Ultimate Guide On Creating the Best Church Brochure

Why Good Church Brochure Design Is So Important

The church has been a powerful influence in people’s lives for generations and almost every civilization has had a church of their own religion. However, the modern 21st century church faces a number of new and different challenges. Our modern way of living leaves us with little time other than to work and sleep, and many people are just too tired at the end of the day. Wellbeing and spirituality are then forgotten. Churches have no choice but to try to face this initial lack of interest head on, by understanding there are ways in which they can promote themselves and attract new parishioners.

When it comes to advertising and marketing a church in order to draw in new visitors, a church brochure can be a great choice. A church brochure not only creates awareness of your organization, but it can help guests understand the nature of your church and why they should join.

However, simply rushing to create a quick church flyer isn’t going to be good enough. If you do so, you will lose valuable time and effort. Even worse, you will probably -and wrongly- conclude that brochure promotion and marketing does not work for you.

If you are serious about promoting your local church then you need to take the time to get a professional church brochure. Brochure design is a skill which takes years to effectively develop, and this is especially the case for niche organizations such as churches. Brochure marketing certainly works, and it is one of the most cost-effective marketing methods around.

But what’s involved in making a premium quality professional brochure for your church? Do you know how a church brochure should be designed? Can you implement a marketing campaign in order to help expand and advertise your church?

Why Brochures Could Help Your Church

Implementing an effective church brochure campaign is a great way to improve the relationship between the church and its members, and a way to capture attention of prospective visitors.

For former church members, brochures can help:

• Combat lack of enthusiasm among the community. Brochures are a way of communicating, and communication empowers and strengthens communities.
• Engage the community and encourage people to share the values of religion that they have otherwise lost. Brochures can work as a reminder of those values.
• Answer some of the many misconceptions that people, especially young people, hold about religion.
• Highlight some of the most important teachings of your church.

For prospective visitors, a brochure is a great tool for introducing your church and for encouraging people to visit your facilities. Before deciding on their particular church, many people will want to first learn more in order to decide on whether or not the church is right for their needs. A brochure may give visitors a great deal of information about you.

Benefits of Promoting Your Church Through Brochures

Brochures will help promote your message.

Some of the benefits of choosing to promote your church through the use of brochures include:

• Cost-effective promotion strategy
• Perfect medium for eye catching and captivating content
• Concise information that intrigues
• Get interest of prospective visitors

Cost-effective Promotion Strategy

Giving out brochures is an affordable and highly effective option for marketing. This is due to the fact that a brochure, by its very nature, does not require a large amount of materials or related services to reach your audience—helping to keep the costs of marketing down.

Perfect Medium for Eye Catching and Captivating Content

Good brochures are typically eye catching and may hold highly captivating content like pictures and infographics. A bright and vibrant design helps people to notice them, and inviting content then retains and engages the reader, thereby increasing the chances of your church getting new interest.

Concise Information that Intrigues

A well planned and designed brochure should provide enough information to intrigue visitors, without giving away all of the information. The content that is offered in a brochure should be varied and concise, meaning that the brochure should give a clear overview of the church’s activities and offerings. However, on the same note, a good brochure shouldn’t give out too much information; instead, it should offer enough knowledge for people to ‘wet their appetites’, as it were, so that they might be motivated to pay a visit to the church itself in order to learn more about the services that it offers.

Get Interest of Prospective Visitors

As part of this, brochures can often be a great way to get people involved in your local church even if they hadn’t necessarily been looking to do so. Brochures are the sort of documents that people will read when they are bored and looking for something to do—meaning that a well written and engaging piece could potentially even draw the interest of individuals who might not have been looking for a new church necessarily.

Brochure campaigns will help promote your church activities.

How to Design a Church Brochure

Designing a brochure for your church is not necessarily as straightforward as it might seem. You should definitely spend some time discussing the pros and cons of each of the different options with your professional designer or design agency, as a wrong decision may unleash lots of problems at later stages.

