Ways to Use Brochures in Your Marketing Campaign

If you’re looking for ways to use brochures in your marketing campaign, you need to first determine the thrust of that campaign. After all, you need to know your desired outcome so you can best determine how any type of advertising, like promotional brochures, can help you in that goal. Basically, promotional brochure printing enables you to print out hundreds, even thousands, of promo materials at drastically lowered cost, and have those materials sent out to your target audience to increase the recognition of your business within your community in general, and your audience in particular. But, in order to fully maximize the benefits of this form of advertising, you should know how brochures can really help you to gain the increased customer base and revenues that you’re looking for.

Peak their interest

Effective brochure marketing relies on the interest of the reader to start looking through the brochure; once they’re attention is caught, it’s up to the content within the brochure itself to truly hook the reader in and gain their patronage. Whether you’re marketing river tours in Mississippi or real estate in Ohio, the principle is the same: know what your target audience wants or needs, and show them how your products or services can fulfill that desire. By using eye-catching graphics alongside informative word content, you can create within the viewer the desire to take advantage of the products and services you offer. The trick here is to catch their eye and interest and hold it; you need to make sure you don’t lose that interest.

Further capture attention

That’s where layout and graphics come in to play when you’re looking for ways to use brochures in your marketing campaign. First of all, you should know how a brochure works: depending on the size and fold options you choose, your brochure can range from two pages to six. Each of those pages has the potential to bring in customers, as long as you capitalize on that potential. For instance, the first page, being the first thing seen by the viewer, should feature the title of the brochure and a relevant, beautiful photo in order to catch their eye, and their interest. The interior of your brochure should hold the majority of the word content, along with supporting photos and graphics to help the reader to visualize the words therein. Bullet points and sub headers allow the reader to skim the brochure to reach the points that truly matter to them; by being able to do that, the reader is less likely to set down the brochure out of boredom or lack of interest.

Finally, ensure that your promotional brochure printing techniques include coordinating color schemes and that the content therein is focused, confident and persuasive. You want your potential customers to be so intrigued by the services or products your business has to offer that they’ll want to come in and check it out for themselves. Effectivebrochure marketing is your chance to bring in the additional customer base, and therefore revenue, that your company needs to thrive in today’s cutthroat world of advertising, without spending thousands of dollars every month on expensive marketing campaigns.

Top 5 Ways to Use Brochures Successfully

Advertising in today’s market is a must; no longer can most small or even larger companies rely solely on word-of-mouth advertising or referrals to stay open. With the greater need for advertising, however, comes a market clogged with various marketing methods that can range from highly effective to annoying nuisances. If you want to increase your customer base with a reliable and affordable means of advertising, here are the top 5 ways to use brochures successfully, and get on the road to effective marketing today. Using brochures the right way First of all, your effective brochure printing strategy needs to be focused; rather than vaguely referring to any particular product or service you offer and hoping that the customer will draw their own impressions, you should always have a pre-determined idea of what exactly it is you’re going to be marketing, and focus on that idea. Adding extraneous information could confuse the reader, or cost you their interest completely. Of course, on the last page of your brochure, you can add little reminders of your other products or services as added advertising, but keep the main thrust of your brochure as a whole focused on what it is you’re trying to sell to the reader. Keep your brochure easy to skim through. Instead of writing out your information in paragraphs with nothing to distinguish between them, use sub-headers and bullet points that allow the reader to jump to the parts that interest them. Successful brochure marketing centers around providing the reader with a reason to come into your office or shop, but if they can’t find the particular reason they need buried within the words on your brochures, they simply won’t. So make your brochures something that the reader to go through at a glance, and the interest sparked will have them reading the whole brochure in no time. Know your audience. If you’re going to be marketing your company toward a certain demographic, make sure you know what it is they’re interested in/in need of, and use that knowledge to create interest in your company. It doesn’t matter what other aspects of effective brochure printing you adhere to if your brochures are not certain what the people you’re trying to entice are looking for when they seek out your services or products. Knowing your audience can help you to create a brochure that really speaks to them. Finally, you have to know exactly what it is you’re marketing, and it’s always best if you have a general idea of what you intend to say and show in your brochure before you even start the creation process. Knowing what you want to convey to your reader will go a long way to lending the brochure a confident, persuasive air; furthermore, by knowing what you want to say and how you want to illustrate it, you are reducing the risk of your brochure appearing ill thought out or sloppy or forgetting major points altogether. Preparedness is your best chance for successful brochure marketing.  Adhering to the top 5 ways to use brochures successfully can make a world of difference in the efficacy of your company’s brochure marketing strategy.

