The Power of Business Brochures

by Tom McKay

Originally published in The Crafts Report

"Effective (brochures) are written with the customer... in mind. They open with strong statements, are dynamic and full of excitement, and most importantly, have one clear purpose -- to get prospective customers to take some specific action," insists Paul and Sarah Edwards, authors (with Laura Clampitt Douglas) of Getting Business to Come to You (Tarcher/Perigree).

A well-designed brochure is an essential element of any successful crafts marketing campaign. Brochures can run the gamut from a simple homemade affair utilizing a single 8-1/2 X 11 sheet of heavy paper folded into thirds and printed in one color, to elaborate layouts involving 16 four-color pages. One of your first efforts will probably be a product brochure you can give to customers and prospects who have already seen your work at retail or wholesale crafts shows. Designed for follow-up sales, it should include your top designs, price list and order form.

Creating a brochure can be difficult and time-consuming. But not having one means missing out on a tremendous means of attracting additional sales at a relatively low cost. How effective is a good brochure? One craftsperson confided that between one-quarter and one-third of her total retail sales comes from her brochure.

Before you sketch a layout or write a word of copy, you must decide what role your brochure will play. You'll almost certainly use it as point-of-sale literature in your booth or shop, but will you also use it as a direct-mail piece? To respond to inquiries? With advance planning, a single brochure can accomplish several tasks, especially when supplemented with different product sheets and price lists. Next, consider who will be reading your brochure. Who is your likely buyer? Are they wholesale or retail prospects? Are they buying for themselves or as a gift? What kind of information are they looking for? How can you best convince them to buy?

"A good brochure does more than explain and inform. It also persuades," says Bob Bly, author of Create the Perfect Sales Piece and The Copywriter's Handbook. "Remember, it's a sales tool, not an instruction manual. Good brochure copy does more than list facts and features. It translates those facts and features into customer benefits -- reasons why the customer should buy the product. It does more than tell -- it sells."

At minimum, you'll want a tri-folded 8-1/2 X 11 paper, or an 8-1/2 X 14 folded in half twice. Since a brochure should contain complete information, it should be just long enough to do the job -- and no longer. Photographs are a vital element in any crafts brochure. In fact, two of the biggest mistakes involves photos: not using enough of them, and using low quality, poorly reproduced photos.

Getting the Look You Want

 "First impressions last", explains Roger C. Parker, designer and author of Looking Good in Print (Ventana Press). "Good design favorably predisposes people to accept your product." Likewise, bad design will cause your printed material to end up in the trash. Still, there's a lot of room for individual style within the realm of "good design". In music, there are no good or bad notes -- just appropriate and inappropriate ones. The same is true of the design elements and flavor of your brochure. They should echo the style and substance of your product. A brochure selling upmarket gold jewelry to baby boomers, for example, would look and feel very different from a piece pitching children's playclothes to young moms or contemporary ceramics to Generation Xers. "Think of design as a means of communication," Parker says, "rather than decoration."

Should you do it yourself, or hire a graphic designer, copywriter and photographer? Your degree of involvement is a personal and professional decision, and depends on your graphic design abilities. Desktop publishing software like Microsoft Publisher, Adobe PageMaker and QuarkExpress put powerful design tools in anyone's hands. Doing some or all of it yourself will save money, too. On the other hand, simply owning the software doesn't make someone a competent designer, and you want your brochure to do the best possible job of selling your products. Its appearance is as important as the content. Your finished brochure is the "best outfit" you'd wear to impress an important wholesale buyer. It has a lot of competition for the eye -- and checkbook -- of the customer.

"At the very least, rely on the best designer you can find to create a look for your company," advises Jay Levinson and Seth Godin, authors of Guerrilla Marketing for the Home-Based Business (Houghton Mifflin). "Have her do the first iteration of your brochure, letterhead, business cards and invoices. Then you'll have a template you can use forever." Each printed piece should contain the same design elements (color, font, paper, etc.), so all your printed material will work together for maximum impact, not look like a hasty afterthought. In the future, as needs develop, Levinson and Godin suggest saving money by hiring an art student to create new materials based on your existing standards, or doing it yourself.

