10 surefire ways to add sparkle to your brochures

Companies rely on brochures as the first line to communicate their products or services. However, according to Shannon Cherry, APR, many do not find them as successful because they underestimate the skills and resources required to publish engaging and effective materials.

“Most people forget that a brochure is important because it represents you to the world and reflects your image,” says Cherry, president of Cherry Communications, a marketing and public relations firm that helps businesses, entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations are heard.

“But the best brochures do more than impress,” he says. “Effective copy and design can intrigue, inform, convince and capture the client’s business just as an effective salesperson does. The effectiveness of the brochure is tied to an appropriate marketing strategy for the audience that drives the design process.”

Cherry shares the following list of the top ten tips that can help your brochure take the best step forward:

1. Keep headlines short. According to studies, headlines with less than ten words get more readers.

2. Focus your headline on your target audience. Show a picture of your target group and make sure the title has the description of the group. For example: if you are targeting moms, use a title like “Moms Know Best.”

3. Keep lines of text to a comfortable length. Body text lines should never be shorter than the font size or longer than twice the font size.

4. Keep paragraphs short, especially the opening paragraphs. Maybe even a sentence.

5. Use graphic dingbats that include bullets, hyphens, and asterisks to divide the text.

6. Use subtitles to attract the reader. Next to the cover, subtitles are the most widely read elements in a brochure.

7. Set the subtitles to a different style.

8. Avoid typographical exaggeration by using too many CAPITALS, italics and bold.

9. Limit yourself to no more than three different sources in a brochure.

10. If you use photos with people in them, make sure their heads are at least the size of a dime.