The Next 6 Things You Should Do for Printing Brochures Success

Print brochures are a necessary part of marketing any small business. Customers usually want some sort of publication they can take home to review. Brochures also help raise awareness of your services and your company in the local area. Plus, companies can mail out brochures to customers as part of a marketing campaign. Once you get the brochures back from the printing company you can do a lot with them. Let's take a look at the next six things small businesses should do after getting their brochures back from commercial printing companies.

Get brochure success!

1. Prepare a mailing list for a part of this batch of brochures. If you thought ahead, you saved space on the back of the brochure for address labels. Mailing lists can be culled from customer newsletter subscriptions, catalog subscriptions or even purchased from special companies. It's easy to import a mailing list into label making software for printing.

2. Prep the brochures. This step includes folding the brochures if the printing company didn't do it and sticking them in envelopes or adding mailing labels to them. If you have hourly employees, this can be something for them to do in between customers.

3. Set a stack on your counter space. If you have a retail location, set brochures out in plain site for customers to see and take. You may also instruct employees to place a brochure in each customer's bag at check out. This helps ensure that brochures get into the hands of customers.

4. Ask other local businesses to put out a stack of your brochures. You can place them in card racks in entryways or on countertops. Offer to do cross-promotion with other businesses in exchange for the advertising. For instance, offer to display some of their brochures on your counter space in exchange for the same.

5. Contact the US Postal Service about the FREE Every Door Direct Mail Kit to help you get started with direct mailing of your brochures. This kit will guide you through the process of sending out mass mailings with the USPS. Marketers have to follow certain rules regarding mailing lists and even having their lists up to date with the current USPS forwarding address database. This kit will explain it all.

6. Order another batch of print brochures from the printer before your current batch runs out. Once you get started handing out, mailing and distributing those brochures, they disappear pretty fast. Most printers are able to print out a rush batch of brochures in a few days at an affordable price.

These steps go a long way towards making effective use of your brochures from the commercial printing companies. Customers can be found in all aspects of life, so don't ignore any marketing possibility. Even hand out brochures on the street, if you have too. Direct mailing of brochures is also another option for companies looking to reach new customers. Get started early with implementation of a marketing plan for those brochures. Otherwise, they won't do you any good just sitting on the counter.

The History of Brochures in Marketing

Brochures have had a longstanding history in the field of marketing; from the time that the printing press made printing marketing brochures more accessible and (eventually) more cost effective, marketing campaigns have used this relatively inexpensive form of advertising to its fullest advantage. Since the 1800s, businesses have made use of brochure printing to provide advertising to the masses in the form of graphics and text to convey a simple message: you need our products and services, and this is why.

Taking a look back

The history of brochures in marketing is a varied one. With the widespread escalation of advertising in magazines and newspapers, business owners began to see the advantages of using smaller, scaled down versions in the form of single-sheet black and white brochures as a means of simple marketing. Because of this rise in printed advertising, especially that of brochures, commercial printing services became a popular enterprise, making brochure printing even more available though still very expensive. Although the advantages associated with this type of advertising were numerous indeed, the cost associated with printing out brochures for advertising purposes often could not be justified by businesses, and so they were forced to find other means of advertising.

With the advent of the off-set printing press, the 1950s and the 1960s saw a dramatic decrease in the cost of printing brochures, as well as a widening in the available colored inks and papers to be used. Printing in full color, for brochures and other promotional materials, became widely popular, though still much more expensive than its black and white counterparts. Furthermore, the offset printing press provided a much higher quality of printing, so businesses found themselves turning to the offset press for their brochure printing needs more and more, turning brochure marketing into a highly successful enterprise.

