5 reasons to not throw away your firm brochure, and how make it better.

Is a corporate printed brochure still an essential marketing tool in today’s electronic world? Online marketing has a growing reputation of being inexpensive, but it also can seem cheap and impersonal. No one wants to receive an impersonal marketing pitch; showing a potential client that you care about them, and will deliver top quality professional results, often begins with how they first heard about you in the first place. When a potential client receives a top-quality marketing brochure from you and they are interested in hiring an attorney, they will assign that brochure much higher regard than an online pitch, a pitch page on a website, or an email.  So why has your firm brochure failed up to this point? Lets walk through a checklist of these five essential ingredients:

Does the firm brochure have a personal touch? Your clients are hiring a person, so neglecting to add a personal touch in your brochure and concentrating too much on legal topics is the number one fatal mistake when developing a firm brochure.  Not only do you want professional photographs of the partners and the office environment, but also make sure that the writing has a personal touch to it.  The writing style can be whatever suits your firm but it should read a little like how you would speak to a client in your office, as opposed to how you would speak on a podium or a stage.

Does your firm brochure’s text address your client’s problems? Too many brochures (and websites for that matter) spend too much time describing the various practices they are knowledgeable in rather than addressing what legal problems their knowledge will solve.  Your readers will be more interested in finding out how you can help them rather than in reading a long list of legal capabilities. Be persuasive in your writing, and use a tone of voice that is true to your firm’s personality. Remember that your clients aren’t interested in you, they are interested in how you can help them.

Does your firm brochure have a design and paper quality of the highest standard? It doesn’t take a master’s degree in graphic design to hold a brochure and know that it was cheaply designed or printed. Although good design and high-quality paper will obviously cost you more than a cheaper product, the investment is worthwhile many times over. If you spend the time to produce good quality on the copy and the photographs, why scrimp on the print quality or the design? The better quality the piece, the more likely people will look at it as a “keeper” rather than a “throwaway,” which increases the likelihood that it will eventually land in the hands of a potential client.

Does your brochure utilize effective and attention-grabbing headlines and photos? Remember, it’s a marketing piece, so the headlines should provide incentive for reading, or continuing to read, what lies ahead. If you use imagery, and you probably should, make sure it conveys the correct message. Not everyone will get the same meaning from each image, but placing a well-written headline alongside it will ensure that most will get it.

Does your firm brochure include a call to action? What do you want people to do once they look over your information? Why should they call now, rather than just file away the brochure or throw it away? If you provide incentive to contact you and make it easy to do so, the number of people who connect with you as a result of reading your brochure will increase substantially.


Matt DeLucia is president of Business Edge Internet Design, a website design agency with locations in New York City and Connecticut with over 100 law firm clients and hundreds of sites built over 17 years. Call 212-931-8538 or contact us here.