Direct-mail marketing is ideal for many small businesses. The National Oil and Lube News newsletter (PDF), for one, advocates reminder cards (in its case, for car maintenance), mailings to customers who haven’t visited in more than a year, and discounts for a targeted audience.

When you do a bulk mailing of postcards, brochures or catalogs, the recipients don’t have the option of hitting Delete – instead, they’re face to face with your eye-popping graphic design and your catchy marketing message. Printed marketing materials are tangible reminders to get something done. How many times have you thought you’d refer back to an e-mail newsletter, only to let it sink to the bottom of your inbox?

Going back to the paper cut-via-envelope scenario – with direct-mail services, once you’ve designed your promotional postcard, booklet or brochure, your hard work is done. Simply provide PsPrint with your mailing list, and addressing, postage and sending are taken care of.

Direct-mail services take the drudge work out of marketing, leaving you more time to focus on your business itself.

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Whether you’re printing 50 brochures for a business meeting or thousands of brochures to include in a direct-mail campaign, here are a few simple tricks to creating brochures that sell.

1. Whitespace is your friend
Some folks’ eyes may glaze over during a phone call or sales pitches, and most people only scan e-mails and direct-mail letters before throwing them in the trash. That leaves the brochure as the last resort in many sales situations. Brochure design should be easy on the eyes and the layout should underscore any important copy or images. The selling points should literally jump off the pages of the brochure. Use enough whitespace to give the brochure’s headlines and call to action an added oomph. A good amount of whitespace will also make the brochure look crisp and modern and not garish and sales-like.

2. Use headlines and subheadlines
Good headlines can walk a reader all the way through a brochure providing clarity and transition between bits of copy and images. Think about the logic of the brochure and which copy should go first, second, third, etc. Then write headlines, and if necessary, subheadlines that not only summarize the paragraph below, but create a flow from one section to the next. In a successful brochure, if you read the headlines only, you would be able to grasp the selling points of the product. Headlines and subheadlines also work to break up the copy in a brochure, especially in larger formats with several folds, making the brochure more inviting to read than a formal letter.

3. Feature photos and illustrations
As stated above, the brochure is most useful when it provides a visual component that may have been absent from the sales pitch. Make sure there is ample real estate in a brochure for photographs of the product or service. Providing captions underneath each photo will improve the chances that customers at least glance at the pictures. Aside from photos of or related to the product or service being sold, the brochure should also convey a sense of the company’s unique brand through graphic design. Full-color brochures, rather than black and white, will produce the greatest effect. For some brochure design inspiration, check out these ideas.

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Templates. I’ve seen templates for stationery, brochures, newsletters and even logos, and they range in price, edging into triple digits. But PsPrint offers free templates for such important items as event tickets, posters, presentation folders, catalogs and club flyers. If your graphic design skills are limited, free templates offer a quick and cost-effective way to create your own printed materials.

Shipping. I have a rule for myself when it comes to holiday shopping – I refuse to pay for shipping and handling. So many online retailers offer free shipping that I simply can’t stomach paying twice as much for a gift to cover the mailing costs. So look around for the online shops that waive shipping. For example, Amazon offers free Super Saver Shipping for two more days if you want your order to arrive by Christmas, and Zappos not only always ships for free but also offers free returns on your shoe order.

Freecycle. Have you ever lost yourself scrolling through Craigslist or eBay, finding treasures you didn’t know you need? Freecycle is like that but better, because it’s all free. You simply join a local group and find things that people want to get rid of. Some of it’s junk, of course, and could be useful in a Burning Man project, but you’d be surprised at how much valuable stuff people give away: computers, household appliances, baby items, firewood, etc. In addition, Freecycle is a great opportunity for you to get rid of that old filing cabinet or oversize suitcase taking up space in your closet. And you can feel good about keeping junk out of landfills!

Advice. I can’t imagine starting up a business, say, 30 years ago, before the Internet was so prominent in our lives. These days you can do a search and quickly find everything from legal advice to reviews of vendors to price comparisons. Businesspeople have had to find a new way to promote themselves, so they tend to give out a lot of free advice on the Internet. Whereas 20 years ago you might have paid a consultant hundreds of dollars per hour to learn how to build your company, nowadays you can find tips online. Check out PsPrint for a bounty of free articles on topics such as small-business marketing, graphic design, tips for new businesses and how to be environmentally friendly.

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

For this reason, Thanksgiving presents small businesses with a largely untapped marketing opportunity. Since most businesses focus on the Christmas holidays as a vehicle for communications with customers, Thanksgiving-themed promotions are a refreshing way to reach out to prospective clients.

Thanksgiving-themed promotions may not work for businesses in the retail sector, which will already flood consumer’s mailboxes with holiday shopping promotions. To be sure your mailing stands out from the Black Friday noise, take a printed piece and turn it into a Thanksgiving-themed gift that your customers will enjoy. Check out these Thanksgiving-themed promotion ideas below:

1. Recipe cards
What is Thanksgiving all about? That’s easy — food! So send out a mailing with a few great recipes enclosed. One way to do this is to include a brochure with recipes for each of the classic dishes that make up a Thanksgiving meal. Or you could incorporate some photography and create postcards with images of the food on the front and recipes on the back. To mix up the menu a bit, consider including cocktail recipes and dessert recipes, too! Don’t forget to brand each recipe card with your logo, company name and website so that customers will remember where the inspiration for their amazing apple pie came from!

