Last updated: July 15th, 2024
With the continuous development of digital marketing and the different promotion channels, such as social media, some might think that brochures are outdated. However, if you take the time to read about today’s marketing strategies, you can easily understand the role of brochures as a complementary tool for companies of all sizes.
There is a main difference between how we viewed brochures a couple of decades ago (printed and handed out physically at events, at the dentist’s office, etc.) and how brochures are used today as cost-effective digital marketing materials that help paint a clearer picture of your audience.
With the right marketing strategy in place, digital brochures are versatile and have proven effective in reaching target audiences. How? Keep reading to find out what makes digital brochures a successful tool for almost every brand out there.
A brochure is a promotional tool for presenting company, product, or service information. Its main purpose is to inform potential customers or other interested parties about a brand and everything it represents. The most commonly used brochure formats are bi-fold (or half-fold), tri-fold, z fold, and gate fold.
A digital brochure is an online version of the traditional printed brochure in an HTML5 format, also known as the flipbook format. Digital brochures create the context for interactive elements, easy sharing with a click, and the possibility of tracking your audience’s engagement.
A brochure marketing strategy represents different tactics a marketing specialist applies to achieve a certain goal. Some examples of brochure marketing goals are to enhance brand awareness, offer information on different products, or acquire new customers.
With the basics of brochures covered, I can move on to this article’s main section: different ways of using digital brochures in your marketing strategy. I have gathered examples from professionals in the food and beverage sector, real estate, insurance, and wholesale to see the real-life approach of crafting digital brochures to achieve their business goals.
For the most part, each digital brochure you create should also contribute to brand awareness. When designing a brochure’s layout, you must incorporate branded elements such as logos, color schemes, and typography.
This information might seem like it should be part of the general business knowledge for companies and brands that have been around for longer. But it’s easier to lose track of your brand elements in design when you’re just starting to use brochures in your digital marketing strategy.
Besides your brand identity present in any type of digital brochure, invest time and effort into complementary visuals for already engaging content. Creating personalized brochures based on criteria that make the most sense to your type of products and services is often the deciding factor between you and another company.
Brand awareness brochures are your best chance to leave any sort of lasting impression on people who engage for the first time. The concept of good brochure anatomy helps you dive deeper into what it means to create successful brand awareness brochures every time. The best part is that effective brand awareness acts as a domino effect in your marketing strategy since it supports customer retention later on.
Look at how Regis, an insurance company, created their brand awareness digital brochure. Through their unique brand elements, and creative fonts, they managed to include the necessary information a prospective client would be looking for. The three values they built the company on are expressed like this: we listen, we design, we empower. With the client in the center, there is a lot to learn and gain in the case of any business.
The strategy of using digital brochures to increase sales is probably the first thing that came to your mind when you read this article’s title. But you might be surprised to know that there are more specific tactics you can use to reach even more potential customers with your brochures.
Distribution and segmentation go hand in hand. First, ensure you know your current clients well enough to target them with personalized brochures. That means you use a clear and logical segmentation based on previous purchases and shown interests. Then, it should be easy to distribute each type of brochure on the right channel. With digital brochure software, you can track the audience’s engagement with your brochure and see if they are interested or if your content needs improvements.
Once you have made the necessary updates to your brochures, it’s time to test them in different campaigns using analytics tools. This method makes it easy to gather feedback from your customers because if your clients resonate with these promotional materials, your business blooms.
Besides using brochures for interactive product offers, companies also use them to promote future events. They can be planned for new product launches, charity events, conferences on relevant topics for that business, and more.
Now let’s pause to analyze Caswell Massey’s product brochure, and how they choose to present their offer professionally and beautifully designed.
The first thing that catches my attention is how with each product category, be it soap, or shaving tools, they create a story around that. It’s not a simple design with an endless list of products, but a storyline that takes you through how they create every product, and why you could benefit from buying it.
Expanding your global reach with sharing options offered by digital brochures can lead to customer acquisition in time. As you already know, the behavior of most online shoppers is to have a couple of touch points with a brand before purchasing. This means that you shouldn’t expect a person to instantly buy from you after interacting with one brochure you sent them or perhaps they found on your website. The goal of lead generation brochures is to interact with prospects or buyers exactly when they’re the most likely to take an action.
Let’s take a step back and analyze how brochures are used poorly to generate leads or new customers. For example, creating a brochure about your company with headlines like About Us, Contact Us, how it works, and pricing is not the right approach for this goal.
The problem with this type of brochure content is that it revolves around the company, and is not of interest to a prospective customer who’s looking for a solution to their problem. If you want to encourage readers to take action (fill out a form to get in touch with a sales agent, receive promotional emails, etc.) there are strategic optimizations you need to make.
