Retail stores and offices that experience a lot of customer traffic often have brochures with product information at the front of the store or in the waiting room. Banks, for instance, create brochures on each category of financial product for customers to review as they wait in the lobby. Marketers also take brochures to trade shows and presentations to hand out to potential customers or business associates.

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Brochures work well in combination with a media kit or promotional giveaway. Media kits are packets of company or product information sent to news media for use in developing reviews or feature stories on the business. The brochure gives a good overview of the company. You can also include brochures in giveaway packages, such as with a bag and T-shirt handed out at a trade show. Combining the brochure with tangible items of interest to the recipient may attract more attention to it.

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Brochures offer much more room for company and product information than other print items, such as a newspaper or magazine ad or direct mail letter or postcard. Even a simple trifold design allows for a colorful front page and five separate sections for product and service information. You can tell a story in a brochure over the course of the layout and end it with a call to action. Coupons with special deals and discounts are also commonly included, which may prompt immediate business.

The relatively low cost of producing brochures compared with other marketing options adds to their value for small businesses. A single brochure may cost as little as $1 to $3 to produce, depending on the design, color content and finish quality. And the more brochures you order, the less expensive each one is. Companies that go to a lot of trade shows or mail lots of brochures to customers often mass-produce them for costs not much higher than those for a simple postcard or letter. A brochure also conveys a much deeper message than you can get across in more expensive television or print media ads.