When you’re looking to make a statement about your business, make a brochure!

Brochures play any role you want them to play. They offer information about your services, connect you with customers, and make a fantastic place for you to tell your business’ story.

If you’re already thinking this sounds too difficult—stop the presses!

You can create eye-catching and informative brochures for your business if you’ll take a minute and read our guide on how to make a brochure.

It all begins with a solid plan!

Start with a Plan

While it’s usually more fun to dig into selecting paper, ink color, and the images you’ll use in your brochure, you won’t get too far without a plan.

Begin by researching your target audience. Whether you market to only one demographic or you have multiple target customers, you’ll need to have a good grasp of your customer’s profile, or persona.

Knowing your customer persona helps you determine which design style will work best for your brochures.

If you’re a one-person show, spend some alone time thinking about ideas for your brochure. If you’re lucky and have a team to work with, hold a team brainstorming session. Focus on coming up with a unique concept that makes your business stand out.

Once you’ve planned your design concept, you’re ready for the next step.

Choose Meaningful Images

We know it sounds cliché but that tired old saying about a picture being worth a thousand words—it’s the truth. We’re working in a visually-oriented business culture where images tell the story.

When you select your images, pay attention to quality. No low-resolution or poorly composed images allowed!

Don’t leave images up to chance. Choose images relevant to your products and services, and relevant to your company message. If your images aren’t relevant, you risk confusing your customers and they won't get the message you're trying to convey.

Make sure you include your company logo on every brochure you design.

Brochures help build brand recognition and without a logo, the person looking at the brochure has no way to identify you or your business. Place your logo in a prevalent place on the brochure so that your customers can’t miss it!

Focus on the Headline

A newspaper headline draws the reader into the story. The headline on a brochure plays a similar role.

When a customer sees your brochure, they should see the headline first and it should tell them what they can expect to read about. If you’re advertising a product or service, let the headline make the announcement.

Avoid placing too much verbiage about your business in the headline. Instead, use your headline to highlight whatever product or service you’re covering in the brochure. Keep business details in the headline limited to basic information.

Keep it Simple

Think about brochures you’ve seen recently. Were any so cluttered with dizzying fonts and clashing colors that you gave up reading the content?

Simplicity in design is often much more effective than a busy brochure filled with too many images, colors, and textures. That said, simple doesn’t mean blah!

Regarding fonts, if you’re company uses a signature font, use it as the main font for your brochure. Add no more than one or two additional fonts.

Stay away from big words—and too many words. Get to the point quickly and use short, succinct text. You can accomplish this without skimping on the information.

Rock the Boat

We know we just talked about keeping things simple, but we also said simple doesn’t have to mean boring, right?

Your customers see multiple brochures every week. And they all likely look like the same tired advertising customers avoid reading all the way through.

If you’ve done your research, you already know you’re dealing with savvy consumers. They don’t want to buy the same old, same old, and they don’t want to read it either.

Your brochure can make an impact—if it doesn’t look like every other brochure in circulation.

When designing your brochure and your other marketing materials, dare to rock the boat. Be different and do something no one else is doing as far as brochure design. Different grabs attention and once you have their attention, you have an opportunity to keep them engaged.

An engaged reader tends to convert to a paying customer.

Call Your Customer to Action

The prettiest brochure in town won’t do anything other than sit around on your customer’s desk (or worse) if you don’t include a call to action (CTA).

The entire reason you’ve designed a brochure is so that you can ask the reader to do something. Whether you’re asking them to buy a product or you’re encouraging them to make a coaching appointment with you, you must tell them what you want them to do.

Don’t be shy about asking someone to purchase your product or service. The brochure is the place to use a bold invitation strategically placed way before the final paragraph.

A good CTA inspires. If it isn’t bold and big, your reader will miss the point and stick the brochure at the bottom of their pile of reading material.

Now You Know How to Make a Brochure

Although we didn’t cover every aspect of creating brochures, we hope we’ve given you some food for thought. Begin with a plan, add the right elements, keep the whole thing simple yet engaging, and finally, invite the customer to take action.

Knowing how to make a brochure will help tighten your marketing strategy. Plus, it lets you show off your creative side.

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