Don’t Print Brochures – Give Them Out On A USB Stick
We were recently approached by a UK distributor and asked to stock their products and promote them via our website. During the meeting with the sales representative he handed over, with no small amount of pride, a copy of their latest glossy product brochure. To say it hit the desk with a resounding “thud” would be an understatement!
The brochure contained 379 pages of full colour print and weighed in at 1080 grams. Granted it was a nice looking brochure but it must have cost a small fortune to print them. But the print costs paled into insignificance when the sale representative went on to explain he’d spent the previous day with his manager stuffing these brochures into envelopes to post out across Europe!!
A conservative estimate would suggest that it must have cost an average of about £20 to print, pack and send each brochure out via Airmail!
Is this crazy or do customers still expect to receive high quality brochures to browse through and to encourage them to trade with your business?
These same brochures were also to be handed out at Trade Shows and Fairs but given their weight I’m not sure how many of the attendees would have been willing to take one and lug it around with them all day – walking around trade shows can be tiring enough without being lumbered with hefty brochures. It must be interesting to check the bins around the exhibition halls to see how many brochures are dumped.
Ironically, the same brochure could have been loaded onto a USB memory stick and sent out across Europe for a fraction of the cost. In fact, not only could the brochure have been pre-loaded onto the USB sticks but they could also contain video clips, price lists, press releases, links to web sites and so on.
OK, you can’t “browse” a USB memory stick in the same way you might flick through a printed catalogue but the content is there for someone who is genuinely interested and there is a much stronger likelihood that they keep the USB Stick (branded with your company logo and contact details) rather than consign it to the bin.
The same arguments apply at Trade Shows and Exhibitions – it makes far more sense to hand out the information about your company and its products on something that is not going to end up in the bin but will instead be kept and used and will act as a reminder of your company and what you have to offer.
Not convinced then we encourage you to run a test – use USB sticks printed with your logo and pre-loaded with your brochure(s) at your next event and see if you get any uplift in sales and enquires compared to previous events where you handed out printed brochures.