With the invention and subsequent huge popularity of the desktop PC in the 1980s, publishing marketing materials like brochures became an at home prospect; graphics software and quickly developed, ever improving printers made printing marketingbrochures at home or in the office more available, though not necessarily easier or more cost effective. Non-professionals now found themselves capable of designing and printing out promotional brochures with the ease and quality of the printing companies they’d previously turned to for their materials. Some software programs even began providing templates and layout schemes for amateurs to create and design their own brochures with ease and skill previously associated with the professionals.

Modern day printing

Today, between the ease and availability of at home or online printing for brochures, the historyof brochures in marketing has skyrocketed to unheard of proportions. Everywhere from doctor’s offices to school libraries to hotel lobbies to rest stops along the highway, we can find examples of advertising brochures intended to spark an interest within the reader to take advantage of the products, services or adventures within the folds of these brightly colored, informative brochures illustrated with gorgeous photos and graphics. Brochures have not lost their ability to draw in the attention and attraction of the consumer, and can still be found in the hands of readers all over looking to get a little insight into whatever the brochure has to offer.

The Hidden Mystery Behind Printing Brochures

Printing brochures is a little different from a normal printing task. This is even more exaggerated with bulk brochure printing. You see with printing for trade companies the brochure companies and other printing groups heavily optimize their process to do exactly what it needs too. This allows for great efficiency and cost savings, but little in the way of flexibility. It would be difficult to suddenly change a printing press design to press sheets and suddenly press out brochures instead.

Mass brochure printing

Brochure companies have to modify the printing process for bulk brochure printing. There are several aspects of mass producing brochures that are different from regular print. First, brochures are in color, so they have to use color printing press by default. Next, brochures are usually printed out at different sizes than standard paper, so the presses themselves have to be designed to handle different paper types and sizes. Third, brochures are printed on both sides at once. This means either running the brochures through a second time for the other side, or a press that can print to both sides at once. Finally, they will need a means of quickly and reliably folding the brochure into place.

Of course, there are a lot of similarities with normal printing. A lot of the process is similar to sheet printing. That is when a large roll of paper is fed through the printing press and then cut to the right sizes. This usually includes printing on both sides of the paper at once. The biggest difference many modern printer shops have to account for with printing is the folding stage. This can be done very fast with specialized machines.

Trade company printing

Printing for trade companies also requires that they handle the process from start to finish. They will receive the designs that are send over. They make a test print, or a small batch, called a proof that can be sent over to the client. This allows the client to okay the final product before any mistakes can be made on the final finished product. Doing so will prevent both sides from fighting over a product neither wanted. Now, they must also handle the issues of folding the brochures, packing them up, and sometimes even mailing them out. This requires a specialized process for each stage, as well as warehouse space to store everything as its being processed.

When a company wants to have a brochure made they must first design the brochure. This is usually done on a computer with software that has templates for brochure layouts and folds. There are several different brochure designs, some of them require special manufacturing additions to make. After the design is made it is sent to the printing company. They will check the design to make sure it is workable, then send a proof back to the client. Sometimes the proof is merely a digital image of the final product. After the client makes changes and approves the design, they print off and fold up the brochures. This batch is usually mailed to the client.

The Guide to Printing Brochures and Flyers Effectively

The world of brochures and flyers printing involves plenty of ink and paper. It also involves a lot of pre-planning and design to get just the right kind of look for print brochures. A good designer will help out with the creation of a brochure or flyer. Most print companies will help their customers out with the process of prepping a document for printing, but they can't help customers create the right designs. They also can't help make customers with their marketing plans.

Marketing with flyers and brochures

Flyers and brochures are both documents that companies use to market their services and to help make potential customers more aware of them. Print brochures and flyers are tools for building the company brand. This is something that businesses should never forget. Sure, a flyer can be used to let customers know about an event or service. Brochures are excellent tools for providing more detailed information about a service or company. It does get the word out to customers. However, the primary purpose of these publications is to let customers know that you exist.

