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Compelling Brochure Copy - The Basics

Written by: Chanie Pritchard

Article Overview: Effective brochure composition requires more than (just) compelling design. In planning your promotional materials, you need to pay as much attention to content as you do to visuals - and vice versa. Just as you’re hiring a professional design firm to compose the visual elements of your brochure, so should you consider hiring a professional copywriter to assist in optimizing the verbal messages you want to get across. That said, nobody knows your business better than you, and if you are going to undertake your own copywriting, there are a few basic points you should consider.

Compelling Brochure Copy - The Basics

It’s part of our job to educate our clients on the importance and advantages of excellent design. At the same time, it must be said that effective brochure composition requires more than (just) compelling design. In planning your promotional materials, you need to pay as much attention to content as you do to visuals - and vice versa.

Just as you’re hiring a professional design firm to compose the visual elements of your brochure, so should you consider hiring a professional copywriter to assist in optimizing the verbal messages you want to get across. That said, nobody knows your business better than you, and if you are going to undertake your own copywriting, there are a few basic points you should consider.

On the cover - don’t jump the gun.
Effective sales people don’t jump into the hard pitch on first contact - similarly, it doesn’t make sense to focus overtly or solely on your company on the brochure’s cover. Instead, focus on an idea that will endorse your company in the customer’s mind, and create a connection.

The copy should focus on your customer, not you.
The text in your brochure should make the customer feel that you understand and sympathize with their problems - after all, they’re seeking you out to fill THEIR needs, not to do you a favour. To your customer, the most important thing about your product or service is how it is of use to them. So, allow your brochure copy to answer all their questions and overcome all their objections. The copy should impart that personal touch to the customer. Brochure copy is sales stragety in writing… and in the world of ad copy, you need to build rapport before you can sell.

Hook your readers.
Bait is great, but without a good hook you’ll never bring that “fish” onto the boat. As it’s been said, every page in your brochure presents the reader with an opportunity to stop going on to the next page. Get their attention, and keep it with a combination of design and copy that is attractive, intriguing, and persuasive.

Sell the refreshment, not the drink.
You’ve put a lot of work into developing your company and products… so it will be very tempting to focus in on the details of all the fantastic features your company/product offers. And although it can be argued that brochures exist to explain features, in copy it’s best to sell those features through the benefits. And you can do this by using true to life examples, cases and applications.

Don’t lose your readers on technical points
This is one of the strongest reasons to seek out a professional copywriter. All too often, business owners find it too difficult to simplify their message for general consumption… because you’re so close to the product, it’s too easy to inadvertently drown your readers under a flood of technical jargon. Please, don’t do that to your prospects. If technical information is important to your particular product, it should only be presented in proper technical style (as a table chart or diagram) and not pushed down the throat of your reader through bewildering, incomprehensible language.

Establish credibility
Obviously, you want to make the best possible impression on your prospects. From a copywriting perspective, you can do this through tone and content, and by providing expert answers in simple English. Your grammer should be perfect, your composition well-considered, and your content relevant and genuinely compelling.

Keep it concise
Aside from those clients who come to us with no content ready whatsoever, perhaps one of the most perplexing problems we come across is those clients who provide us with a short novel of text to squeeze into six small brochure panes. If your prospects wanted to read a whitepaper on your company, they would ask for a whitepaper. The purpose of a sales brochure is to present a compelling, easy-to-digest overview of your company - it is not a medium in which to detail your overall business plan. Decide which points are the most important to present, and focus on those… if they are well written and presented in an artful way, they will compel your prospects to seek you out for more.

End with a call to action
Always, always end your copy with a call to action. You’ve built a rapport, you’ve outlined the benefits of your company to the customer - now simply and clearly tell the customer what you want them to do. In other words, if you want them to purchase, say, “Harold’s Widgets”, simply ask them for their order.

Writing good quality content for brochures is a vital requirement for any credible corporation. Remember you are not just selling brochure paper, you are selling yourself.

Related Articles
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  How To Create Ad-Copy That Sells
  Keep Your Brochure Out of the Trash
  10 Pointers on Creating a Tri-fold Brochure
  Are Your Marketing Materials Selling the Wrong Things

Article Tags: brochure copy, composition, copywriting, customer brochure, effective sales, excellent design, favour, first contact, fish, job, jump the gun, objections, personal touch, pitch, professional copywriter, professional design firm, promotional materials, verbal messages, visual elements, visuals



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