When designed well, brochures can act as consummate salespeople that sit in the lobbies of doctors’ offices, in the homes of your patients, and any other place you choose. Most practices have brochures simply because so many people expect them. The degree to which those brochures actually help the provider varies widely. Here are some tips for having
Brochures that Sell
#1 Throw Your Brochures Off an Overpass
If your brochures are sitting in a box in your office, they have a better chance of working for you if you throw them off an overpass. Do not hoard your marketing materials. Every time you receive a quantity of marketing materials (e.g. brochures, door hangers, rack cards), immediately make a schedule and a game plan for distributing them. If you have an old stock of marketing materials in your office, now is the time to make a strategy and schedule for distributing them. Anything is better than letting them grow old in boxes. Consider stocking the brochure racks at local physician offices, pharmacies, DME stores, and other high traffic areas. Set them out at your own offices and give them to new patients.
Of course, willingness to distribute brochures effectively will depend partly on the cost per unit of the brochures compared to the potential return on investment. With Brazzell Marketing Agency, clients often get high-quality, custom-designed brochures for only 15¢ each including design fees, printing, and shipping costs. On reorders where there are no new design fees, those costs can go down to 8¢ per brochure! At this low cost, a home health agency with typical profit margins could distribute 5,000 brochures, get one new referral off of it, and still realize a positive return on investment.
#2 Medium Sends the First Message
The instant a consumer encounters your advertising, the consumer starts drawing conclusions about your business based on the looks of your advertising. Understanding this human tendency, some administrators become reluctant to use their brochures when the brochures do not look “right” for the business. Do not settle for designs or printing that will later discourage you from using your marketing pieces or that will reflect poorly on your practice. This is especially true in today's hypercompetitive home health market. Doctors no longer take it for granted that every Medicare-certified home health agency is automatically good enough. Doctors are looking for additional signs of credibility. With Brazzell Marketing Agency, excellent brochure design is easily attainable and an investment you can use for years to come.
#3 Be Concise
People have shorter attention spans now than ever before. Don't create text just to fill space. If you have space to fill, use callouts to highlight your call to action or unique selling points. In most cases, your mission statement should not be in your brochure. No one cares about your aspirations. They want to know what you can do for them now and why they should choose you. Convey those two points as concisely as possible.
#4 Consider Your Target Audience
Create brochures specific to the motivations of who will be reading them. For instance, if your brochure is in a rack at a discharge-planning office, how will you get yours chosen when it is right beside ten others that all declare "care at home," "home is where the heart is," XYZ home health," etc. Simple. Make your headline about their need in that moment: "We Make Going Home From the Hospital Better" or "Hospital to Home Transition Program."
If you are handing these brochures to doctors, are they seeing anything in your brochure that's not in others? Most brochures are written to explain the services to patients and feature a basic unique selling point. However, doctors have different informational needs than patients. To have brochures that motivate doctors, consider making a separate brochure that speaks directly to the points they will find most influential (e.g. physician reimbursement codes, rehospitalization rates, ease of referral, speed of referral, clinician credentials, accreditations, etc.).
Speak to your target audience directly through titles (e.g. doctor) or the second person pronoun (i.e. "you"). This raises the emotional impact of your text. Avoid the common error of typing "the patient" in text designed for a patient to read. Write your patient-oriented text as if your patient were in front of you and you were speaking to him or her directly. Look at this example of what not to do. This is the first sentence out of a home health brochure we found: "When the patient’s physician sends an initial order, the Director of Nursing assigns to the patient a primary RN who is responsible for supervising care, assessing progress, corresponding with the physician, and discharge planning." This does not sound like anything a family would want, and it's hard to imagine any home health nurse ever actually speaking to a patient this way. Those same thoughts can be expressed in a more motivational way like this, "At Southern Home Health, you will have your own registered nurse, and you will know her by first name. She will coordinate care with your doctor and make sure that every aspect of your homecare goes well."
Think about what the readers of your brochure want and what would impress them and address that directly. Do not define each discipline in your staff (i.e. nurses do this; physical therapists do that; occupational therapists do the other). Patients don't want a lesson in scope of practice. Patients might want safety, comfort, convenience, wound care, COPD management, and/or friendliness. Speak to them directly about how you will provide those things.
#5 Have a Call to Action
Tell them what you want them to do and when. Don't make them guess. "Please refer your patients to XYZ Physical Therapy." "Please call now to discuss how XYZ Homecare can protect the health and safety of your loved one."
With Brazzell's full-service brochure design, we interview you and then write and design your brochure for you. If your brochure needs improvement, please order our full service brochure design, now: https://brazzellmarketing.com/Order-Forms/Design-Order-Form.php