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10 Surefire Ways to Add Sizzle to Your Brochures |
By:
Shannon Cherry, APR |
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Businesses rely on brochures as their front line in
communicating their products or services. Yet according to
Shannon Cherry, APR, many find them not as successful because
they underestimate the skills and resources necessary to publish
attractive and effective materials.
"Most people forget a brochure is important because it
represents you to the world and reflects your image," says
Cherry, president of Cherry Communications, a public relations
and marketing firm that helps businesses, entrepreneurs and
nonprofit organizations be heard.
"But the best brochures do more than impress," she says.
"Effective copy and design can intrigue, inform, convince and
capture customer business just as an effective salesperson does.
Brochure effectiveness is linked to an audience-appropriate
marketing strategy that drives the design process."
Cherry shares the following top ten list of hints can help your
brochure put its best foot forward:
1.Keep headlines short. According to studies, headlines with
fewer than ten words get more readership. 2.Focus your headline
on your target audience. Show a picture of your target group and
make sure the headline has the groups description in it. For
example: If you are targeting moms, uses a headline like, "Moms
Know Best." 3.Keep text lines at a comfortable length. Body copy
lines should never be shorter than the font size or longer than
double the font size. 4.Keep paragraphs - especially lead
paragraphs - short. Perhaps even one sentence. 5.Use graphical
dingbats including bullets, hyphens, and asterisks, to break up
text. 6.Use captions to draw the reader in. Next to the cover,
captions are the most read items in a brochure. 7.Set captions
in a different style. 8.Avoid typographic overkill by using too
many CAPS, italics and bolds. 9.Stick to no more than three
different fonts in a brochure. 10.If you use photos with people
in them, make sure their heads are at least the size of a dime.
About the author: Shannon Cherry, APR, MA helps businesses,
entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations to be heard. She's a
marketing communications and public relations expert with more
than 15 years experience and the owner of Cherry Communications.
Subscribe today for Be Heard! our free biweekly ezine and get a
free special report: "Get Set For Success: Creative, Low-Cost
Marketing Tips to Help You be Heard." Go to
www.cherrycommunications.com.
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Article Source: http://www.powerdirectory.net/articles/article52590.html |
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