What Your Print Clients Actually Want From Their Brochure

The brief says A4 tri-fold. Matt laminate. Eight panels. Delivered by the end of the month.

You deliver exactly that. Good stock. Clean registration. Finish they're happy with.

Six months later, the box is still in their office. Three-quarters full.

Not because something went wrong. Because the thing inside it - the reason someone should actually call them - never quite said what it needed to say. And no one in the room when the job was signed off knew how to fix that.

The real brief, and why they can't give it to you

Most business owners don't know how to brief a brochure. They know the format. They might have a logo and a few photos. What they struggle to say - because they've never had to put it into words - is what they actually want it to do.

They want someone to pick it up at a trade show and feel like it was written for them. They want the prospect who's been sitting on the fence for three months to finally call. They want language that sounds like a person who genuinely knows their subject - not a template that could belong to any company in the sector.

They want, in other words, to read it back and think: yes, that's us.

That almost never happens. And the reason has nothing to do with the printing.

What ends up in the panels instead

Read through the brochures most service businesses hand out. The pattern's pretty consistent. Company established in 1987. Team of experienced professionals. Photo of people smiling in a meeting room. Services listed in bullet points.

Nothing wrong with any of it. Somehow, it says nothing.

Because the person who briefed that brochure knows things that didn't make it in. They know why the cheap quote almost always costs more to sort out later. They know the question every customer is too embarrassed to ask. They know what goes wrong when someone tries to do it themselves.

None of that made it onto the page. Not because they didn't want it there. Because the mechanism for getting it out - in written form, at a standard they'd be happy sending to a client - isn't something most people have.

So they write what feels safe. They copy something they saw elsewhere. They hand it to someone who doesn't really know the business. What comes back is polished enough. It's also the same as every competitor in the sector.

Why this isn't a discipline problem

I used to think the answer was giving clients more time. A better brief form. A word count guide. Suggested headings.

Hang on a minute - none of that addresses what's actually happening. Because the block isn't organisation. It's expression. Knowing your subject cold and being able to write about it are two different skills, and almost nobody tells expert business owners that. They sit down with the best of intentions and the words that come out aren't the words that were in their head. Stiffer. More formal. Not quite right. So they put it down. Pick it up a week later. Put it down again.

Your job sits in the queue waiting.

What changes things isn't more time. It's removing the translation problem altogether. That's what Decodefy does - it captures how someone actually thinks and speaks, through a real conversation rather than a form, and produces written output in their voice. Gregory Harrand called it "a market and reputation arm" for his small business - the thing that finally let him respond and advertise in a way that sounded like him. Don Peel, starting a legal business from scratch, said the difference was working with something that took the trouble to understand his business first.

Both of them had been stuck at exactly this point. The knowledge was there. The expression wasn't.

What this means for you

The brochures that get reordered are the ones that worked. The ones where the client called someone back, or handed it to a prospect and had them actually read it, or came to a show and ran out by lunchtime.

Print quality is a given. Content quality is the variable. And right now, most of your clients are handing you the variable half of that equation already solved - by producing something that sounds like someone else entirely.

The printers who understand this conversation aren't just order-takers. They're the ones clients call first, before the next job even starts. That's a different kind of relationship. Worth having.