An effective marketing brochure must attract and hold a reader’s attention while persuading him or her to buy a product or service. Naming and explaining the features of the product or service and its benefits to the possible consumer provide much of the persuasion for many consumers looking for the one being described in the brochure or something similar to it. Also, many, but by no means, all, good marketing brochures use diagrams or photographs of the products or services being offered, quite often in color, and layouts vary with the types of businesses being advertised.

In designing a brochure, the advertiser generally begins with the company’s name and logo or a graphic representing the company’s work on the outside front of the brochure. Quite often, color is incorporated into this aspect of the design to attract attention and make the brochure stand out from other literature displayed nearby. Company contact information may appear on the front of the brochure as well, so that potential customers may find it easily and access more information.

Brochures vary in length and complexity of design depending upon the type of company being advertised. Those with smaller budgets or simple to advertise concepts may use the traditional design where the space is equivalent to one piece of paper folded either once or twice. These most basic brochures many times will place a photograph or graphic of what the advertiser has to offer next to a small paragraph about the product or service. The larger company with a larger budget, on the other hand, may elect to have several sheets of glossy magazine style paper with flashy graphics and text bound together into a booklet describing the company and what it does. Regardless of the design of the marketing brochure, many companies will set up part of the back page so that they can attach addresses and postage in order to mail the brochure to possible customers.

No matter whether the business owner chooses to use the traditional layout consisting of one piece of paper or a booklet style, the placement of words and graphics representing the products or services is crucial to the success of the brochure in attracting customers. The simplest but most effective layout in this respect is to place each the graphic of each of the company’s products or services next to a small paragraph describing the item or concept. In detailing the features of a product, many marketers inform the reading public what the product is made of, its size, shape, and intended function so consumers may more easily decide how well it fits their needs. Often, service-oriented companies spell out for the reader of the brochure exactly how their services will make life more convenient or easier while also describing a particular product they may sell that helps the consumer achieve a specific goal. Carefully written words which have had spelling and grammatical errors edited out impress the consumer into doing business with the company more often than not.