Writing Great Brochure Copy

The copy you write for brochures is a bit different to what you might put on a website. The English you use can be, for one thing, a bit fuller than that of your website, which has to grab the reader’s attention in seconds. You can afford to have less sentence fragments and slogans hanging in the air. When a potential customer has taken the trouble to pick up your brochure, you have their attention... Well, initially, at least (so don’t blow it).

Unlike with a website, there is a bit more room in a brochure to talk about your company and the history of service you have, but it’s still of utmost importance that you write something punchy that gets to the point quickly.

You should always be concerned with giving the customer what they want up front, which means: what can you do for me?

Customers want to know what they can get out of a relationship with you; information on your number of employees and your year of incorporation is, at best, secondary.

What you should try to do when you communicate with your potential customers is make them imagine the time after they’ve used you. Make them imagine looking back at what a fantastic job you’ve done for them. I find it makes a stronger case than saying “if you use us, this is what we can give you” if you take away the element of chance. Make them think of when it’s already happened and tell them how great it was.

The first thing you need when you write a brochure is a checklist to get you started. Try to tick off as many as you can:

• What it’s being written for (informational? Promoting sales?)
• Who it’s aimed at (what kinds of companies, profile of people reading the brochure)
• How many pages it has
• Where to get the information to write the new brochure (marketing division? Interviews with R&D staff? Engineers?)
• When the last brochure came out
• When the new one is due to be replaced (in other words, what’s its life-cycle?)
• When you need the copy to be finished (hey, don’t laugh. A tight deadline can have a big effect – positive and negative – on the quality of what you write)
• The design (has the new brochure already been designed? This would impact on the word count and the style of how you write it)
• Your house style (many companies have a certain vocabulary and a certain way of describing things)
• Competitors’ brochures (why not see if there’s anything you can model for your brochure? At the very least you can find out what you’re up against)
• Your overall plan at the outset for what kind of brochure you’d like

At all times you should be thinking of your customers. What do they want? What don’t they want? What can you do to make their lives easier? What can you help them avoid?

Happy writing.

You’re very welcome to reprint any of the Good Business articles on your website and/or newsletters free of charge, provided:

• you don’t change the article in any way
• you include the writing credit below (including all website links)

Daniel O'Connor is a website copywriter, advertising copywriter and marketing copywriter using the name Daniboy. He can be contacted in the UK on +44-1892-518269 or at mail@daniboy.com. Visit http://www.daniboy.com for further details of his services, including bespoke article writing, and more free reprint articles.

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