Brochure Copywriting

Give people something worth picking up

Brochures have been declared dead almost as often as print itself. And yet companies still produce them. Customers still pick them up. Sales teams still leave them behind. People still download them as PDFs, take them away from exhibitions and occasionally even read them.

Which makes the words rather important.

I’ve been writing brochures, flyers and other sales literature for 30 years, for everyone from small businesses and charities to FTSE 100 companies and some of the world’s best-known brands.

The formats have changed over that time. The basic job hasn’t.

Work out what matters. Put it in the right order. Make people want to keep reading.

A brochure isn’t your website with staples in it

One of the easiest ways to produce a bad brochure is to take chunks of your website, paste them into a document and send it to the designer. Brochures work differently. They have a beginning, middle and end. Space is limited.

Pages have to work individually and together. Headlines need to earn attention, images need room to breathe and important information needs to appear where somebody is likely to notice it.

Before I start writing, I look at what the brochure needs to achieve, who will read it and what they need to know, think or do by the time they reach the end. What questions will they have? What might make them hesitate? What evidence will they need before they believe you?

Then we can decide what deserves the space.

Deciding what not to put in

Most brochure briefs arrive with too much information rather than too little. Company history. Product specifications. Service descriptions. Accreditations. Testimonials. Technical information. Six different people’s views about what absolutely has to appear on page three.

The temptation is to squeeze everything in. I prefer to establish a hierarchy.

What does the reader need to know first? What will make them interested enough to continue? What evidence will make them believe you? Which details help them make a decision? And what can safely be left somewhere else?

Good brochure copy isn’t simply concise writing. It’s knowing what deserves to be said.

Brochure copywriting that works with the design

Words and design shouldn’t meet for the first time when somebody pours the approved copy into a finished layout. I can work directly with your designer or creative agency from the beginning, helping establish the content structure, page plan and hierarchy before every available space has been filled with a photograph.

That makes it easier to balance headlines, body copy, pull quotes, captions, facts, statistics and calls to action across the document. Once the copy goes into layout, I can also edit it in situ. A headline may need shortening. A paragraph may need losing. Something that looked perfectly sensible in Word may suddenly occupy half a page. The finished brochure matters more than the original word count.

Corporate, sales and product brochure copywriting

I’ve written hundreds of brochures across sectors including automotive, charity, education, energy, healthcare, financial services and property. They’ve included corporate brochures, product and service brochures, sales literature, event and exhibition materials, property brochures, prospectuses, leaflets, flyers and downloadable PDFs.

Clients have included Volvo, BP, Barclays, O2, EDF, Pfizer, Savills, GSK, Mitsubishi, NHS organisations, universities and the National Autistic Society.

Different brochures need different things.

A corporate brochure may need to establish credibility. A product brochure has to make features meaningful. A property brochure may need to sell a place as much as a building. An event flyer may have only a few seconds to persuade somebody to look twice.

Adjectives aren’t evidence

The format changes. So does the tone. The thinking comes first. Features are useful. Benefits give them a point.

“State-of-the-art.”

“Market-leading.”

“High quality.”

“Complete solution.”

Brochures have always been rather fond of phrases like these. The trouble is that competitors tend to be equally fond of them. I look for the specifics behind the claims: what the product actually does, what makes the service different, what problem it solves and why any of that should matter to the person reading.

Sometimes a technical specification is exactly what the customer needs. Sometimes they need to know what that specification means for them. Usually, they need both.

Brochures, flyers and everything in between

Not every project needs 32 beautifully bound pages. Sometimes four pages are enough. Sometimes one side of A4 has to do the whole job. I can write:

corporate and company brochures;
sales and marketing brochures;
product and service brochures;
property and development brochures;
event and exhibition literature;
prospectuses and information booklets;
product literature and specification sheets;
leaflets and flyers;
sales sheets and leave-behinds; and
downloadable and digital brochures.

I can write everything from scratch, restructure existing material or take copy that’s almost there and make it considerably better.

Print or PDF?

Usually both. Many brochures now spend at least part of their lives as downloadable PDFs or digital sales documents. That makes them easier to distribute and update, and allows useful links and calls to action to be built into the document.

But being digital doesn’t mean a brochure suddenly becomes a website. It still needs a clear structure, strong visual hierarchy and copy written for the format. Whether somebody picks it up from a reception desk or opens it from an email, you still have to give them a reason to turn the page.

And because brochures tend to hang around rather longer than most marketing communications, it’s worth thinking about what will still be true six months or a year from now.

Thirty years of knowing what to leave out

Writing hundreds of brochures teaches you a few things. One is that the client nearly always has more to say than the brochure has room for. Another is that the shortest pieces aren’t necessarily the quickest to write. And a third is that the sentence everybody fought to keep in the first draft is sometimes the first one to disappear once the design arrives.

I’ve spent 30 years working with businesses, marketing teams, agencies and designers to turn large quantities of information into clear, persuasive sales and corporate literature. I ask questions, find the useful details, establish the structure and write the copy around the reader rather than the internal organisation chart. Because the reader doesn’t need to know everything you know. They need to know enough to want to know more.

Need a brochure copywriter?

If you’re starting with a blank page, several folders of source material or an existing brochure that nobody particularly wants to read, tell me what you’re working on. I’ll tell you honestly whether I can help.

Brochure copywriting FAQs

What information do you need to write a brochure?

Usually, I’ll need to understand what you’re promoting, who the brochure is for, what you want them to do and what makes the company, product or service worth their attention. I’ll then review whatever material you already have and identify the gaps. You don’t need to organise everything perfectly before contacting me. Working out what matters is part of the job.

Can you work directly with our brochure designer?

Yes, and I’d generally encourage it. Bringing the writer and designer together early makes it easier to establish the structure and ensure the amount of copy suits the format. I can also review copy once it’s in layout and make the small adjustments that almost inevitably become necessary.

Can you rewrite an existing brochure?

Yes. Sometimes the underlying information is perfectly good but the brochure is too long, badly structured, inconsistent or simply showing its age. I can restructure and rewrite the whole thing or concentrate on the sections that aren’t working.

How do you charge for brochure copywriting?

I usually quote a fixed project fee once I understand the scope, length, source material and how much research or interviewing is involved. A four-page brochure with an agreed structure is a rather different job from turning several folders of material into a 40-page corporate brochure, so I’d rather understand what you need before putting a number on it.

Do you write flyers and leaflets as well as brochures?

Yes. I write flyers, leaflets, sales sheets, exhibition materials and other short-form sales and marketing literature. Having less space doesn’t make the writing easier. Quite often it makes every word matter more.

Do you write digital brochures and downloadable PDFs?

Yes. I write brochures intended primarily for print, digital distribution or both. The principles of good structure and persuasive writing remain much the same, although the format, reading behaviour and opportunities for links and calls to action may differ.