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Developing a company brochure

Your brochure may be the first thing you put into a prospective customer's hands, but remember that it is part of an entire marketing program. Your brochure will be most valuable—to you and to your customers—if its message is supported by things like a great website with more information, and knowledgeable employees that can answer questions and follow through on inquiries.

Even if you conduct business solely online, there may be times when you want to be able to give someone a hard copy business brochure. If you are attending trade shows or making sales calls, people will expect you to have a professional brochure.

Gathering required information

You can prepare yourself before contacting printing or graphic design suppliers by gathering the following information about your business:

• Description of your products and/or services
• Definition of your target markets and your target customers
• Outline of the benefits you are offering, the problems you solve

• Proof of the capabilities of your business and its products or services

  • Years of experience
  • Number of satisfied customers
  • Testimonials or references

• What you expect the brochure to accomplish:

  • Introduce your business, its products or services
  • Bring in orders
  • Serve as a reminder

• Any existing branding materials, including your business card and websites (to ensure a consistent brand experience).

Decide what you want to say and who you want to say it to:

• Be direct, as if actually speaking with a potential client.
• Talk about their needs, not about yourself.
• Don't try to say too much at once, the message will get lost or tossed. Be focused.
• Prepare contact information that should be included on the brochure.
• Find examples of brochures from other companies that you like.

Working with a supplier

Once you have gathered the required information, you will need to work with suppliers to design and print your brochure.

• Select your supplier(s): You will usually need two suppliers - a creative design firm and a printer. Meet with them to discuss your objectives, needs and budget. Make sure they understand your requirements. Often the creative design firm can recommend a printer or may be able to include printing costs in their quote and deal with the printer on your behalf.

• Discuss ideas with your supplier: You should share all of the information that you gathered with the creative design firm. You may also want to incorporate your own creative ideas for the design.

  • Consider which shapes, images, colors and materials you think will best represent your business.
  • Think about how your brochure will be used by your client. You can decrease the chance of it getting tossed away by incorporating a pertinent use for it, such as a calendar, recipe, tips relevant to your business, and more.
  • Talk about techniques to motivate people to open up the brochure. Avoid flooding the front page with a mere business logo. Instead, sell them on the value your business offers.
  • Listen to ideas from your suppliers (they are the experts!) and answer your supplier's questions.

• Review proofs: Your supplier should prepare a proof of the brochure for you to review. Some suppliers will do a few different concepts for you to choose from (depending on what was agreed to in your contract). When you review the proof, check everything very carefully. Is all of the required information included? Is everything spelled correctly? Is the contact information correct? Do not take anything for granted - having hundreds of brochures printed only to discover an error in your phone number can be a very costly mistake.

Next steps

Once your brochure has been printed and delivered, make sure that you put it to good use for your business.

• Get the brochure in people's hands: There are a great number of brochures that were carefully designed and printed, only to collect dust on a store room shelf. If you aren't sure how you will use your brochure, you might not want to have one designed at all. If you do have one made, have a strategy for distributing it. Take brochures with you on sales calls and to trade shows. Consider doing a mail-out to prospective customers. Host an event at your location and make brochures available to those who visit.
• Follow up: A single promotional activity rarely results in a contract, order or sale, so be prepared to follow up with several activities, such as personal visits, telephone calls and more mailings.

When you contract for the development of your brochure, consider having a full promotional package done at the same time (for example, business cards, website, banner).