Page 56 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

24 HOLD ON TO THOSE
BROCHURES

In general we tend to think of brochures as a way of promoting
products, and so they are in most contexts. In some circumstances,
though, we might be giving away expensive brochures without
much hope of the prospective customer actually reading them.
For example, exhibitions are places where a great many visitors
simply collect brochures from every stand they can, without really
having much intention of reading them (and still less intention of
buying anything).

Ensuring that only genuinely interested people have a brochure is
one issue—the other issue is ensuring that the company gets the
maximum “bang for a buck” from the brochure. Brochures are
expensive to produce and distribute—handing them out to people
who will simply dump them is not good business, but nor is allowing
interested parties to collect brochures from all our competitors
as well as us, without ensuring that ours is the one that gets
the results.

The idea

Thermastor Double Glazing was at one time the third-largest
window company in Britain. They were also probably the most
expensive—their patented insulation system was state-of-the-art
and has not been matched before or since. Among many innovative
marketing ideas, one of their best was the “no brochure” approach,
used at exhibitions.

The company instructed its salespeople to tell stand visitors that
all the brochures were gone, due to heavy demand from other

100 GREAT MARKETING IDEAS • 47