Does your staffing firm really need a brochure?
Nearly every staffing company has some sort of brochure – so so they must be beneficial…right?
Too often the answer is “no.”
Unfortunately, most brochures aren’t worth much more than the paper they’re printed on. They do little to educate prospects, build credibility or advance sales efforts. And a poorly designed brochure doesn’t just waste money; it can effectively kill sales!
It’s not a brochure that you need. In fact, no business truly needs a brochure.
What you really need is to sell something.
And you need tools that help your sales people to be as effective as they can be. So, is a brochure the right tool to help you close more sales? And if so, how?
In my next series of posts, I’ll help you answer these important questions. Let’s start with the view from 10,000 feet:
Don’t think brochure. Think sales strategy.
It all starts with a plan.
Your brochure (or any sales collateral) should be an integral part of your sales and marketing process. Before starting a brochure project, ask yourself these questions:
Why are we creating a brochure?
- To educate people
- To close deals
- To build trust and credibility
- To generate sales leads
- As a vehicle for presenting a proposal
- To cross-sell services
What will the brochure promote?
- Your company as a whole
- A specific product or service (or range of products or services)
- An event
- The people in your organization
- A concept, such as strategic workforce planning
How will the brochure be used?
- In direct mail campaigns
- As a follow-up to a meeting (If so, will delivery be by mail, email or in person?)
- As a drop-off or leave behind
- As a sales aid during an appointment
- As a download from your website
- As content you share on social media
Create the right content strategy.
A brochure is not about you. It’s not about your services, your capabilities or your talented team. It’s about your clients. Their challenges. Their needs. And how your services (and your company) are the best answers to a question they are asking.
Sometimes a brochure is promotional, illustrating a problem you can solve and the value you offer. Other times, it’s educational, highlighting an issue or opportunity and the impact on your clients.
Your content strategy should be determined by the purpose of your brochure. If you are introducing your staffing services, then the content must demonstrate your positioning, key differentiators, and most importantly, the unique value you offer to your target client.
For a promotional brochure, you’ll want to include proof points to show why you are different / better than the competition. This may include:
- Testimonials
- Short case studies
- Performance metrics (fill percentage, time to fill, fall-off rate, etc.)
- Customer satisfaction scores
- Niche industry or technical expertise
- Bios of key team members
If your brochure is educational, then your content strategy has to focus on teaching your audience something new or providing a solution to a problem. The most effective brochures teach concepts that illustrate the value of using staffing services.
Here are a few topic ideas for educational content that could be used quite effectively to open the doors with a prospect:
- How to improve hiring by becoming a Best Place to Work
- Understanding strategic staffing
- Workforce planning essentials
- 5 ways to improve employee retention
- Secrets to getting better ROI from your staffing investment
The secret to great educational content is that it addresses a timely, relevant challenge your clients are facing while illustrating the value of staffing services as one of the solutions to the challenge.
And when it comes to content, always, always, always write from the reader’s perspective. Why would someone be interested in reading your brochure? What’s in it for them? What problem are you helping them to solve? Why is it in the reader’s best interest to work with you instead of the competition?
Up Next: Choosing the right delivery options.
Print is just one of the many ways to deliver your brochure. In my next post, I’ll review the best delivery options, as well as how to choose the right vehicle for your content.
Don’t want to wait for the next post to publish? Download the entire Idea Club article, “Do Staffing Companies NEED a Brochure?” today!