Social media and digital marketing are booming, especially since the pandemic. But the power of physical mail is still to be reckoned with, even in today’s online age.
Brochure marketing is an excellent way of reaching and influencing people. If designed and distributed correctly, a brochure can indicate that your company is professional, reliable, and committed to their customers.
If you aren’t already, you should consider using brochure marketing as a tool in your marketing repertoire. It could be the missing piece that catches you your dream customer!
What Exactly Is a Brochure?
At its core, a brochure is a single-fold or multi-fold sheet of paper, containing advertising information. This is usually info on the company’s products and services, as well as contact and possibly location details.
You do get digital brochures too. However, for the purpose of this article, we’re talking about physical mail – a piece of paper that someone can hold in their hand.
Brochures come in a variety of different shapes and types. Bi-fold and tri-fold are two of the most common designs, providing more than enough space for all the necessary content. Brochures are also often made into small booklets, with multiple pages bound together.
What’s the Difference Between a Brochure and a Pamphlet?
Ultimately, it comes down to content. Brochures advertise products and services, whle pamphlets promote non-commercial events, like a rock concert. Brochures can be robust and consists of multiple pages. A one page marketing brochure is usually called a pamphlet.
Essentially, the point of a brochure is to drive action that results in sales for your business. The point of a pamphlet is simply to make people aware of something.
The Psychology of Brochure Marketing
Wondering why brochures are important for marketing when you’re online? The truth is, social media marketing can only take your brand so far.
One of the best things about brochure marketing is that statistics show a greater brand recall than digital media. That means that people who view your brochure are much more likely to remember your brand than people who see your adverts on social media.
This is highly significant! Your brand can be forgettable online. But when someone is holding a piece of paper with your logo, offerings, and brand colours, it cements itself in a person’s memory in a different way.
Multiple studies support the idea that readers take in more information when viewing print ads than they do when viewing digital ads. These studies consider things like how easy different formats are to understand, how long a viewer spends reading, and the level of persuasion.
On every count, physical mail beats digital marketing. You can’t deny that a piece of mail in someone’s hand has positive effects!
The Creativity of Brochure Marketing
You can get really creative when it comes to brochure marketing! While designing social media ads can be fun on its own, designing physical mail requires some out-of-the-box thinking if you want your brochure to stand out.
When it comes to digital marketing, you’re a little restricted by the platform you’re advertising on. Your post needs to be a certain size, otherwise it gets trimmed down and vital info may be lost. It needs to meet specific guidelines, otherwise all your setting up can go to waste if it’s not approved.
When designing physical mail, though, as long your print-ready file is within the right size and resolution for top-quality printing, you can get as creative as you want with ideas for brochures, including shape, colour, and layout.
How to Creat Effective Brochures
If you’re short on inspiration, you can find fun, funky, and effective marketing brochure samples all over the internet. There’s also an abundance of high-quality marketing brochure templates, which you can download and customise with your own information.
However, we highly recommend designing your own. That way, you know that nobody else has used your design before!
Design
Instead of going with your usual square or rectangular brochure, why not design something eye-catching? Take a leaf out of Konami Gaming or 3rock’s book and try a 3D brochure design to capture attention:
Or, go for a uniquely shaped design that invites the reader to open it up and see what’s going on inside, like these:
You could also go for a bit of texture or a user-engaging experience, like these two designs from Attitude and Spencer’s Crossing respectively:
Content
Your marketing brochure content is as important as your design. This is where you sell your product or service.
While your content may depend slightly on your design, there are certain elements that you can’t ignore. Your headline, for example, needs to capture attention and entice the reader to keep reading.
Your content should be simple and easy to understand. Make sure your tone is on point with your brand! You should also have clear calls-to-action in appropriate places, leaving your reader in no doubt about what they should do to get your product or service.
Lastly, if your product or service allows for it, offer something free with your brochure. A great example is something similar to the design below, which gives a few free guitar picks. Nobody’s going to forget that, especially when they’re seeing the brand every time they play guitar!
The Most Cost-Effective Form of Marketing
If you aren’t yet totally convinced of the power of digital marketing, the good news is that it’s one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing you’ll find.
Most businesses don’t think twice about spending money on digital marketing like Facebook, Instagram, Google, or YouTube ads. And mostly without any indication of what sort of ROI may come of it!
Why not spend a small bit on running a highly targeted letterbox campaign instead of blind digital ads? There’s an extremely low overhead cost, leaving you open to a much higher ROI than online marketing typically has.
Conclusion: Old-Fashioned or Unique Modern Tool?
What are your thoughts on brochure marketing? The benefits of brochures in marketing can’t be ignored – statistics prove that it’s highly effective at helping people actually remember your business!
While running a letterbox campaign may sound old-fashioned, don’t underestimate its effectiveness. Digital marketing is the latest way of getting your business out there. But if you’re neglecting direct mail, you’re missing out on a huge avenue of influence.
If you haven’t got a direct mail campaign running right now, there’s never been a better time to implement a brochure marketing strategy. Get in touch with us with your own creative market brochure, or allow us to design some marketing brochure examples for you.
See how your business skyrockets when running a direct mail campaign as well as digital ads! You’ll never go back.