Crafting the killer product brochure

Our company is on the cusp of releasing its first products — making it very easy for homeowners and commercial property owners to save energy — so it’s time to write the one-page product brochures.  I’ve been thinking hard about what makes an effective product brochure.  [And to avoid doing the actual writing, I'm sharing my thoughts instead.]

Potential customers looking at the first line your product brochure will mentally be asking: Am I interested? And you literally have less than one second in which to convince them to read the next line or else lose them.  Here are the simple steps to writing a killer product brochure:

Your first step in writing the killer product brochure is to forget everything you know about your product.  I’m serious.  Remember, the product brochure isn’t for your product — it’s for your customer.  You need to clear your mind for the next step.

Next: Put yourself in the customers’ shoes. Unless you can empathize with what they’re thinking and what they need, you won’t be able to connect with them.  News flash: frequent conversations with customers has been shown to be effective way to understand what they’re thinking about.

Thus mentally prepared, you can write your brochure.  The rule is simple: every sentence or image in the brochure needs to answer the question the customer will be asking, consciously or otherwise: Am I still interested? If the answer is yes, you’ve earned the attention of the customer long enough for the customer to read the next sentence. The exposition unrolls like this:

1. Am I your customer? The brochure should tell me at first glance whether or not this product is for me.  If not, no harm done — I’ll just stop reading.  Otherwise, I’ll read the next line…
2. Are you going to address problem of mine that needs to be solved? You need to convince me that you’re offering me something that I need.
3. What results will I see?  How will this product benefit me? If I think the expected outcome is worthwhile, I’ll keep on reading.

Notice that at this point, we haven’t said anything about what our product really is, but we have earned the customer’s interest to read this far.  Now (and only now) we can start to talk about the product.

4. Convince me that it works. This can be a picture of results or a short description makes me go “aha — I see what this is doing”.
5. How do I learn more? If I’ve read this far, I really am interested. Give me something to chew on. On a paper brochure, provide specifications on the back side. On a web page, offer a link to more detailed information.
6. Okay — what do I do next? A surprising number of product brochures and web pages forget this important step: what next? There should always be a call to action in the form of “call this number” or “click here”.

Now I just need to get around to writing our brochures.

As always, comments are welcome.

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