What makes the best design to get lots of people picking up your brochure?
Tour activity providers, campgrounds, bed and breakfasts, and many others often reach buyers by having brochures in display racks prominently located in high traffic areas like visitor centres, local gas stations, shops, ferries, waiting rooms and many other places. Here are some tips to improve your odds of attracting a prospect and help close sales.
Recently, brand specialist Roger Brooks published a post on this subject in a newsletter. I am going to paraphrase Roger here and give you a link to his website further down this page.
- Put your main ad copy above the “fold” or the rack bar at the top. Like they say in news, ‘don’t bury the lead”. Roger recommends yellow on black in huge bold letters that get to the point. Personally, from years at trade shows with stacks of brochures, I also find a red background attracts people.
- Tell us what you are selling. Do not put the destination in the top header as people are looking for “what to do” not “your town”.
- Get our attention. Create copy like below.
- Once we pick it up, tell us why we should be taking your trip or experience. Don’t tell us about your company, or your facilities until you tell us why we should care.
- And Roger’s favourite advice, don’t use generic words or phrases in your headline or body copy. He kindly provides a link to the most over abused words in tourism advertising. These are so generic that many businesses and communities could use the same words. “Jettison the generic” he says. To read more on brochure design, you can visit the original article.
- Last but not least, this one from Adventure Engine, make sure you have a call to action leading us to your online booking engine. This is the best time to capture a sale. If you tell people that they can see what is available to buy now, tomorrow or when ever, they’re more likely to book. If your clients are not mobile users, give them an alternate contact, at your office or ask someone at the visitors centre to book for them. This process can be mightily enhanced with a community marketing system. This links all the local tourism providers in a single networked booking system. If you’d like to learn more, contact us here.