Bah to Brochures!
A member of the audience of the Washington, DC chapter of the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) asked me if I had any opinions on brochures. He shouldn’t have gotten me started! My comments on brochures always start civilly enough and end with me ranting and foaming at the mouth. In this case, they went something like this:
Brochures have their place . . . but not on the planet!
Excuse me, I forget myself.
Brochures have their place, but they aren’t the foundation of a marketing effort that some people seem to think they are. They aren’t essential first steps in founding a firm or a practice or a studio. To the contrary, time spent writing (and bickering) about a brochure is time away from the market and, especially when you are starting up, you need to be out in the market talking with people, not in the office writing. Spend the time you would spend writing a brochure out in the market talking with people and you have a good chance of turning up some business.
Of course, that’s one of the comforts of brochure writing; you can postpone having to go out and talk with people. But time is precious during the early days of building a business. If you aren’t generating business you’re draining cash. Unless, you talk with people, you’ll never sell anything! That’s the only way you will generate cash flow. In that light, writing a brochure is like planting a flower garden when you are running out of food! Like planting flowers when starvation is staring you in the face! Instead, you should be out in the forest stalking . . .
Excuse me, I got carried away.
With modern desktop publishing technology, you can rapidly put together a presentable leave-behind document and get out in the market immediately. Offerings tend to shift rapidly during the early days of a business, and you can change your desktop document easily and cheaply as you adapt your service and the way you talk about it to the market. You can’t do that with a four-color glossy brochure, can you? No, those $3-a-pop wonders will become obsolete in a year and then sit on the shelf collecting dust. Then you’ll be sorry you . . .
Ahem.
Better still, before you prepare any document, do some market research. Take four or five potential or past clients to lunch and ask them to comment on you business concept and offerings and the way you intend to talk about them. You will get some great ideas and will have, in the context of the meetings, educated four or five buyers about what you do.
But don’t, don’t waste precious time and money writing a #*$!!>&^ brochure! The whole *(?>&%!@# is a *&^%)_? ?**&#!! and . . .
At this point, the man who had asked the question cautiously stood up and said, “Yes, but what I really want to know is, do you have an opinion about brochures?
April 20th, 2009 at 1:31 PM
I rarely see a printed brochure today that doesn’t look it was created by a committee intent upon being as bland and broad as possible.
Powerpoint decks are the new 4-color process brochure.
Great things about Powerpoint: 1. you can have a superset of slides and customize it to a particular sales presentation, 2. it can always be up to date, 3. you can email it and they can store it, 4. you don’t have to spend zillions of hours approving art and copy, 5. therefore you’re able to get out into the market and start listening as Ford suggests.
April 20th, 2009 at 6:48 PM
Ford-
Right on! Brochures do have a place in our marketing campaigns, but many people incorrectly believe that brochures in-and-of-themselves are marketing campaigns. Real success comes when we focus on relationships, not paper.
Great post!
Tim Klabunde
April 21st, 2009 at 3:53 AM
It amazes me how people think that stuff like brochures really matters. Sure, it doesn’t hurt to have one, but our own marketing energy on this was, I think, about two hours, which is what it is worth, considering I can’t attribute any business from that source.
April 21st, 2009 at 4:56 AM
Mark
Agreed. If we were both equally critical of blogs, what would we say?
Ford Harding
April 21st, 2009 at 6:08 AM
I don’t agree entirely with your thoughts. Have you not heard of digital printing? Brochures do have a place in marketing and promoting a business, along with many other media. The difference today is that Brochures need to be more personalised and focused on the client. I do agree that there are too many out of date brochures sitting in boxes at many businesses and it is part of my mission to spread the word that this is not necessary. I can show people how to do this.
The other thing I find surprising is telling people not to waste time writing a brochure. Nobody should write their own brochure, true. They should and must get a professional to write it for them, using their guidance only. This can be done very quickly.
Basically Brochures can be as flexible as digital media, the knowledge that this is possible and how to do it is the most important thing marketing professionals need to know. If you are not getting any business from brochures you are doing it wrong!
April 21st, 2009 at 11:36 AM
Ford,
Agree ’bout brochures, but what the best/coolest “Leave Behind”. Is there a consensus? How ’bout a CD with a 3 minute video of yours truly reviewing what you do and how?
Maybe 2-3 short videos that automatically run on any laptop, a bio, area(s) of specialization…? Post on YouTube???
Inquiring Minds Wanna….
David
April 21st, 2009 at 1:11 PM
I always enjoy reading this blog! Good stuff here. For, while you make some great points, brochures may still important in many service categories, just renamed “credentials.”
A necessary evil, perhaps. But always made better when they’re brief, relevant and demonstrate the ability to help solve prospective client problems. These kinds of documents should be renamed to focus on prospective client benefits.
But for just about anyone, brochures help a company pass the “sniff test.”
This whole topic reminds me of what Rodney Dangerfield said in “Back to School”… “This feels like a C. Add some color charts and get back to me.” Or something like that.
April 21st, 2009 at 2:46 PM
I completely agree with being out there selling and generating business. My thoughts are kind a split between having a brochure vs. not having one. I used brochures for one-time instances such as events, conferences, seminars etc. They are very helpful to the customers as they can quickly glance over for details when required and make a good impression on the quality of events we are conducting. Their shelf life is until the event date and then they can head towards the recyling plant. On the other hand, if they are used as a vehicle selling, then I doubt their effectiveness.
April 21st, 2009 at 2:58 PM
The Web made brochures obsolete in the mid 1990′s! At a former employer I managed a brochure budget of nearly a million dollars/year for a single, all-encompassing, bloated brochure that had to be updated 4-5 times a year as products changed. I’ve been out of the brochure business since 1994 and I’m so glad.
April 21st, 2009 at 3:54 PM
David
Good ideas. Thanks.
Andrea
And you are so good at improving blogs, I’m glad you did, too.
Tim, Steve and Venkat
Thanks for standing up for brochures. Your comments provide needed balance to my somewhat one-sided post. Reviewing my post I now see it lacked journalistic objectivity. It comes across as a bit of a rant, actually–and it feels so good to get it off my chest! Bah! (That feels good.) Bah! BAH to brochures! On another day, I might agree with you, but my dander is up and I can’t possibly back down now. BAH!
Sincerely, please keep commenting.
Ford Harding
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:06 AM
Some very good points are made by everyone but the main point is that there is not one best marketing tool. There are many great marketing tools and the best one depends on the product, the company,the target market etc etc. The skill in marketing is to choose the right tool for your company to gain the required effect.
One other thing to mention. Technology in all media is changing rapidly, including printing, and it is imperative to keep up to date with the latest developments, don’t ignore any process and keep your head well and truly out of the sand.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:28 AM
[...] which dictates that you get out into the market now. (See the posts Rain Making = Doing and Bah to Brochures for more on this subject.) The need to find business is too urgent to go on hold while you do [...]