Seven Simple Steps to Boost the Effectiveness of Brochures and Print Advertisements

Home care and hospice agencies spend a fortune each year on printed materials and advertisements.  Brochures are printed that may be nice looking but are not effective.  Agencies spend a lot on print advertisements, including Yellow Pages ads, but, how effective are they?  It is critical that agencies make the return on marketing investment as high as possible by creating the most effective collaterals and advertisements.  Start by defining your target audience and the goals for the campaign.

Then, over the next few weeks, we will share with you seven tips to improve the impact and results of your printed material.  Here’s the first one:

1) Sell Benefits not Features

This single piece of advice can make an investment in a marketing campaign, brochure, advertising campaign, etc. a success rather than a failure.  When developing the list of benefits you should always keep the customer in mind.  If you know what is important to the intended customer then you will be able to design your campaign for maximum effectiveness. 

Don’t make any assumptions about what will be important to the customer.  Ask your current customers the questions to know what they value about agency and its services. 

Define the target market and what they want from a home care or hospice agency.  Look at your message from this customer’s viewpoint.  Test, test and test your message some more.  Talk to your customers.  Conduct surveys with prospective customers and or new target markets to find out what they need and their attitudes toward home care and hospice.  Test new marketing messages to make sure that they are answering the needs of the intended customer with interviews, focus groups and surveys.  Your message must resonate with the intended market to be truly effective.

Customers want to know how your service will meet their needs, make them feel safer or otherwise provide them with something of perceived value.  List all of the benefits of working with your agency.  Then determine those that are most important to the intended audience.  Include them in the creation of your marketing piece or campaign.

Be sure to check back next week for more helpful tips in our series!