When designing effective looking documents for brochures and flyersprinting companies, you need to keep the brand in mind. Flyers and brochures should not only look good, they should follow the company brand and style. If your small business doesn't have a brand or style, get one. Brand is everywhere people turn these days. It's the logo on a can of soda or the distinctive color used in a popular restaurant chain's decor. This style is replicated in the print publications and websites of these major companies. That's because the more customers see the brand, the more established the company seems and the more likely customers are to recognize the product. Any small business can build their brand using this technique.

Your ultimate goal

Before settling down with print companies that specialize in brochures or flyers, think about what you will want to do with those publications. Your small business needs a plan. Brochures can be sent in the mail, displayed in card racks or handed out. Flyers can be posted in other locations, handed out or placed in the mail. Look at the cost of printing up lots of brochures or flyers. These publications don't cost much, but they have a low conversion rate. So, you'll need thousands of flyers and brochures to get a decent turnout of customers. Getting these publications into the hands of potential customers is another task altogether. You really need to decide on a plan of action and scope out potential locations to post those publications. Don't be afraid to reach out to other local businesses.

Naturally, printing up brochures means paying attention to design and finding the right company. Deciding on the appropriate design for each publication isn't hard. Just follow your company brand for inspiration. Once printed, you'll need an effective plan for getting those brochures and flyers in the hands of customers. Consider the plan before deciding on the company. It may have an effect on your final budget.

What is CMYK?

In the art and design industry you commonly hear the acronym “CMYK”. What is CMYK or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key? They are the basic colors used in color printing. These colors have been around since, more or less, the dawn of color printing. They are the cheapest and fastest way for commercial printers to print out color images, and if you look closely at old pictures and comics you can actually see the separate colors in pixilated dots. Using a CMYK color chart, you can get most any color out of them. It is less seen these days due to advances in technology. However this process is still one of the fastest, cheapest, and most reliable methods of printing color.
What about colors?
More to the point what is CMYK useful for is tricking the eye. Colors are different frequencies of light, or combinations of those frequencies. Our eyes aren't perfect, and even less so our brains. So, they take and average out the light they see, into approximations. When you have two sets of very small dots of color mixed in together, you eyes will average them to make a new color. Cyan, magenta, and yellow are the three basic colors that can be merged together in this manner to make most any other color. They are printed down as a bunch of small dots in various densities to generate the colors. In addition, the background color, usually white, and the key color, usually black, are added in to make the color light or dark.
The CMYK color chart is a chart of what proportions of each will yield which colors. More specifically not all printers have infinite resolution and printing quality, so you have to use the colors listed in the color chart if you want them printed out. Now, modern commercial printers have printing methods that can usually get any color you want, but this is not cheap. If you want to have a nice mass produced color scheme you must stick to the color pallet that is provided for you and design your artwork following it.
Taking note of CMYK colors
The most common places where you will encounter the CMYK colors are with large scale bulk printing that is cheap and disposable. A common example of this is newspaper comics, or older cheap comics from the 70s. Some mass produced pamphlets and fliers can use this process as well. Another more recent trend is to print T-shirts using the color method on them. However most instances of CMYK have been upgraded so that you can use any four colors on a given print run. So as long as you stick to just those four colors for the whole print run, it is almost as efficient as normal CMYK.
CMYK allows for a great deal more flexibility with colors and design than you might first imagine. As such, it is not to be underestimated as a viable design and printing solution. This color printing process will allow you to get a large scale print run of materials for a fairly cheap and reasonable price. Plus, it is also compatible with older printing methods.

What Fonts Are Appropriate for Readability?