If you create the layout on your PC, you'll want the final version printed at a service bureau, using their 2400 dpi (dot per inch) printers. Take a floppy disk or CD containing the files and fonts for your brochure, or upload it to them via modem, and they'll print out camera-ready art (often called a "stat" or "mechanical") that you take to the offset printer for duplication. Even a 600 dpi laser printer, the kind you might have at home, is not crisp enough for quality offset printed brochures, especially if you're using scanned photographs. 

One Color, Two Color, Four Color?

Every ink used in your brochure is considered a color, and adds to the total printing cost. If you only use black ink on white paper, that's a one color brochure. Crimson ink on wheat stock? That's still one color. Add some blue headlines, boxes and borders, and it becomes two colors. And so on. You're probably planning to use color photographs to illustrate your products, so you're talking about a four-color brochure. It's the most expensive way to go, but color sells. Ads using color, studies have shown, have 80% more readership than black-and-white ones, and the same is probably true of brochures. Remember, your piece is fighting to be noticed and saved. One crafts professional admitted that her extensive multi-page brochure, featuring dozens of black-and-white thumbnail photos, was an effective sales tool -- but only for people who had already seen her work in person. Her next brochure, she insisted, would be full-color.

"The combination of good paper stock, professional printing and skilled photography can yield a dynamite brochure at a reasonable cost," explain Levinson and Godin. Printing prices vary widely, so shop around. For an 8-1/2 X 11 tri-fold brochure, using three half-tones (photos) on heavyweight "cover stock", with the customer providing camera-ready art, I was quoted the following prices:

One color:
$343 for 1,000 (about $.34 each)
$680 for 5,000 (about $.13 each)
$1119 for 10,000 (about $.11 each)

Four color:
$838 for 1,000 (about $.84 each)
$1359 for 5,000 (about $.27 each)
$2100 for 10,000 (about $.21 each)

(Author's Note: these prices date back several years. Since then, printing costs have actually gone down.)

Four-color printing, as you can see, costs roughly twice as much as one-color but is generally a more effective sales tool. The longer the print run, i.e., the more copies you have printed, the cheaper each one becomes. "Leave one at every meeting and personal call you make," urge Paul and Sarah Edwards. "Make them available at every public place and trade show you attend... include one in every presentation you make and every publicity kit you prepare."

Many crafts professionals have an extensive product line and worry about overcrowding their brochures. The solution: expand the size of your brochure, or create separate full-color "product sheets" to illustrate your various lines, e.g., spring, summer, fall products. A free-standing price list/order form is also a good idea. That lets you use the same brochure for both retail and wholesale customers, and adjust the price of some items without having to scrap your whole brochure. And they're easy to create on your home computer. Just be sure these add-ons echo the same design elements -- layout, fonts, colors -- of your brochure. 

Essential Elements

The cover of your brochure should emphasize a strong "sell message". It might be a photo of your most popular design or a phrase like "Hand-Sewn Quilts from Antique Fabrics". That is much more likely to attract a buyer than simply the name of your business.

The body copy should concentrate on your products, their features and benefits to the buyer. Your best selling designs should get the most space; your weaker designs, the least. Close with a clear, compelling message of what the customer should do next: call to place an order, visit your shop, or fill out the coupon. Be sure to include your company name, mailing address, phone and fax numbers, your Web site and e-mail address if you have them, and any other convenient way for customers to contact you. Spell out any warranties and guarantees, and include ordering information, shipping costs, sales tax info, whether credit cards are accepted, and the like. You might also include a few testimonials from satisfied customers (with their permission, of course).

If you have a gallery or store, be sure to include the hours and street address with landmarks -- "At 3rd and State Street, opposite the Thorndike Museum". Consider getting a toll-free number. One study found including toll-free numbers in direct mail campaigns doubled the response. Try not to date your brochure. Write "Stoneware Pottery since 1991" rather than "In business ten years".

Proof-read carefully for typos and spelling mistakes, then check it again. Ask a friend to hunt for goofs. Then check it again yourself. Don't depend on a computer spell checker -- it can't tell whether you mean "Buy now!" or "Bye now!" Nothing is more sickening than seeing a mistake glaring at you from the top of a stack of 10,000 brochures.

And don't be surprised if your brochure sometimes works against you. Some customers will use it as an excuse not to buy today, saying they want to "study" it. Smart marketers sometimes hold back their brochures until they're convinced the sale is lost and the prospect is about to walk out of the booth. Nevertheless, a good brochure adds an air of permanence and legitimacy to a business that, to buyers, can seem to vanish at the end of a weekend festival.