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Keep Your Brochure Out of the Trash

Written by: Donald F. Pooley

Article Overview: Brochures are popular marketing tools, which can be highly effective. But it's estimated that over half of them end up in the trash without ever being read. Considering their cost, every effort should be made to gain the readers' attention, and provide information that will cause them to act.

Keep Your Brochure Out of the Trash

Brochures are popular marketing tools, which can be highly effective. But it's estimated that over half of them end up in the trash without ever being read. Considering their cost, every effort should be made to gain the readers' attention, and provide information that will cause them to act.
Here's what to do:
1) Create an innovative, interesting, and applicable cover.
2) Use photos on your cover, as they are attention-getters. Visit stock photo sites, such as www.photospin.com, to find reasonably priced, professionally taken pictures.
3) Use full color on your cover to get your brochure read. If your cover doesn't catch a prospect's eye, the rest of it will go unread.
4) Use your copy space wisely. Most tri-fold brochures offer limited space for text, so use it to focus on the benefits of your services to your clients. Use definitive calls-to- action, and leave at least one key piece of information out of the copy so the reader will be more likely to contact you.
But DO NOT:
1) Print "homemade" brochures. Brochures that do not portray a highly professional image are received with skepticism. A low quality homemade brochure gives the impression that your business is of low quality, too.
2) Skimp on proofreading. This is without a doubt one of the most common errors novice marketers make. Typos, the misuse of words, and blatant grammatical errors are very damaging to your image. While most programs now offer a spell-check feature, these tools can't differentiate between words like 'no' and 'know', or 'peek', 'peak' and 'pique'. Also, their ability to check for mistakes in grammar is inadequate.
3) Try to close the sale from your brochure. Most brochures are simply not designed to take the customer through the buying process to the point-of-purchase. That's not their purpose. They're designed to give sufficient information to spark the interest of the readers and to cause them to ask questions and want further details. If you try to include every ounce of information about your product or service in your brochure, it will be too crowded and overbearing to bring about positive results.
Concentrate on creating a brochure designed to do its job of presenting you attractively. By enticing your prospects, and then providing excellent contact information, you will find that your brochure will open the door to many more sales.
Cathy Kessler is a Certified Professional Virtual Assistant specializing in proofreading, copyediting, and research. Do you have articles, books, brochures, websites, newsletters, ebooks, or other documents that need to be proofread or researched? Visit her site today for further information, or contact her at cathy@kesslerva.com .

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Don't they know there are spammers out there? - Just a rant.... I have a spam filter on my email, such that every day probably about 20 or more emails a day end up in my Bulk folder and I don't even see them. But I still see dozens of spam messages a day in my Inbox, and I recognize them by their titles, if they just say, "Hello," or "Hi" or some other generic title, I know it's spam and I just delete it without even opening it - as you must do. Today I got an email from someone, and the title was "wff". Just that. Not even capital letters. Normally I would have just deleted it without reading it, but fortunately I saw the name of the author, and it was a name I recognized, not a friend but an acquaintance - someone who works for the Williamsburg Film Festival. And the title "wff" was of course Williamsburg Film Festival. And I wonder how many businesses send out emails to potential customers with generic subject lines so that their stuff gets sent to the Trash file without even being looked at.
Re: Don't they know there are spammers out there? - [quote="OmnivoreInk":utcjbiv6]Just a rant.... I have a spam filter on my email, such that every day probably about 20 or more emails a day end up in my Bulk folder and I don't even see them. But I still see dozens of spam messages a day in my Inbox, and I recognize them by their titles, if they just say, "Hello," or "Hi" or some other generic title, I know it's spam and I just delete it without even opening it - as you must do. Today I got an email from someone, and the title was "wff". Just that. Not even capital letters. Normally I would have just deleted it without reading it, but fortunately I saw the name of the author, and it was a name I recognized, not a friend but an acquaintance - someone who works for the Williamsburg Film Festival. And the title "wff" was of course Williamsburg Film Festival. And I wonder how many businesses send out emails to potential customers with generic subject lines so that their stuff gets sent to the Trash file without even being looked at.[/quote:utcjbiv6] Hi Barbara, Personally, I do my best to skim all the sender names and subject titles before deleting everything in my "bulk folder" because you never know if you're missing out on something. For instance, I had a friend whose email used to make it safely into my inbox, but then I later found a few of them in mislabeled as spam in the bulk folder.


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