Typeface and font are often a huge part of any kind of printing task, whether it’s a textbook for college or a fictional novel or even printed ads and web design; after all, no one wants to take the time to write out hundreds of pages – or even just one page – of information that hardly anyone will read because the words are just too difficult or awkward to decipher easily. Even when your intention is to get the attention of the reader, if the font isn’t legible or clear, that interest isn’t going to last long, and you’ve wasted time and energy printing out something no one is going to read. So when you’re creating a web design, a book or a promotional pamphlet, make sure to ask yourself which fonts are appropriate for readability, and you can save yourself a lot of time and aggravation down the road.
Typeface and Font
First you may want to understand the difference between typeface and font. Typeface is the larger classification of print, wherein certain aspects of the lettering are upheld throughout the class, even as the minor details may vary from one font to another. For example, roman typefaces are the most commonly used, for their clarity and readability. Roman typefaces include Slab-Serif, Antigua (or Old Style), Transitional, Clarendon, Modern and Typewriter. Each typeface has its own particular defining characteristics that separate it from the others, while still maintaining a certain similarity with them.
The difference between these typefaces lies usually within minor details. For instance, Antigua typeface will have low contrasting strokes and ascender serifs, while Transitional typeface has medium contrasting and Modern typeface has a high ratio of contrast between strokes. Each typeface generally will have minor differences in individual letters where the diagonal strokes meet, especially in Ws, and other letters that have unique shapes – like the letter Q with its tail – will be formed differently.
Typeface Fonts
Typeface fonts, however, are the sub-categories underneath those. We all know what fonts are, because at the top of whatever word program we use we have the option to change our fonts. The most commonly used fonts are – again, in the roman typeface category – Times New Roman, Times Roman, Bembo, Baskerville, Garamond, Courier New, and many more. These fonts, with their upright strokes and minimal embellishments, are highly popular for their clarity and legibility.
Which Fonts are Appropriate for Readability?
The truth is that roman typeface fonts are generally the best bet when you want to have clear, legible writing. Because of their characteristics and simplistic, straightforward shapes, roman typefaces are the easiest to read, actually leading the reader’s eye from one letter to the next smoothly, rather than a harsh, frictional manner. When you’re trying to determine which fonts are appropriate for readability, regardless of your project, sticking with roman typeface for your fonts will allow you to choose among myriad options, while still having the assurance of knowing that readers will be able to easily decipher exactly what it is you’re trying to say, which in turn will keep them reading further.

Web Design versus Print Design

Any graphic designers can tell you that they are essential difference between the implementation of print vs web design. Customers and clients use the web and print media differently. One is more focused on scanning for vital information, while the other is focus on catching the eye. Print media design has to work hard to get customers' attention in today’s for loud and busy world. Companies have a lot of competition for customers with each other and with the other forms of media out there. Website design means focusing on making information easy to find and also making the experience of visiting a website easy and functional.
How to merge the two
It is possible for companies to tie their print vs web design needs together with brand and message. A website and other online marketing need not look completely different from the print media design that customers see in the real world. However, businesses do need to pay attention to the difference between these two media. They also need to make sure that whomever they have working on their print design and affordable web design are staying in touch with one another and are working together to present a unified appearance.
When working on a website, designers focus first on creating a structure for the site, kind of like a map. After this, the designers create layouts for each page of the site and finally the add extra design elements like color and logos. The primary focus of the web designers is very similar to that of an engineer in building a site from the ground up, or revamping a site. Designers look at the big picture and crate a working construct before they add in the elements of design to the site.
How print designers work with it
Print designers work on the other end of the spectrum with printed publications. First, they create a mock up of the printed material that they want to use. This is like a website layout that the website designer uses. Next, the designers write up the content to place in the printed material. Designers may also work with a professional writer who actually creates the written content for the printed publications. Finally, the print designer compiles it all into one finished product. Print designers think about layout and design first, then move onto the content they want to include in the flyer, brochure or calendar.
When looking for someone to help out with print and affordable web design, you may want to hire separate people. Each designer will obviously specialize in either print or web designer work. Each designer knows what is involved with prepping for the project and also how to create effective printed materials or a finished website for the user. If you do end up with one person for both print and web work, make sure that the designer understands the difference between the two types of media. A website design can quickly become overwhelming for a print designer. Alternatively, web designers may not come up with the most effective printed materials.

