to and what your brand identity should reflect to the world.
2. Image Matters
Your brochure is a great way to share the image of your company and your vision of the world. Your image matters and the only way you can let people know that you agree is by showing it in your brochure. Through every graphic design element, whether white space, the fonts, photos, or logos, you'll be speaking a visual language communicating to your audience.
If you have a strong logo, make sure that you get the highest resolution version of your logo possible for your brochure. If you're in the middle of a brand revamp, be sure you've got the latest release of your logo. Even a slight change in your color will cause confusion for your clients and they might think they're encountering a company in transition.
When you're selecting fonts, be sure that you're consistent. If you've got a curly or a serif font on one page and a sans serif font on another page, you'll look like you don't know what you're doing. Choose a font that's appropriate for your industry and that comes across as confident.
When you're choosing photos for your brochure, be sure that they're also at the highest resolution possible. Don't choose group photos with everyone crammed in. Focus on specific single subjects or images that can engage your audience.
How colourful your brochure is, depends on your industry. One of the major things to keep in mind is that people need white space to read. It helps images breathe.
3. List Benefits, Not Just Features
When you're describing what you do, it can be tempting to tell everyone about all the great things your products and services do. You might want to show off the endless list of talents you have or skills your staff has. Those features are important but they only tell a part of the story.
When someone is envisioning working with you and your company, they're thinking about how your services can benefit their life. They're not thinking about the features. They're thinking about the benefits.
You know how people talk about not wanting to know how the sausage is made? That analogy works for just about every industry. People don't care at the end of the day how you improve their lives, just that you do.
The benefits of your services should be the star of the show, not just the features. If you haven't sat down and listed what these things should be yet, it's time to get together with your team and hammer out the details. Think from the perspective of a customer, the problem they have related to your industry, and how your product can solve it.
4. Don't Be Shy
You might be a humble small business owner every other day of the week, but your brochure is the place where you need to brag. Being shy once you've got your brochure in the hands of potential clients is a waste of an opportunity to market yourself. People need to know how great you are.
If you've worked with other companies, tell them now. If one of the biggest stadiums on the planet carries your products or if you're in major retail chains, let people know. Companies who are humble miss the chance to tell customers about what they can do.
Now's the perfect time to name drop. Your brochure is the place for photos with famous athletes and performers. If you're looking for the place to let people know that Beyonce wears your hats or John Deere uses your seat covers, this is when to do it.
Use photographic evidence, other brand logos with their permission, and images that show off what you've done and where you've been. If your CEO knows Barack Obama, include a photo of them together if it's relevant. You never know what it takes to win over a customer who is waiting on the fence.
5. Keep it Brief
The main thing to remember about your brochure is that you need to keep all text brief. Images are the center of the story here and you want to use them to encourage potential clients to come to you.
No one wants to read an entire short story on the back of your brochure. They want a little bit of text that makes them ask more. This is the part of your sales funnel where you try to build excitement.
It's hard to fully convert buyers with a brochure.
That's why you need to take the opportunity to get people to take a secondary engagement with your products and services. Get them to sign up to your email list via a simple link. Ask them to follow you on social media so that they can keep abreast of specials and deals.
You need to get people hooked and have a way to reach out to them at a moment's notice. Social media is your best bet. If you offer occasional deals and specials to your followers, you're sure to increase your engagement and start walking potential clients into your sales funnel.
6. Use Action Words
Your brochure can't be passive. You shouldn't be hyperbolic and make strange and undeliverable promises, but you shouldn't be afraid to be firm. Use strong action words that let your potential clients know that you mean business.
No matter what industry you're in, you could focus on the problems that drive people to seek out services like yours. Those words might inspire some people to work with you, but do you really want people to come to you because they feel desperate?
New clients should come to you because they feel inspired by the words you use. That's why you need to use strong action words to let people know that you're a force for good. When you're around to do good, you can tell people that subconsciously with positive language.
7. Show More Than Tell
While your brochure is a great way to tell people about your services, you need to use it to show people what you can do. Go through every element of the brochure and try to come up with any questions potential clients could have. You want them to have questions, but you want productive questions.
You don't want them leaving confused about what you do. They shouldn't be asking "okay, so what do you do?" You want questions like "how soon can I get this service?" or "do you offer services in my area?"
These questions are the type that allow you to excite your readers about the prospect of working with you. When you show people who you are and what you're about, you let them come to that crucial decision to work with you on their own.
Your Business Brochure is A Guide to Your Company
When people see your business brochure, they should put it down feeling like they know who you are. Your business brochure might have a different impact on different people, but they should all have the same general idea. Run a few tests with friends and colleagues before you make the final print.
If you need some more essential tips to brochure design, check out our definitive guide.