Tips on Making your Business Brochures Edgier

New York-based direct-mail expert David R. Yale offers these pointers on how to hone your business brochures for maximum effectiveness:

Assume that people do not want to read your material

You have only seconds to grab your prospects’ attention and induce them to go on reading. The way to do it:

• Present benefits so compellingly that you overcome their resistance.

• Drive casual scanners to become detail-hungry readers ... Turn random readers into interested readers ... Then change interested readers into eager readers.

• Provide a direct visual pathway from the least important to the most significant business points you are trying to make.

• Use attention-riveting large-type call-out boxes.

• Sprinkle eye-easy boldface subheads throughout your copy.

• Follow a strategic copy and graphics plan

Decide exactly where your business brochures or booklets fit in the persuasion cycle.

• Will it stand on its own, or will it mesh with other material?

• What information must your prospects have before moving on to the next point you want to make?

• What ultimate action do you want your readers to take?

Pay attention to your typography

• Never use all caps – even in headlines. Lower-case type is easier to read and makes for more attentive readership.

• Very narrow and very wide line measures depress readership.

• Mixing typefaces and sizes deters readership.

• Make sure your graphics support your point

• Write your copy in plain English

• Sobering, but true: the average American reads at the fourth grade level.

• Use lots of personal pronouns, transitive verbs, the active voice, short sentences and paragraphs, and everyday words.

• Use simple punctuation. Your high school English teacher may have taught you about the semicolon (;), but most people do not understand much beyond commas and periods.

Always ask for the order

• Tell your prospects exactly what you want them to do.