How to get your brochure read

Nobody reads brochures…

… Or do they?

I’ve produced a lot of brochures for a lot of companies. And yet, I often find myself advising them not to send their brochures when they do direct mail.

Why is that?

Most people won’t read them…

People are so bombarded with information and other distractions, it’s really expecting a lot for them to be interested in your brochure. If you’re reaching them at their offices, then you’re also competing with all the other documents and papers already in their overflowing inboxes.

That’s especially so if your brochure – like so many others – is full of a lot of blather you think is important, but really has little interest for them – such as mission statements, self-serving praise and other talk that is all about you and not at all about them: “We do this…”; “We have that…”; “Our clients love us…”

So, rule number one for producing effective brochures is: Make them about the problem or need your customers have that you solve. Talk to them. Say “you” often and “we” or “us” seldom.

They’ll scan them, instead…

Even if you do orient your brochure to the readers, most still won’t read them. However, if you do grab their attention with a benefit-loaded headline, they will look inside and scan your brochure.

Which leads to rule number two: Make your brochure scannable. Here’s how to do that:

1. Avoid long sentences. Most should be in the range of 8 to 12 words. A few can range up to 20 to 24 words. Seldom, if ever, should you need to write a longer sentence.


2. Keep your paragraphs short. Four to five lines is a good length. You should almost never go beyond seven lines.


3. Keep your line widths down to 60 or 65 characters, so the reader’s eyes don’t have to skip back and forth.


4. Leave extra lines of white space between paragraphs.


5. Use meaningful subheads. You can even try having them tell your story in brief… like the ones in this article.

They look for points that interest them…

The first four points above are ways to make your text look easy to read. Long blocks of type – especially when they run across the entire width of a page – tell the reader “Don’t go here, you’ll die of boredom!”

Creating points of interest is the job of your meaningful subheads. Take the time to make sure those subheads work. They are mini-headlines, trying to draw readers into the words that follow. They deserve as much attention as your main headlines and subheads. Here’s a resource – a headline analyzer -- I often use to test my headlines:

http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/

Go ahead, try it out now. It will surprise you.

They gloss over most of your text…

But still, readers skip over most of the words you’ve paid for, missing key elements of your sales message. Here’s how you stop those wandering eyes:

Use pictures and colourful graphic elements to grab the reader’s eyes and direct them to the words you really want them to read.

They don’t have to be large or complex graphics, or even symbolic. They do have to be positioned properly – which usually means to the immediate left of the important text.

Also, make sure your most important elements are punched home, using colour or increased font size. This particularly applies to your phone number. Make it big, make it visible. Your phone number is more important than the logo you paid thousands of dollars to create.

But they invariably look at the pictures…

There is one excellent way to make sure people see and read your key points and sales messages: Put them as captions under photos, charts, diagrams and other pictures.

Captions are like the PS in a letter. Everybody reads them. And everybody looks at pictures. Here’s a non-marketing example:

Not too many years ago, Scientific American used to write informative captions under all graphical elements. These captions were long – long enough that simply by looking at the pictures and diagrams and reading the captions, you got a very good idea of what the article was about.

Scientific American no longer does this as well as they used too – new editor, I guess – but you should do it. If you want help doing it, call me:

John Friesen – 604-812-1332

P.S. There is one more thing you can do to get your brochure read. Instead of sending it in your direct mail, or as a PDF attached to an email, make your prospects ask for it. That way it has some importance to them when it arrives, and they are more likely to read it (but still more likely to scan it!).