Utilizing Print Design in Effective Marketing

Small businesses often work with a print design company to print out brochures, calendars and other print marketing materials. These materials are quite useful for small companies in raising awareness for local customers. They also help spread the word about special events, services and deals that customers can take advantage of at the company. Another useful aspect of print materials for the small business is the branding. These publications, if they all follow the same style and design will help to build the company brand over time. Here's how companies can effectively use printing & design materials in marketing.
Use Multiple Print Publications
When having materials made up by a print design company it's a good idea to make up several different types of print publications. This ways companies can kick off cross promotional campaigns for their businesses. Make up flyers to paste on bulletin boards, telephone polls and hand out to passersby. Print out brochures to place in customer bags, on countertops and in card racks at other business locations. Even have banners and bumper stickers printed up for display on employee cars and in your business location. There are many different kinds of printed materials that businesses can take advantage of in getting their marketing work off the ground.
Consider Promotional Items
Many print marketing campaigns also include some promotional items to give to customers and clients. These items such as, calendars, bumper stickers and refrigerator magnets, have some practical value. Customers are more likely to pick up these items because they are useful, meaning they are more likely to see the company name and advertising every day at home or the office. The better the promotional item, the more use it is going to see. When trying to get a high value campaign started, these promotional items will really help raise customer awareness of the company or service.
Standardize Designs to the Brand
In printing & design it's important to remember that all marketing needs to be standardized. A consistent look and feel to advertising will help customers identify a company more easily. Brand recognition is also about establishing an identity. Customers will start to associate certain qualities with a company based on its advertising, so be aware of this tendency. If businesses use expensive, high-quality materials, they'll convey the impression that they are highly successful and well-established. If a company uses DIY business cards on cheap paper, they give an impression of just getting started or having a small budget and needing to cut corners.
A print design company can help out a great deal with creating marketing materials. However, the small business needs to know how to use these materials effectively. The world of marketing relates to catching the customer's interest, conveying the message and getting that customer to take action. There are a number of ways to do this, but businesses need to have a plan to succeed. This means setting up a cross promotional campaign, giving customers something valuable that they can use and standardizing the brand.

Tips for Small Businesses to Use When Printing

Small businesses need to advertise too; just because your small business doesn’t necessarily have the man-power or the extensive budget required for large marketing campaign doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of various effective, relatively low-cost methods of advertising like business postcard printing. No matter what kinds of advertising you find yourself in need of, however, there are some tips for small businesses to use when printing that you should keep in mind, so that you know how to maximums the marketing potential in your print advertising. 

Business Postcard Printing

Business postcard printing, along with other forms of printed advertising, is a very effective and convenient way to get the word out and about in your community about the various products and services your business has to offer, in addition to advertising the events and sales you’ve got going on at any time of the year. Because of the often scaled down marketing budget and resources that most small businesses are forced to operate with, large scale advertising like television or radio commercials are not always within reach; print advertising, however, is a wonderful means of marketing that is relatively low-cost and is just as efficient, if not more so, than other means.

After all, small business printers are just as dedicated as you are to providing customers with high-quality products at competitive prices. So when you take advantage of printing companies such as those online, you’re actually getting better quality than you might image, for a reduced advertising cost. Furthermore, you can create and design your print advertising for your small business from the paper to the graphics and everywhere in between, making your mark on your printed postcards, and personalizing it for your target audience. That personalization can be a lot more impressive to consumers than a blanket commercial. And, because some online printers actually offer mailing services for you, you can simply have your printed ads mailed directly from the printers, adding to the convenience and efficiency of the whole process.

Small business printers

One of the best tips for small businesses to use when printing advertisements for marketing purposes is to make use of smallbusiness printers. They are committed to providing clients with custom designed marketing prints that will draw in consumers with their gorgeous pigmented inks and sturdy durable cardstock that is often covered with an aqueous coating to ensure longevity and reduce the fingerprints and smudges left on the postcards or brochures.

By making use of small printing businesses like online printers, you can take advantage of a huge portion of marketing that is highly effective, and get your business the customers it needs to not only survive but thrive in today’s economy. Just because you own a small business doesn’t mean you have to forgo a large-scale marketing campaign that will net you customers and profits by the droves; it just means you have to be more selective, and use a much more personalized approach to achieve those ends. And with printed promo materials designed by you, printed by professionals and mailed directly to your targeted addressees, there’s really nothing to lose and everything to gain.