If you want a simple way to advertise your business, you need a brochure.

Direct mail campaigns still generate revenue. It’s estimated that advertisers that spend $167 per person on direct mail earn $2,095 worth of goods sold. That’s a 1,300% return!

Having printed materials in stores can help marketing efforts, and can give you marketing collateral for trade shows and mail campaigns.

Be Your Own Brochure Designer

You may not have a degree in graphic design, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do graphic design work. With the right mind frame, you should haven’t a problem creating engaging brochures.

Are you ready to start designing your own brochures? If you follow these tips you’ll have effective print marketing collateral in no time.

Know What Customers Want

Before you can start effectively designing a brochure, you need to make sure that you’re putting the right content into it. Professional designers know that effective language use and hitting the right points can ensure that whatever you design meets your customer’s needs.

Think about some of the frequently asked questions customers have when they’re in your store or use your services. Consider what you think your main selling points are and highlight them.

Consider Branding

Are you stuck on picking out colors and fonts for your brochure? Do what any brochure designer would do. Have it follow established branding.

Use colors that are used in your store or on the company website, and also use the same font. This helps keeps the branding consistent, and can help the customer associate certain colors and fonts with your business.

Do you not feel like you have set colors, fonts, and other brand elements? Are you missing a company logo? Now is the perfect time to make them and use them in your brochure.

Keep It Simple

A brochure designer knows that it’s best to keep things simple and streamlined as opposed to flashy and complicated. You don’t have to have your brochure in a strange shape or use a gimmick, just focus on the message at hand.

For your first round of brochures, feel free to go with the simple tall 2 fold kind. As long as your message is communicated and customers respond to them, a simple brochure is fine for your marketing needs.

Add Value

If you were looking for a POS system provider, would you go with someone that hands you a brochure that just says “we do POS work?”

The last thing you want is for a customer to pick up your brochure then throw it away. You need to add value beyond company information. That’s why you need to give your brochure something extra.

Don’t just talk about service offerings and company hours, talk about why people should use your business. Do you use high quality or organic ingredients? Do you have years of expertise in the industry?

Don’t Forget Your CTA

A potential customer just got their hands on your brochure. What do you want them to do with it? Whether you want your customer to make a purchase or contact you for more information, you need to make that clear in the brochure.

A call to action (CTA) prompts your customers to do something. Sometimes simply including the phrases “contact us today” or “visit ____ for more information” can be enough to get them to take action.

Your Story

As you can see, you don’t need a brochure designer to make something great. If you go into brochure creation with the right goals, you’ll create something customers will like.

Do you need more marketing advice? If you liked this post, read this piece about designing banners.