Printing Booklets and the printed word is still powerful and influential. Holding a booklet helps to give the material in it weight and authority. And for that reason, you should still be making use of the printed word when promoting your own business. Here’s some other important reasons:
1. Booklets are more versatile
When you think about the number of ways a booklet can be used, there is an application for just about every industry and market sector. Retailers can use booklets to highlight their marquee products. B2B organisations can use booklets to share in-depth information about their latest solution. Banks can use booklets to create easy comparisons between their complex products. Companies can use booklets to share the stories of the company itself, which can be an effective branding initiative when you’re looking to establish your brand as something with a deep heritage.
2. Booklets offer more room for information
There are times where a simple leaflet or banner can’t convey the complexity that you need to get across. A leaflet or banner might allow you a few dozen words before it starts to look cluttered, where a booklet could include hundreds … or even thousands of words. Booklets can be laid out just as a book might, and this makes them ideal when you want to share a lot of information.
3. Booklets allow you to control information
While you can hold unlimited amounts of information on a website, one of the disadvantages of a website is that you can never be sure the order in which a person will view those pages. As a result, the narrative from page to page will be disjointed.
Booklets, however, are chronological. You can be sure that the reader will move from one page to the next in an orderly fashion. This allows you to provide a far more sustained narrative, and to build the story over the course of the entire booklet.
4. Booklets are cheap to print
Compared with many other types of marketing, it’s actually very cost effective. Each booklet can be printed for just a few dollars, and it becomes cheaper the more you order. Compared with the thousands that you might spend on each run of a television or online ad, you may well find that a booklet-driven marketing campaign comes out cheaper.
5. You can be far more certain that people will read a booklet
If you physically hand a person a booklet – at a trade show or event, for example – you can be fairly sure that the person will at the very least flick through the booklet. By personally interacting with the other person, you create a small connection with them, which will make them more inclined to then pay attention to what you’ve given them. By contrast, an advertisement doesn’t offer that personal connection, and it’s that much easier to ignore. It’s for this reason that organisations at trade shows or events will still heavily rely on booklets to support whatever conversation they want to have.
6. Booklets are re-usable
Run an advertisement and it’s gone a day later. But if you produce booklets, any that are unused at the end of the day can be used at the next event. Whatever stock you create of booklets has a longer ‘shelf life’, and can continue to be passed over to consumers until the information in the booklet is no longer valid.
For this reason, most organisations that create booklets put information in them that will continue to be relevant months, if not years into the future. That way, all they need to do is order a new print run when their stock runs low. Over time, the cost savings in not having to re-design booklets can lead to a significantly lower marketing expenses.
7. Printing Booklets are more permanent for the recipient, too
If your booklet is designed well, informative and easy to read, people will generally keep them around. It’ll end up on a desk or table, and might well be picked up and read by other people, too. That permanency means two things:
- Your booklet’s reach is better than one person per copy
- Your brand will remain visible, and therefore top of mind, for longer.
How booklets are different to brochures
People often use ‘booklet’ and ‘brochure’ interchangeably. The truth is the two forms of printed material are different, and used for different purposes.
A brochure is a more limited form of print media, in that you’ll generally not have as many pages to work with. They’re a single piece of paper, which is folded in order to create “pages.”
There are a number of different ways that you can fold a brochure, from a classic half fold to more creative options such as a gate fold, z-fold, or tri-fold, and as a result the number of “pages” in a brochure can vary greatly, but you’ll always be limited in how much total information you can fit onto it; you’ve got, in total, a single page to work with.
Brochures have their place. They’re easy to pick up and read, have a popular aesthetic and they tend to be a colourful way to start a conversation about a brand. But this is a very different form and function to the booklet.
A booklet features multiple pages and is bound; those pages are attached together in a structure that resembles a book (hence the name, “booklet”). In most cases, the binding will be either saddle stitched or stapled together. However, the very largest booklets are perfect bound (where pages are glued together). This generally requires at least 100 interior pages, however, so it’s closer to a book in scope.
Because booklets offer so many pages, they are the better choice when you’ve got detailed topics or information to share with consumers.
Some examples of great booklets
Finally, to whet your appetite for booklets, here are some of the best examples of brands using the printed word to have a real impact on their audience:
Desigual Catalogue
Booklets are an excellent medium to share high quality pictures. With a glossy finish, a fashion booklet can have all the rich, bold colour of the highest quality magazines, and it’s the kind of thing that people will want to keep around.
Sandro Desii Catalogue
This catering business hit gold when it decided to use the booklet format to show off what dishes it can offer its clients. Being able to look at a spoonful of each food is a far more effective way of showing off a product than simply listing menus and, again, the premium ‘feel’ of a booklet works to this brand’s advantage; when you want people to think ‘gourmet’ when they think of your brand, presenting your brand using a deluxe, high-quality booklet is an effective way to drive that idea home.
Saint Etinne Opera House Seasonal Programme
As mentioned earlier, a booklet is the kind of material that can be kept for long periods of time. If you’re an opera, ballet, theatre or other arts company, which works on an annual programme of events basis, then a booklet is a great way to make sure that your biggest patrons have a constant reminder of what’s coming up to look forward to. The information that you present in these booklets can be a nice complement to the event itself, too, giving attendees background information on the performance, actors or anything else they might need to know.
Friend of Mine catalogue
This is another fashion booklet, but it’s worth highlighting as an example of how booklets don’t necessarily have to have a lot of words in them. As mentioned above, printing booklets are a great way to share stories and information, but that doesn’t mean they need to be dry or even use words. This minimalist approach to a booklet is every bit as informative and interesting.
HP’s Virtualization for Dummies
Finally, here’s an example of a much more sustained booklet – it’s 75 pages long! HP has a complex enterprise technology that it sells to corporate businesses called “virtualization.” This technology is difficult to understand at a glance, so HP has produced this easy-to-read guidebook as a way of informing corporates about virtualization, while also highlighting the benefits of the technology (and therefore why they should buy it).
As you can see, there’s a lot that can be done with booklets. It’s a cost-effective, highly-informative form of marketing collateral and, if done well, will become a cornerstone of your marketing strategy.
MVP Print has been working with many clients to help them create the most amazing booklets. If you want to talk to us, we’re always happy to talk! Contact us today!
