How to Make a Brochure: The Complete Guide

How many times have you been handed a brochure while walking down a street or at a business meeting? Can’t even begin to count, right?

Brochures are one of the most efficient and flexible marketing tools that a business can use. In fact, they are being used more than business cards these days.

First-time entrepreneurs tend to think that designing a brochure is a very difficult and time consuming task so they fall back without even making an attempt to try and create one.

A brochure can engage and educate your audience in a very compelling and professional way. You can use it as a standalone sales pitch, or as an add-on to the sales pitch you are verbally presenting to prospects.

You could even use it as a platform to talk about the products and services you sell or the business as a whole.

There are so many ways to distribute brochures. You could hand them over to prospects at the end of business meetings, place some brochures in a display near the office exit, distribute brochures directly via street promotions, or send them digitally via an email marketing campaign.

The content of your brochure could even be segmented in a way where it will deliver different messages to different types of audiences.

The amount of impact a brochure does totally depends on its design. A unique, compelling design will grab the reader’s attention firmly and make sure they read everything till the end, whereas a brochure with a generic design will end up in a trash can.

Why do businesses use brochures?

Before you can even think about starting the design process of your brochure you have to know why you are creating one in the first place. It’s impossible to move forward without knowing the exact purpose.

To help you out, I have listed down some common reasons a business would want a brochure designed.

• To use as a sales pitch for prospects and investors.

• To introduce your business as a whole.

• To spread word about a particular product or service you recently started.

• To drive people to your retail shop.

• To drive people to your website.

• To create hype for a new and upcoming product.

• To spread word about some event you are hosting & much more.

Discover your audience

Your next job is to figure out who your audience is. Different audiences have different design requirements. When you know exactly who you are designing for, it’s easier to come up with a design that feels true to them.

Here are some questions that may help you when figuring out your audience.

• Who is my target audience?

• What information would they want to know the most?

• Would they prefer a brochure with more text or images?

• What tone should I use in the text? Humorous or serious?

• What Call-to-Action should I use?

Estimate the costs

Is it expensive? Maybe, maybe not. Everything depends on the type of brochure you choose, it’s design, the quality of the paper, and etc.

If you want the brochure to be sturdy and shiny, go for a thicker glossy paper. If you want the print to be of very high-quality, invest in more pricier ink and printing techniques.

See how much it will cost to print a single brochure and then calculate how many copies of it you can afford and whether that would be enough. If it’s not enough, you may have to give up on the expensive ink and etc.

Gear up the text and images

Before you even think about moving forward, you must know what you are going to say in your brochure and how. Even the design depends on the content.

If your message is not clear enough and if the images don’t relate to the overall theme of your brochure, it won’t matter what design you come up with because it’s destined to fail.

Let’s say you own a nursery school. You may want to include stylish fonts, vibrant colors and playful images to match the overall theme of your business. You would also use simple straightforward language since being too professional doesn’t match a nursery.

However, if a digital marketing agency try to do the same with their brochure, clients would consider it to be childish and would not take their message seriously.

It’s important to have the images ready as well because they will come in handy when deciding what the layout will be like and what size should the images be.

Also, don’t be surprised if all your text and images can’t make it in. Just make sure all the main points are included and be flexible in choosing the images that tell your story the most and decide their placements accordingly.

Come up with a strong CTA

A brochure without a call-to-action is useless. If none of the readers buy your product or service, what’s even the point of distributing them, right? You need the people who read your brochures to take some kind of action.

Maybe you want them to visit your website, maybe you want them to make some donations, or maybe to purchase your new product or service. For people to take action, you have to have a strong CTA.

If your CTA is buried inside the last paragraph of the last page, no one would see it, let alone take action.

Keep in mind that most people won’t read the brochure till the end. Typically, they would loose interest somewhere in the middle, especially if there is a ton of text. So be sure to give enough spotlight to your CTA. Put it in multiple places in the front and middle. Make it stand out.

Pick a suitable fold

Did you think there is only one type of brochure? Unfortunately, no. There are 15 types of brochures available and they are different from each other by the way they are folded.

Here is an image illustrating the 10 most common types of brochures.

Types of brochures

I know it’s confusing but unfortunately I can’t help you with the decision making process. Your content decides what the most suitable brochure type is. If you can’t think of anything just go with the classic tri-fold brochure that most businesses use.

Choose a bi-fold design if the value proposition of your business is simple and straightforward. Bi-fold brochures are great when using large graphics and high-quality photography.

Let’s also talk a little about the z-fold brochure before we move on. Z-fold brochures are actually the most flexible of them all. You can use them to feature larger images and graphics since it can turn into a single large page with just one move.

One important thing to keep in mind is how you are going to deliver your brochure to people. Are you going to put it on display? Are you going to mail them? Some brochure types are harder to put in display due to too many folds while some are harder to read as an email because they are just too big and complex.

Pick a suitable printing paper

Most people tend to use whatever kind of paper available, however, the paper you choose may have a greater impact than you think. Each type of paper has its own set of advantages and disadvantages and they can either null or increase the impact of your brochure.

Glossy paper is the generic type of paper used for brochures. It’s good if your brochure features vibrant colors and graphics but the reflection will make it hard to read in the presence of bright light.

Matte paper is considered to be more professional than other types of papers while uncoated paper feels more natural in touch.

Tips to follow when writing your brochure

• Keep the sentences short, clear and to-the-point.

• Write in first-person. Do not talk about your business in a third-person perspective and avoid referring to your readers as “customers”. Use words like “We” and “You” to make the message more personal.

• Keep the paragraphs short. It should not be more than 3 lines long.

• Use sub-headings and bullet points to separate out the content nicely.

• Read your brochure aloud as this will help you catch typos and awkward word combinations.

Tips to follow when designing your brochure

• Gear up a high-res version of your logo. For best results use Adobe Reader, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop files. Also, make sure the print dimensions of your logo is set to 300 DPI (Dots Per Inch) when printing.

• The images you take from you phone’s camera will never be as professional and high-quality as images taken from a digital camera. If you don’t own a camera, hire a photographer and get yourself a portfolio of images that you can use now as well as in the long-run. You could even access free or low-priced online stock photography websites.

• Limit the number of fonts to three or less. Typically, you use one for the main heading, one for all the sub-headings and the other for the body text.
• Complex layouts may confuse your customer and result in diluting the strength of the message.

Conclusion

Congrats! Now you have everything you need to design a compelling brochure that will deliver a strong message to your customers and make them take action.

Your brochure is just as, if not, more valuable than your business card so be sure to carry some with you always, even when going to non-official places. Who knows, potential prospects and customers might be anywhere and you have to be ready.

Your brochure must be the best possible expression of your business, product or service, and it’s the best way to show people how your business is different from the rest.