2. Cooking bookmarks
You can help folks create the perfect Thanksgiving meal by including a special bookmark within a promotional mailing. The bookmark can feature a Thanksgiving-themed image such as a cornucopia overflowing with food or other autumnal imagery coupled with appropriate text. Or, to make the bookmark especially handy, you can print useful cooking information on it. Everyone can use a handy reference for cooking conversion tables, tips for kitchen safety or steps for cooking and carving a turkey properly. There are so many ways to make the bookmark useful to recipients. Again, don’t forget to place your business name and information somewhere on the bookmark to remind customers of your generosity.

3. Holiday cards
Sending out blank holiday cards is one of the brilliant methods that nonprofit organizations use to solicit donations. As the winter holidays approach, nonprofits will send a mailing to potential donors and include beautiful holiday greeting cards as a free gift to encourage reciprocity. Copying this idea for a small business mailing is easy. Simply design 3 or 4 different holiday or new year’s themed greeting cards and print enough cards for each person on your list. Your customers will greatly appreciate having a few extra holiday cards around the house, well in advance of the holidays. Place your business name, logo and URL in small type on the back of the cards. You may even include a message about your company, so that when customers send their cards out, your business information will reach new audiences.

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A: A Q&A or FAQ section on a printed brochure, flyer, mailing and even on a website, can help land potential clients by providing detailed answers to allay any fears, doubts and concerns about hiring a designer or copywriter.

Q: How do I brainstorm copy for a Q&A section?

A: Writing a good Q&A involves putting yourself in the client’s shoes. Think about a time when you purchased a costly service or product. Maybe it was the last time you set up a big printing job. You might have had some questions or doubts about the proofing process, turnaround time and total costs. The goal of the questions and answers section is to address such key issues, fears and doubts surrounding a purchase decision. Consider cost, deliverables, edits, project timelines and any other high-level issues your client would be concerned with upon hiring you.

Q: How do I actually start writing a Q&A section?

A: First, don’t sit down and write a list of questions right away. Instead, start by making a list of each issue you can think of. Next, for each issue on your list write a short paragraph that works through how the client might feel about the issue. For example, if you were writing about the topic “Fees,” you might consider a client’s preferences for an hourly versus a flat fee, what kind of payment terms they’d like, etc.

Then write a second paragraph about “Fees” that illustrates how you currently handle fees, and what the benefits are of your approach. If you offer no payment up front and payment upon project delivery, that would be something attractive to clients that you’d want to highlight.

The hard part comes next, when for each topic, you must fuse the client’s point of view and your point of view together into one paragraph. (You may realize throughout this process that you need to make a few changes in your business terms in order to be more attractive to clients.)

Finally, go through each issue and paragraph and write a question headline that summarizes the main idea at stake.

Q: Does it matter what order the question are in?

A: Yes! Go through the list of questions and answers and try to organize them in the way that makes the most sense if someone were to read through the list. Try to create a flow from question to question and eliminate any redundancies.

The overall sequence should be persuasive, building up to a final question that acts as a call-to-action, to get potential clients to take the next step and contact you. For the last question, you could write something like, “How do I get started,” or “How can I find about more about Company X’s services,” and in the answer section, simply provide your contact information.

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These copy elements work because they combine clever writing and design. In other words, it’s the placement of the text that drives the messaging home.

Every designer and marketer should become familiar with these three pieces of copy and use them whenever possible.

1. Teaser copy
Teaser copy refers to the line or two of text that recipients see right away when they pick up your promotion. On a letter, it’s found on the envelope and in a brochure, it would be visible on the cover page. Teaser copy is one of the best ways to entice customers to actually open up and read your promotion. Use teaser copy to let them know when: a) there’s something free inside; b) there’s a discount offer inside; or c) that they will learn something by viewing your promotion. If you let an envelope, brochure or postcard go out, without this vital piece of text, you may experience depressed response.

2. Headlines and subheads
Headlines work really well on letters, inside brochures and on Websites — basically in any promotion that includes a lot of copy. Headlines and subheads can help break up the content of your promotion into digestible bites that even the most impatient or distracted reader can process. Many customers will skim quickly over your promotion looking for something to jump out at them. By using headlines that capture important information such as product benefits, offers and calls to action, you can still reach those skimming readers.

3. The P.S.
The P.S. or postscript in a letter may seem like a tiny detail, but leading marketers will attest to the power of the P.S. in printed promotions. For some reason, people tend to jump down to the postscript even before they finish reading a letter. If you are including a letter, or message of any kind then definitely include a P.S. In the P.S. it’s best to reiterate or summarize the gist of the entire promotion. Write it so that, even if its the only thing a person reads, they’ll still get the big picture.

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