Hot Tip: Use Tips Booklets

When someone hands you a flyer or brochure, what usually happens? If you’re like most people, you’ll give it a quick perusal and then toss it on the pile on your desk, or in a folder of similar materials you keep promising yourself you’ll go through … “someday.”

And then, as they say, out-of-sight, out-of-mind. When “some day” finally does arrive, it’s often as part of a “clean-up” day to purge one’s work space of the items of paper detritus that have accumulated over the weeks or months like so many land barnacles.

If you offer any kind of product or professional service, this is exactly what happens with your materials after you hand them out. You do need them, and they serve a valuable purpose, but they have a short half-life as far as their ability to influence  your potential clients. These sheets and trifolds aren’t “keepers,” because frankly, they’re too promotional. They serve little practical function for your prospective clients.

This post alerts you to a tool that circumvents that particular issue. This tool is one that as a person in business, you must have in your marketing arsenal. I speak of the humble tips booklet. And here’s why you want one or several lines of tips booklets circulating with your name or your business name on them:

• They boost your credibility and establish you as an expert (acknowledged expertise = more business)
• They carry more perceived value because they offer information of value
• You can make them a revenue-generating item by offering them for sale as print products when you speak or through assorted sales channels
• You can sell them online as a download (after recouping your costs of time and effort, each subsequent sale becomes virtually “free money”)
• People are much less likely to throw away something as substantial as a booklet — that allows your piece to keep on making impressions
• You can use them as an incentive for Web visitors to join your e-list; and we all know the value of lists
• You can license your booklets to interested organizations for substantial bucks(!)

So just what is a tips “booklet”  and how do you put one together?

It can be as simple as half a dozen or more numbered items of advice in your area of expertise. (Here’s an example.)The important thing is to make it a quick, easy, valuable read. For that reason, numbering your tips is a good idea. Readers love numbered lists, as they make large, complicated masses of information digestible.
Whip up an attractive cover page in the front and a “house ad” contact blurb at the end, and you’re in business. In-between, of course, you will want to format your text so that it is clean from a design standpoint and in a relatively large, easy-to-read font. Big type (12-14 point) also makes it a faster read, which today’s time-strapped information-seekers prefer.
Preferred dimensions? There’s some argument on this one – some people prefer a super-compact 3.5” by 8.5” format because they slip easily into a standard letter-size envelope. I prefer a  full 8.5″ x 11″ footprint, as it allows for better integration of visuals that help move people to action. For any type of volume, you’ll want to have yours professionally printed and “saddle-stitched” for the binding.

Tips booklets are an ingenious marketing piece for those of us in business and a valuable, practical product that leads our clients and potential clients’ to solutions for their problems. Learn more about the booklets medium from Paulette Ensign, the doyenne of tips booklets, at http://www.tipsbooklets.com. I’ve personally bought her stuff and it delivers huge value; she knows the medium inside and out, especially the lucrative areas like licensing.

Next time you want to make a lasting impression on a potential client, ditch the brochure and give them something that’s actually useful — a booklet!