This is the eighth part of an 11 part series on How To Build A Great Marketing Kit.

Before you read further, you may want to read the introduction here.

Your brochure or fact sheet about your practice should be included in your marketing kit. Its purpose is to build your credibility and to get your referral source to contact you. With those two goals in mind, here are some things to consider when constructing your brochure:

• Identify the single market that you are targeting and direct your content to that market only.
• I recommend that you develop the content yourself and leave the actual design of the brochure up to a graphic designer like Jennifer Gunther of Nudge Creative or Joel Bass of Invincible Fuzzy Thing.
• However, if you struggle with developing your ideas for the content, you may want to contact a professional copywriter like Kathryn Bass of Kadroodle or professional brainstormer, like me.
• Brochures are typically skimmed by the reader rather than read from front to back. With that in mind, keep paragraphs short (no more than 4-6 lines); make liberal use of bullet points and negative or white space.
• This is not your resume so don’t include every service you provide or every group that you work with. Instead, include a testimonial or two from clients who can vouch for your services.
• Also include a partial list of organizations / businesses that you have done work for. (It doesn’t matter if you did this work under contract, as an employee, or as a volunteer.)
• The most important thing in your brochure is to connect with your potential referral source / client and let them know how you can help your reader – not those in other target markets.
• When I have a brochure designed, I make sure that the designer creates it in a software program that I can use on my computer. I recommend that you do the same. That way, you’ll be able to print only a few as you need them and can alter the content as your practice changes.
• Don’t forget to have several of your colleagues proof read and critique the final draft of your brochure. They should be able to ascertain who your target audience is, what you do, and what makes you special by looking at the brochure for no more than 30 seconds.

Do you already have a brochure to include in your Marketing Kit? How does it measure up?