A Guide On Creating the Best Medical Brochure

How many times have you sat in a medical waiting room and took a look at the brochures on the tables or counter? Healthcare establishments can be found in almost every town in America and medical marketing professionals are constantly trying to advertise their services with the hope of gaining new patients. As a marketing professional in the medical industry your current challenge might be reaching potential clients or effectively communicating the services you provide and I think we all can relate to struggling to get the most impact with a small marketing and communications budget. Let's be real, it's hard marketing medicine!

Why Brochure Marketing for a Medical Practice?

Medical marketing is difficult because advertising materials require substantially more information than other types of industries. Regardless if you are providing surgery, medical imaging or pediatric care, people want to know the range of services you provide, the quality of care you offer, how accessible your services are, and the reason they should choose your establishment over others. This is hard to do with a business card, billboard or digital ads.

It is important to get a constant flow of new clients to your medical practice.

Brochures are one of the most versatile marketing tools that any company can have because they can be used on their own or be integrated into a larger marketing mix. Brochures provide comprehensive information to readers in a compact design.

Brochures offer the right amount of space to include the story of your medical practice and all the major details a customer is looking for such as location, pricing, packages, reviews and even your business's hours. Medical brochures can be mailed to clients directly, handed out at events or placed in high traffic areas for individuals to grab on their own. What's even better? Brochures can be passed along person to person making it great for referrals!

A well-designed brochure helps build trust and reliability with customers because if your advertising looks professional, consumers will assume your services are too! So how do you design one professionally? Keep reading to find out.

Content is Key

Content is key on a medical brochure.

Did you know that the average person will not read everything written on your brochure? This may not come as a surprise but many marketers forget this basic fact. So, what does this mean for your medical brochure? It means that in order to create an effective brochure you need to have content that is concise and organized. Your writing should be easy to scan and tailored to the needs and desires of potential customers.

Specify Your Healthcare Services

Be clear when specifying the services you offer.

Think about it. There are hundreds of medical services that your company can provide and different companies offer varying combinations of services and benefits to patients and consumers. One key aspect of marketing is positioning, and in order to position your service properly to the right consumer you'll have to properly communicate the scope of services that you provide.

Focus on FAQ's and Reviews

With medicine comes concerns, and with concerns come questions. Anyone who is thinking of undergoing a procedure or buying a medical device will certainly want to know all the relevant information. How much does it cost? What are the risks? What types of insurance are accepted? The list goes on and on.

Testimonials will help patients earn trust in you.

When utilizing brochure marketing, your content must satisfy people's two biggest needs - their desire for information and their desire for trust. Two easy ways to address this are to include a "Frequently Asked Questions" and a "Customer Review" section to your brochure.

The FAQ section allows you to bullet point important information and helps quell any initial concerns a potential patient might have.

The Customer Review Section helps you as a service provider to garner credibility. Would you let someone do plastic surgery on you without first checking the reviews? Would you buy a new heart monitor without seeing if it worked well for others? Most likely your answer is no. By adding a customer review section, readers will naturally be more inclined to trust you because other customers can vouch for your services.

Headlines and Organization of your Medical Brochure

To tie the content section all together, ask yourself - does your brochure have long paragraphs that are too bulky to read? Are there little to no headlines? Does it take too long to find information? If you answered yes to any of these questions then your content needs to be organized better.

The two major parts to effective organization are headlines and paragraphs. Headlines serve as a "guiding light" for readers because it points them in the direction they need to go. This is helpful if a potential consumer is reading your medical brochure with little time, or if they are disinterested. Headlines can be as simple as "price, location, services, mission" etc. and it allows big content to be separated by section.

Concise paragraphs are important as well. Generally, people are keen to hearing about the problems your medical practice will solve for them and a brief description quelling any big concerns. For a weight loss clinic, this means stating how much weight the consumer can lose in a certain amount of time and using a keyword like "non-evasive surgery, no diet needed, safe, 80% efficacy rate," etc.

Consumers can always request more information. The point of your medical brochure’s content is to sell people on your service by giving them enough information to determine if your services are right for them and to help them gain trust in you as a medical service provider. You don’t have much time to do this so an efficiently organized flyer is paramount!

Brochure Design for Your Medical Practice

Everything we’ve discussed so far is important but what makes people pick your brochure up in the first place is the cover and design!

Unlike other brochures, medical brochures especially need to be cleanly designed and organized because it’s a reflection of the services you provide. Most people would not want to be in the care of a lazy medical service provider or buy a medical product from a disorganized company thus your brochure shouldn’t look lazy or unorganized so a professional design is essential.

Sample medical brochures.

The first step in designing a professional medical brochure is to capture the reader’s attention with a savvy cover. The best brochure covers utilize powerful images to capture potential consumers.

If you are marketing a pediatrician’s office, what might be a compelling cover photo to encourage someone to keep reading your medical brochure? The first thing that comes to mind is a smiling pediatrician in a clean, high-tech examination room tending to a bubbly young child and its two parents. This image conveys great customer service, a high level of patient care and emits a sense of joy.

What services are you providing potential consumers? How can you communicate this in a photo? Successful medical brochures differentiate themselves from competitors by communicating their services effectively to the right people. Only you as the medical marketing manager can decide which images best represents your services and thus will attract your target customers.

Additionally, just as an image can speak a thousand words, your brochure cover shouldn’t have a thousand words. Besides the name and address of your business, keep the cover of your medical brochure simple and let the cover photo and inside do the rest.

Different Brochure Options for your Practice

The three factors when determining the best brochure options for your medical practice marketing.

So now you need to design a brochure! Medical businesses have many options when it comes to designing their ideal medical brochures. See the chart below to see what option is the best for you!

Option	Pros	Cons
Designing your own brochure	Offers full creative control of the brochure’s content and design Costs little to no money to design	Requires a lot of time Brochure is often times not full professional quality Many websites that offer DIY templates recycle brochure designs threatening the originality of your brochure
Buying a pre-made template	Offers partial creative control of the brochure’s content The visual design will be professional quality	Very difficult to integrate your content and brand identity into a pre-designed brochure leading to a lack of cohesiveness and an unprofessional brochure
Hiring a freelancer	Low cost and prices are often negotiable Provides tailored brochure designs for your medical business	Freelancers typically use public templates, the same ones you’d use if you were to design your own brochure It can be difficult to verify the quality and credibility of your freelancer leading to either lack of professionalism or plagiarized content If they don’t share their original file it can be difficult or impossible to edit your brochure
Using a traditional PR agency	Provide premiere level marketing materials and brochure designs at a professional quality Provides the ability to meet with your designer in person	Independent PR companies usually cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for contracted work making it the most expensive option
Utilizing an internet-based brochure design agency	The ideal brochure design option Online agencies offer the full range of print and design services as PR companies for a much more reasonable price Online agencies are professionals so they work directly with your medical business’s needs to design original brochures and content	Very large medical practices may prefer to work with someone they can meet with in person

Final Thoughts

If interested in an internet-based brochure design agency, BrochureDesigners.com offers custom, cost-effective professional brochures for medical practices like yours.