Factors to Consider when Designing a Church Brochure

When it comes to designing a brochure for your church, there are a number of different factors to consider, which we can group in these categories:

• Content
• Design and layout
• Printing and distribution

Content

Regarding content, you should consider:

• what’s the intent (promotional, informative, etc.),
• what’s your target audience (particular aspects of your target audience, ie. gender, age, etc.)
• what is the message you need to convey

If you want it to be merely informative and you are targeting your parishioners, you may consider how many different activities and benefits your church offers that are not as popular as they may be.

If you are leaning towards a promotional brochure targeting new visitors, you should be aware that people considering joining your church will want to know what you can offer to them and why they should join. Surveys or just asking around may help you find those strong points that you should highlight in the brochure.

After all, it’s all about trying to put yourself in the target’s shoes and thinking what might be of interest to your target audience.

Modern people are largely disconnected with the skill of reading nowadays and will often not want to spend more than a few minutes surveying your church’s offerings. As such, you should consider condensing the content of your flyer or brochure as much as you possibly can, without impacting on the information that is offered. A professional should be able to help you come up with a plan for this, but you should consider using the following techniques in order to keep the content of your brochure short and sweet:

• Use bullet points and lists
• Use short sentences
• Use simple and easy to understand language and terminology
• Include relevant images, where applicable, without impacting on the layout of the brochure

Hiring a professional copywriter and/or editor may be a good choice for those that do not feel at ease with writing.

Graphic Design and Layout

The second factor that you should consider when it comes to designing your church brochure is graphic design and layout.

You could always try to come up with your own design and layout, hire a freelancer or use an online brochure maker. However, these will almost always be inferior – way inferior - to professional designs.

Having a great presentation and layout for your brochure will help you to catch the attention of your target audience—helping to increase the chances of new people joining your church.

But why should you choose a professional designer over a freelance designer? While freelance designers are often the cheapest to hire, you should always ask yourself about why they are so seemingly affordable; indeed, a freelance designer will often be self taught and less skilled than a professional, and this can mean that you might get provided with a far lesser standard of service. Contrastingly, if you choose to hire a professional instead, you can be confident that the services with which you are provided will be of a high quality and will serve to enhance your church’s promotional attempts.

As part of the design process, a professional designer will consider the content and how it will fit within the construction, folding structure, size, and reading flow of the chosen brochure type. In other words, brochures can be folded in a number of different ways which leads to different panel sizes and reading flow. For example, a standard tri-fold brochure has very thin panels, and may not be good for wide tables or infographics, but works great for text or vertical pictures.

The decision on the type of brochure is critical and has impact in every aspect of the brochure. Do not be afraid to ask - a professional graphic designer will help you find the right brochure for your specific needs.

Church flyers and brochures help you keep your church community informed of activities.

Printing and Distribution

Your final decision should be related to printing (paper quality, print shop, etc.) and distribution (physically, by mail, electronically, or a combination of these means).

If you are distributing the brochure physically, be aware that a good brochure needs to feel great; many people can truly appreciate the feel of a glossy and thick brochure that doesn’t feel like it is going to disintegrate in the reader’s hands. However, thicker does not mean better. Each paper type has pros and cons. For example, a specific paper stock that is great for a tri-fold may not work for a larger bi-fold. Some paper stocks may tend to crack at folds. Some may be writable, some others cannot. A skilled graphic designer or your print shop will be able to help you make the right decision in this regard. Obviously, the decision on paper stock has a cost impact that you should take into account too.

Creating Your Church Brochure

If you decide that creating a brochure for your church might be the right option for you and your needs, you should consider the number of factors involved. The whole process can seem like quite a hard skill to get the hang of. While there are many different templates and design ideas available on the internet, our recommendation is always hiring a team of skilled church brochure design experts.

Not only can their experience in the brochure design industry help you to make the right design choices for your brochures but they will also be there for you to bounce ideas off of. A good brochure designer will help you to come up with the best possible design, layout, content, and styles for your church’s campaign intentions.

So, if you find yourself in need of a brochure for your church, don’t compromise on quality services; choose a team such as www.brochuredesigners.com to help you out with all of your flyer and brochure design needs.