Page Turner or Turn Off? Part Two

I was surprised to go into a Bose shop recently and be told that they don't publish a cataloguie because people can go to the website. This is very shortsighted. Brochures drive large numbers of people to websites as well as generating sales in their own right.

Now where was I? Oh yes. Let’s turn to the inside pages. Most people automatically look at a point slightly above the centre and to the right, so if you want them to look at the rest of the page, you must lead them round it. A good layout uses a face looking inward or a curving body to move the eye in a circular motion around the whole page and to focus it on the key information. Painters have been using this and other rules of composition to control eye movement for hundreds of years - check out Botticelli’s The Birth Of Venus.

As for the words, the best brochures sell benefits not features. Since this is a basic rule of marketing, I’m surprised how often it’s broken. For example, just because the show won Best Musical Award, it doesn’t follow that your customer will enjoy it; there’s a world of difference between Les Mis and Hairspray. The best copy talks to the reader about what they want: “When you leave the theatre dancing down the street, you’ll know why this show won Best Musical Award.”

When it comes to design, the marketer stays in control of the best brochures. Designers may love pink type coming out of a red background but we know our customers won’t be able to read it. They may use 8 point type to make more room for images but we know it must be at least 12 point. A good designer will make the brochure look lovely but the good marketer keeps the artist’s feet on the ground and insists that important messages are communicated clearly.

Finally, the best brochure will have been checked by independent readers, who will have included older customers if they make up a significant proportion of the audience.

There are many more techniques that a brochure specialist can suggest to boost sales but simply incorporate the above and you’ll ensure that your brochure is a page turner instead of a turn-off.

Is Your Brochure a Page-Turner or a Turn-Off?

What makes the perfect season brochure? A winning formula involves more than making it look pretty. If the brochure you’re involved with isn’t using the following techniques and quite a few others, then you’re losing sales.

Let’s begin at the end. If the brochure has been displayed back to front or thrown casually on a table, its back cover may be the first sight the customer has of a brochure, so a good one will have the venue’s name clearly displayed for people who know your business and will actually pick up a brochure for it.

When you put something on the back cover, it’s like shining a Super Trouper on it. Along with the inside covers and the centre spread, it’s one of the ‘hot spots’ that get noticed. A well planned brochure won’t waste these positions with boring information like How To Find Us or Terms & Conditions, because these are the best pages to sell the most valuable products.

Flipping the brochure over, the front cover will be shouting ‘PICK ME UP!’ It will use more tricks than Paris Hilton to grab attention, apart from forgetting to put knickers on. Look at magazine covers- you’ll nearly always see one big image (probably an attractive face (probably an attractive famous face)). An unusual picture can also make an impression. What they won’t have is a lot of tiny images, because trying to please everybody pleases nobody.

The brochure cover will use strong colours, especially red since that’s a colour more likely to appeal to women who form the majority of shoppers.

Notice how the most important reasons for picking it up are at the top. A designer sees the whole cover on a screen but we know that our piece of print may be stuck behind something on a tiered rack, so we need the venue name and the key products to be featured on the visible area.

Next time, we'll look at the inside pages.