Designing a Promotional Brochure

Many voluntary groups produce a brochure to help promote their activities or events, but to make your brochure a cut above the rest Exult has listed below a few points you should consider:

• Know what you want your brochure to achieve. Is it to inform potential members or clients of what you do or is it to help secure sponsors and supporters? Each of these brochures will contain different information and provide different key messages. If you don’t know the reason for creating your brochure, don’t waste your time.

• Consider how or where your brochure will be distributed. This will help determine your size and format. Will they be posted, displayed in brochures stands or simply handed out?

• Keep the image consistent with the rest of your branding so your brochure is instantly recognisable. If you don’t have a consistent brand yet, now’s the time to create one. At the very least, choose a couple of colours and a standard font to use on all your promotional material.

• Use good quality photographs that really tell a story. If you want people to think volunteering with your organisation is fun, make sure the photograph is of people having LOTS OF FUN! If you want potential sponsors to know that they get maximum exposure at your events, make sure the photograph shows plenty of signage and branding. Choose your pictures carefully because they really do tell 1000 words.

• Include testimonials from your clients, volunteers, sponsors and supporters. If you haven’t got any to use, resist the urge to make them up. Instead approach a few people to write a few lines, and get permission to publish their full name and relationship to your organisation. Anonymous testimonials cause people to question how real they are.

• Have all your contact details available, including your website and fundraising page if you have one.

• Have somebody else read your brochure and ask for their honest opinion. Does it contain all the information they would need to take action? Is it easy to read, follow and understand?

• Have somebody proofread the brochure for spelling mistakes and accuracies. If you do this yourself, you will read what should be there – rather than what is. Guaranteed you will miss something.

• Shop around for prices, and ask where their price break occurs eg. 500, 1000, 2000. You may find if you print an extra 100 it becomes considerably more cost effective. If cost is really an issue, consider other options such as having full colour print on one side and black only on the other.

Designing a Promotional Brochure is Checklist 8 in the Exult e-book – Top 20 Checklists for Community Groups. For more useful information visit www.exult.co.nz and sign up to be an Exult Network Member. The Members Area is full of articles and templates and it’s completely FREE!

For more information about Exult and the services it provides for community groups, email tracy@exult.co.nz