Firstly, improve the copy to center around your audience and not your business. This effort also helps your brochure rank higher in Google with relevant industry keywords included. Consequently, more people discover your solution, and a percentage enter the sales funnel. When designing the brochure, it’s important to focus on a single action you want the reader to take. Use the same call to action: in our case, it can be “Get in touch with our sales team” or nurture them further with more informational content.
What better example to use for customer acquisition brochures than a real estate company? This Waimarino real estate’s brochure describes well how to create a complete argument for renting out this luxurious space used for offering accommodation and food. This agency goes into plenty of detail, from who are the operators behind this space, why it was built using this architecture and design, how they see this space managed and used at its full potential.
The potential customer has plenty of reasons why this can be exactly what they’re looking for. You can take this real brochure example and use a lead form to make it easier for clients to get in touch with you, or to book a site viewing.
Our next use case is digital brochures for targeted marketing campaigns. We have conducted a survey among our retail clients to ask how they’re navigating the digital environment. Based on those responses, it became clear that whether you’re creating brochures, product catalogs, or flyers, dynamic promotional content is the way to approach new and existing clients. In the context of a digital brochure, it’s much easier to update product prices or other information, remove outdated products, and shuffle the order of the products based on the buyer you’re going to send it to.
Considering you already know the main buyer personas for your products, craft customized content and design elements that resonate with each specific persona. Where it makes sense, combine them and use the same brochure. This customization comes with personalized messages and offers that increase relevance to your target buyers.
Returning to printed brochures, they’re once again extremely limited when it comes to offering immersive shopping experiences. Digital brochures, on the other hand, provide the perfect context for multimedia elements that captivate the buyer better. I’m talking about photo slideshows, product videos, product tags, buy buttons, and even shopping lists. Once you shorten the buying process for your audience, it can tip the scale to your advantage.
Last but not least, digital brochures have omnichannel marketing capabilities. They can be distributed far and wide to anyone with access to the Internet. The public sharing options include embedding a brochure on your website, sending it via email, or using the full-view link to distribute on any platform. This is a great method to reach new potential customers with the click of a button.
Tailoring digital brochures for specific target audiences and demographics contributes to increased revenue. However, we will tackle this subject of measurable ROI in the next section.
We’ve reached the most exciting part about digital brochures: the ability to measure their impact and engagement with your audience. You can try different marketing channels for distribution, segment your audience perfectly, and still fail to meet your target due to a lack of data. How do you evaluate the effectiveness of a brochure?
This section is not about a specific way of using brochures in marketing strategy, but rather about them as an indispensable tool in ensuring your efforts are measurable. Once you get access to real insights, you can make data-driven decisions about brochures and improve your ROI.
To access brochure statistics, you need to use a digital brochure maker with built-in stats. For example, Flipsnack’s brochure maker offers insights such as views (opens), impressions, average time spent on documents, downloads, devices, and readers’ locations. The latter can also help you better understand your audience’s demographics and whether you need to create another version of your brochure in a new language.
Then, analyze this data to optimize future campaigns and improve ROI by reordering products to show those of interest sooner or eliminating other products from the brochure to ensure the buyer isn’t bombarded with too much information at once.
With the different brochures we talked about in mind, let’s work together to create an interactive brochure from idea to implementation. As I already mentioned, start the creative process with your audience in mind and based on your marketing objective. There are a couple of necessary steps that lay the foundation of an effective brochure:
Accessible AI brochure enhancer
Make your digital brochure accessible to everyone by using Flipsnack AI accessibility solution. It automatically generates alt text summaries for each page, making the content visible to screen readers. Using keyboard navigation, people online will be able to browse through your products or services in a logical order, with clear labels and names for each existing element. Other AI solutions include translating text boxes or entire flipbooks to reach more diverse audiences. Put your precious time to better use and let Flipsnack take part of the load off.
Getting started with a brochure from scratch can be challenging, so I’ve compiled a list of digital brochure templates from different industries and use cases. Choose the one that best fits your marketing goal, and fully customize it with your brand logo, colors, and typography.
Impress your future clients with this interactive marketing agency brochure template. Just drag it into Flipsnack’s Design Studio and personalize it with your colors and fonts, upload professional photos. It’s easy to add links, videos, social media buttons, and contact forms. Write about your vision and mission, present your team and portfolio, and also add some of your clients’ testimonials.
Starting from the first pages of this interactive marketing services brochure, you can see a pop up with the company’s location. Save design space with this layout while adding a creative element. Depending on your marketing company style, you can incorporate as many or as little GIFs and stickers. By doing so, you present your team, services, testimonials and many more aspects, in a new, unique way, perfect for online sharing.
