So you're about to sit down and write/design/print a brochure, but have no place to start?

Well my friend, take 6 minutes to read this and you'll have an outline (and some templates):

“What is a brochure?”

A brochure is a piece of paper, usually folded up, that informs new customers about your product or service.

If you go to a hotel, they will often have a rack full of brochures from local companies, like this:

There will be all kinds of brochures in these racks:

• Brochures for local attractions.
• Brochures for guided tours around town.
• Brochures for restaurants.
• Brochures for comedy shows, plays, dances.
• Brochures for car rentals.
• Brochures for shopping centers.

However, brochures can be used to promote nearly any service at all.

"The point of a brochure is to be convenient to pick up, carry, and convince a customer to take action."

So if you go to a spa:

The brochure they give will often be a "service menu" which lists prices and services they offer inside the spa. You are free to take this with you and reference it for later.

If you go to a car repair shop:

The brochure will usually list prices of car services, and inform customers which services they should buy.

If you see a brochure for a boat tour:

The brochure should have a schedule, pictures of the tour, description of how long the tour will be, and directions.

Elements Of An Effective Brochure:

1.) Grabbing title.

This should generally be something very quick and to the point.  Do not try to be "clever" here, just flat-out describe the attraction. For example:

"Best Kayak Tour In Austin"

"See A Real Space Shuttle At NASA"

"Don't Miss Houston's #1 Space Shuttle Attraction!"

2.) Fun details:

Include little details that will make people want to put you on their itinerary:

"This bat watching tour is the #2 attraction in Austin behind the State Capital!"

"Parents tell us they've never seen their kids so excited to see a zoo!"

"We've been rated the top attraction in Austin by Time Magazine!"

3.) Testimonials:

Put quotes about your service/product from your happy customers:

"2 years later and our kids are STILL talking about the airboat ride!"

"I've been to Los Angeles 6 times, and never had as much fun as the Disney Adventure Tour!"

"I tell every friend who comes in town to do the Auckland Bungee Jump!"

4.) A Call to Action:

Make sure people know what to do next after seeing your brochure:

"Book right now by calling 555-555-5555, and we'll send a free shuttle to pick you up."

"Call this number 555-555-5555 to setup your once-in-a-lifetime snowmobiling trip!"

"Book before 11am each day to ensure a seat on the bus, call 555-555-5555 now!"

"What specific action do you want people to take from your brochure?"

You need to know exactly what the point of your brochure is. The point of your brochure can either be:

• Get people to pick up the brochure and call a number.
• Get people to pick up the brochure and email you.
• Get people to pick up the brochure and drive to your location.
• Get people to pick up the brochure and go online to buy something.

Once you know which of these you want them to do (and you should only pick ONE primary objective), you can design your whole brochure around that.

Brochure Examples:

Here's a bunch of examples of real brochures

We ran each brochure through a Visual Attention System which is a neural network that acts like a human brain.  In the heat map and diagrams you see what a human will FIRST pay attention to on a brochure.

This helps give us an extra hint of where people are looking.

Keep in mind a person looking at a rack of brochures may only spend 1 second skimming past your brochure, so it's good to make your brochure easy to understand:

So let's check out some different examples of brochures below:

iFly Indoor Skydiving Brochure:

This is a great brochure that's eye-catching because of the awesome subject matter: Indoor skydiving.

Right off the bat it tells you in plain English what this is, it has a catchy image that looks super fun, and it gives a strong incentive ($5 off price) to pickup and take the brochure:

Below you can see the original brochure, and how the front of it attracts the human eye:

Glass Blowing Brochure:

This is an example of a brochure advertising a glass blowing demonstration. This is actually a pretty great brochure that will appeal to a very specific group of people.

Below you can see the original brochure, and how the front of it attracts the human eye:

Kayak Tour Brochure:

This is a kayak tour brochure.  Judging by the Visual Attention heatmap, the front of this brochure has FAR too much wasted and dark space.  It could easily be filled in with more information or better pictures showing their inventory of watercraft:

Below you can see the original brochure, and how the front of it attracts the human eye:

Mosquito Prevention Brochure:

This is an advertisement in the form of a helpful brochure, so it's an advertorial by Johnson & Johnson to get people to buy bug spray.

Below you can see the original brochure, and how the front of it attracts the human eye. You can see in the heatmap how much dead space there is towards the bottom of the brochure:

Museum of the Weird Brochure:

This is a funky little brochure advertising a funky little museum called The Museum of the Weird.  While I like the very old-school and weird style of brochure, it DOES make it a bit hard to read.  I would prefer if one side of the brochure was a bit more structured with information:

I would like to a see a lot more information on the brochure such as:

• How long does it take to tour?
• What age ranges can experience this?
• What else is around here if I make the trip?
• Show people taking selfies with weird exhibits.
• How much does it cost?

Below you can see the original brochure, and how the front of it attracts the human eye:

Boat Tour Brochure:

This is a brochure for a glass bottom boat tour.  I think the picture on the front of the brochure is bad.  It should be more attractive, have FAR less dead space, or just show me a picture of people looking through the glass bottom!

The brochure doesn't really "sell" me on why I should take time to do this:

Below you can see the original brochure, and how the front of it attracts the human eye:

Wildlife Ranch Brochure:

This is a decent brochure for a wildlife ranch.  Since this attraction requires a long drive, I wish the brochure put more information inside such as:

• How long it takes to tour the facility.
• What age ranges it can accommodate.
• Are there bathrooms?
• Does it cost a lot of money? Charge per car? Charge per person?
• Is there food I can buy?
• Is there anything else around I can visit after or before?

Below you can see the original brochure, and how the front of it attracts the human eye:

Travel Tips Brochure:

This is a brochure that attempts to get people to download an app that is filled with recommendations (of course all of them are affiliates of the company).

I thought this brochure had A LOT more potential if they actually gave a few good recommendations before trying pitch an app:

There's not even a HINT of what kind of travel tips you'll find inside.  I checked out the VisitorTips website, and analyzed it with some traffic tools, that show it gets VERY LOW AMOUNTS OF TRAFFIC:

This brochure looks like garbage, gives nothing BUT garbage information, and therefore converts like garbage.

Below you can see the original brochure, and how the front of it attracts the human eye:

Library Brochure:

This is a brochure for the LBJ Library:

I wish the brochure added some information such as "See the life of our 36th president" or something like that. Even something about the era would appeal to a lot of people, such as, "See the turbulent 60's and how America was."

Below you can see the original brochure, and how the front of it attracts the human eye:

Clever Brochure Idea and Tricks:

1.) Put a business card in each brochure.  When they pick it up, it will fall out, or they can at least keep the business card.

2.) Provide a handy resource such as "The Perfect Day in Austin" list.  On it, your business will be listed somewhere of course 🙂

By providing some good value, people are more likely to pickup your brochure, and keep referencing it.

Brochure Cheat Sheet:

1.) What is the specific end goal of your brochure?

Get them to a website?  Get them to call and reserve?  Give them a map? Pick only one. Preferably the action that actually brings you money. Your product might be better advertised with a simple one-pager rather than a fancy brochure.

2.) Does your brochure give reasons they should go with you?

What else is around your attraction?  What other useful information is there?

Sincerely,

Neville Medhora - Copywriting Course

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