What's happening in the world of Brochures?

We Are Acuity have been working with our automotive clients for 25 years now and one of the key projects we work on for some of those clients is producing their product brochures. We've been doing this for over 12 years and in that time we’ve become experts in the field, so we thought we'd share some of that insight with you.

In looking at ways to develop our brochures and ensure that we're producing the best possible work for our clients, every year we review the brochures available across the automotive industry. We audit the entire customer journey around the product brochures so we can then analyse and share the results with our client and make any necessary changes to improve what we produce to ensure they are industry leading.

Although it is based on the automotive industry, the learnings from the audit still apply to product brochures across a wide range of industries. Our latest work was completed at the end of last year and as usual, it threw up some interesting results...

One clear thing is that companies are no longer investing in printed brochures. The number of printed brochures available was already steadily decreasing over the last five years or so and it was the pandemic that eventually caused the complete stop in being able to order a printed brochure. Instead, it looks like brands have been opting to produce some form of online experience. 90% of the brands surveyed still offered an actual brochure experience but, now in a digital format. The other 10% have decided to rely on their standard website which, we feel, offers a completely different experience to an effective brochure journey that takes the customer through a focused, paced narrative.

When it comes to the format of this digital brochure offering, the majority of brands opt for the usual PDF output with 70% of the brands offering brochures relying on this standard format. The other 30% used several solutions to offer a more interactive experience and this is what we've done for our client, Citroën UK. It offers a much more engaging experience for any potential customer and includes features such as videos and direct links out to all the relevant Call to Actions (CTAs) like ‘Book a Test drive’ and ‘configure your vehicle’, which is useful for connecting the customer with the brand.

As we know, the local retailer should be a prominent presence for national brands and around half of the brands we looked at seem to know this, as they supply the local dealer information at some point in the journey – either in the brochure itself or on a follow-up email for those that ask for details. But it seems half the brands are still not making the most of that local relationship. Perhaps they should be reading our other blog posts...

If you’re looking at more innovative ways to market your brand and products at local (and national) level, get in contact with the team.

Or alternatively read more about Local Marketing on our blog page "Local Thinking': https://www.weareacuity.com/local-thinking-our-blog

#brochures #product #brands #insight