Check out Flipsnack’s real estate solution, presented in this editable real estate MLS-friendly brochure. Using the RESO system, we used the same identifiers to automate the design process for you and your agents. Add your brand kit, starting with the logo, custom typography, and colors to maintain your company’s identity throughout the publication. Include the interactivity I mentioned, such as a virtual tour, embed maps, videos showing off the property, and a photo slideshow.
Your tiptop shape properties deserve an even better presentation, in the form of this editable modern real estate smart template. The “smart” concept refers to automating the design process by connecting your MLS system to Flipsnack and by one click, your details will be transferred onto the existing layout of a template. Create real estate brochures that attract more leads in just a couple of clicks.
What is the first thing you look at when booking a hotel? The rooms, the facilities, distance to the beach or other touristic attractions? Well, if you’re in the hotel business, then you know how important all these details are. If you are looking for a new elegant and clean design, use this sales brochure for hotels template to refresh your marketing materials.
What’s the best way to advertise a dessert business? Through delicious images of cheesecakes, muffins and all sorts of sweet cakes. And if you want to spread the word around town that you opened a new dessert place, then this dessert tri-fold brochure template is a sure way to attract more customers.
Present your advanced security services in a professional manner with the help of this trifold security company brochure template from Flipsnack. Its modern black and yellow layout is eye-catching and will definitely attract potential clients. Information such as industries you specialize in, services or an about section is essential to have a professional brochure ready to hand out or share online.
Take a look at this business brochure design for content inspiration. In the case of an architectural design company, it’s important to establish the color theme, which will be present on all the publication’s pages. Once that’s done, continue with a message from the director, followed by a mission statement. There’s an easy way to use your brochure offline by using the PDF download format or simply share this digital brochure online.
After I covered the main topics about how digital brochures are used in marketing today, there might still be a couple of questions left. Or perhaps you want to only go through this part of the article.
Digital brochures are mainly used to offer information about a company (brand awareness), promote products to existing customers, or acquire new customers. In some marketing strategies, it makes sense to create a brochure that encapsulates all three uses, but be careful not to overload your audience with too diverse information. A brochure that has too many goals will fail to meet any of them.
Depending on the business, there are many strategies for attracting more sales through brochures. The most cost-effective would be distributing digital brochures with a click on any platform where your audience spends most of their time. If your audience is on the more traditional marketing side, consider printing your brochures and placing them where they are easily accessible.
A brochure can be considered interesting and engaging if it’s different from your competitors. So, make sure your brochure has interactions added to it, with relevant and personalized information for the people you want to share it with. Interactive elements such as videos, photo slideshows, and product tags attract potential buyers in a way that static printed brochures can’t.
Short answer: yes. Long answer: considering all the benefits of digital brochures in today’s marketing (fast and easy online distribution, ability to track their impact), they’re a highly effective and important informational and selling tool used by companies small and large.
There are rules for brochures, like in the case of every type of publication.
Firstly, don’t overcrowd the design and text, and make sure you captivate the audience from the cover.
Choose the right font and size for every information you include, and don’t send generic brochures to everyone.
Use white space strategically through space-saving interactions like slideshows and spotlight areas.
Lastly, implement a performance check tool and keep track of who interacts with each brochure.
There is no point in sharing a poorly designed brochure that will most likely fail at bringing any customers. A successful brochure includes detailed product descriptions, specifications, and benefits. Add all sorts of multimedia elements to encourage people to browse through your brochure. Photo slideshows, buy buttons, or a shopping list so potential customers can place orders directly through your digital brochure.
By now it is obvious that digital brochures play a major role in promoting, selling and acquiring new leads for your business. They are a great asset when used with other strategies in place, such as a well-designed company website, a series of emails that are relevant to your subscribers, etc. Like I have tried to show you in those real examples of different companies and brands, brochures take many forms and fulfill one of three main purposes: brand awareness, promoting and selling, or closing new deals.
With these benefits in mind, I encourage you to explore the potential of digital brochures in your own marketing efforts. A successful digital brochure requires thought out audience segmentation, personalized messages, and using the right distribution channels. Once you start experimenting with different tactics, you’ll get to know your audience better, which will lead to more sales in a shorter period of time.
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Hello , I am looking to get a digital brochure for my company . To be used on ipad and the computer.
Please let me know how long will you need to make this. There are alot of content on my side . Please can you call me this morning.
Thank you, Gurmit
Hi Gurmit, we are a do it yourself service, meaning that we only provide the software for our users, and they do the actual brochure themselves. You can easily sign up with Flipsnack and give it a try, to see how it works!