Graphic and Print Design -
A guide to making a good brochure

1	Why do you even need a brochure? A brochure is as important and basic a tool as your business card. However, where your business card simply introduces you as an individual, your company brochure introduces your entire company. It is like an executive summary of your operation and offerings. It is an important marketing and sales tool, one in which you can do a little bragging and shamelessly present your credentials in the most favourable light. It is your opportunity to create a lasting impression. Make sure that it is a good one.
2	Keep it brief It must effectively communicate the most important fundamentals about your business and your products or services. It must communicate with, reach and move a prospective customer who, you must assume, knows nothing about your company. That is a tall order.
3	Leave the reader with a solid impression of your company Leave the reader with the impression that yours is a solid, reliable company and therefore its products must be equally as good, solid and reliable. It is a corner stone in building trust with your prospective customers. It must leave the reader wanting to learn more about your company, but not necessarily today.
4	Keep it visually appealing It will introduce your company and give the prospect a visual feel for who you are and what you do. It should function well as both a door opener before a sales call and a reminder afterwards to which prospective clients may refer. While your brochure will seldom actually get you a sale, it will make getting the order so much easier.
5	Learn from your competition Before you start to develop a brochure for your company, review all your competitors' brochures. You'll be surprised at what you learn. Pick out the points and techniques that attract and sell you. It is easier to point to a brochure with the type of image you like than to verbalize it in briefing a creative person. The best way to learn about your industry is from your competition. Look at their brochures, price sheets, promotional material, samples of their products. This is the first step.
6	Involve a Creative from the start Bring in a creative services person for a preliminary chat. If you decide to use Sien Total Media, then show us your competitors' material. Give us an idea of what you are trying to accomplish and a little company background. We should be able to elicit from you all we need to develop an initial rough concept, copy and layout. By working together we can develop the brochure you need.
7	Determine how much you can spend on your brochure It's no good just telling your design team, like Sien Total Media, to develop some ideas unless you provide a realistic budget within which to work. You do not want to waste money, but neither do you want to produce rubbish just to save a little. That's penny wise and pound foolish. A good bench mark you could use is that your brochure should match or better the quality of the best competitive brochures. Set a budget that tends to hurt and then add 10%. Your brochure must reflect the quality your company sells. There is seldom profit in looking second rate.
8	Printing Budgets Setting up a reasonable printing budget is easy, if not painless. Call up a couple of printers and ask them, in general terms, what it will cost to print the type of brochure you have in mind, based on all artwork supplied. Usually they will be glad to assist. After all it could mean an order. Alternatively you can ask us to see whether we can find you a better deal.
9	Pre-Press Budgets Everyone wants things at the cheapest price, but cheapest is normally the best. Contact us for a quotation and we will be happy to oblige. For the best results, let your printer print but have your Creative do all the copy, design and related pre press work. Do NOT have your printer designing brochures. And no matter how good your receptionist is with her paint program, do not have amateurs creating your corporate material, unless of course you want to look amateur.
10	Brochures are usually used in three ways: Initially: as an introductory mailer. You may mass mail the brochure to sales leads and follow up later by phone. Secondarily: Your brochure should always be used as a leave behind at initial sales calls. Even when you have mailed out a copy in advance of a meeting, it is always a good idea to leave another copy as you finish up your sales call. It serves as a reminder that there is a solid, respectable company behind the sales rep who just left. And it certainly never hurts to have several copies of your brochure circulating in your prospect's office(s). Thirdly: A corporate brochure is essential to fulfil requests from potential clients for literature, either in response to an ad or a phone enquiry.
11	Reasons why people don't respond to bad brochures No one will tell you what is wrong, but they will avoid you, or in this case, your company. Your brochure, along with your phone number, will simply go right to the wastebasket. When that happens, you will find you have done more than just waste your money and time. You have turned a prospective customer into a permanent no sale without even getting a chance to get in the door. If you saved a few hundred pounds on producing your brochure, was it worth it? A badly done or cheap looking brochure reflects badly on you, your company and your products. Do not scrimp. A company which economizes on a brochure may also be seen as scrimping on its products.