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Direct Mail and Business Mail
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10 Secrets For Effective Brochuresby Janet Attard If you're planning to send out a brochure to drum up sales or to announce a new product or service, you're probably wondering what you can do to ensure a good response. After all, when you add up all the costs for putting out a brochure--writing, artwork, photography, typesetting, printing, postage, and mailing list rental--plus the time you or your staff spend on associated chores, a simple business-envelope-sized brochure can cost well over $1.00 per piece to create and mail. Cost isn't the only thing you need to worry about. Every piece of literature you send out leaves an impression on your prospects. Leave the wrong impression, and you run the risk of losing sales and alienating customers. So, what can you do to make your next sales brochure a winner? Here are ten important secrets of successful brochures. 1. Understand your customer.Before you spend any time planning a brochure, make sure you understand your customer. Why would they want to buy your product? What's the most important thing it can do for them? What is the most important problem your product or service can solve for them? If you don't know the answers to questions like these, go ask. Talk to your salespeople. Talk to customers. Use their answers to help decide which benefits to play up in your brochure. 2. Plan your brochure for AIDA.No, that's not your favorite aunt. AIDA is an acronym for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. To be effective, your brochure needs to get attention, get the prospect interested enough to read further, raise their desire for the product or service, and get them to take a specific action such as buy now, call and make an appointment, return a post card. 3. Don't put a picture of your building on the cover of the brochure.Sure, you're proud of the building and the way the company has grown. But your customers really don't care how proud you are of your company, or how big your building is. The only thing they care about is whether or not your products meet their needs. Don't waste space you should use to sell your products and convince customers to buy now. 4. Sell, don't tell.Your customers and prospects aren't really interested in your company or products. They are interested in themselves and/or their own businesses. To get their attention, your brochure needs to focus on the benefits they will enjoy by making a purchase from you. Remember, people don't buy telephone answering machines to record messages. They buy answering machines so they will never miss an important call again. 5. Use headlines and graphics your audience cares about.The average reader takes less than 5 seconds to glance at the cover of a brochure and decide whether or not to read it. If your headline or graphics on the cover of your brochure are boring, few recipients will bother opening it. For instance, a photo of people watching a presenter writing on a flip chart above a headline that reads, "Matching People and Strategy," is likely to get a brochure pitched into the recycle bin. But, a photo showing a businessperson giving a thumbs up sign to small group of associates and a headline that reads, "Train Your Team To Land Big Sales," is likely to get attention. 6. Use benefits-oriented headlines inside your brochure, too.Once you've gotten the brochure recipient to open the brochure, the next thing they'll do is skim the headlines inside the brochure. Use these inside headlines to hold their attention, and move them through the copy. 7. Tell them what you want them to do after reading the copy.After you interest the reader in what you sell, you have to take the next step: tell them what they need to do to acquire it. Don't just assume they'll look for your phone number and call. If you don't tell them what action to take, they may take the wrong one - calling another merchant or service provider instead of you. 8. Give them a reason to act nowIf you don't urge the reader to act now, and don't give them a reason to do so, your efforts in getting attention, building interest and desire will be wasted. The customer will move on to the next thing that catches their attention and forget all about you. Some of the more common offers to get customers to buy now are special discounts that are only valid before a specific date, a free gift for purchases before a specific date, and rebates for purchase by a specific date. Others that don't involve discounts or giveaways are reminders to buy now because the quantities are limited (if they really are), or because prices will be increasing, etc. 9. Make it easy to respond.Be sure your business name and phone number are easily found in the brochure. Include a toll-free 800 number, or some other easy way for people to take the action you want them to take. 10. Take away the risk.Once you've built up the desire to have what you sell, you could still lose the sale if the customer has any concerns about purchasing because they don't know who you are or how good the product really is. To ease the customer's fear, include a money-back guarantee. About
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