Let’s be honest, unlike digital versions, physical print brochures either end up in the recycling or on your ‘important documents’ pile. (You know, the one that just keeps growing!) These two outcomes are unfortunate because paper brochures normally do contain loads of valuable content.

The fact is, print brochures have a lot of problems. Readers cannot easily search for the exact information they need, making print brochures too time-consuming to process. Printed brochures are often overwhelming or boring, and critically, businesses can’t be sure their materials are even being read. So what are the best print brochure alternatives? We dive into it below.

Why should I use a digital brochure?

So now we’ve established the problem with the old way of doing brochures, let’s lay out the advantages of a future with digital brochures.

Accessibility: By hosting your brochure online, it can be easily shared and distributed to audiences around the world, and therefore you’re widening the net of potential leads.

Cost-effectiveness: You can update your brochure regularly if it’s online and this, paired with lower production costs, makes a digital brochure more cost-effective.

Interactivity: Using media, like videos or images, and including links, polls, and surveys in your brochure will keep your readers eyes on the page. No more one-way ticket to the trash can; digital brochures are collateral that will have your audience turning the pages again and again.

Technical capabilities: The technical capabilities of digital brochures, such as engagement analytics and personalization, enable you to create smarter documents that use data for better performance.

Let’s take a deeper look at the benefits mentioned above, as well as some more …

7 benefits of using digital brochures as an alternative to print

#1: Cost savings

The first advantage of using digital brochures is to save money on production and distribution. Having printed brochures as part of your strategy puts significant strain on your marketing budget.

Brochures don’t just accumulate costs in the designing and writing stages. They include expensive additional steps like printing, delivery or postage, and distribution. Each one of these added steps comes with a significant price tag which add up fast. The price of printing 5000 reasonable quality brochures alone is anywhere between $300-$500, according to GD Print.

Add to this the costs of designing the brochure (around $1500 for a mid-quality designer), shipping – either to your office or internationally – and your minimum spend is at least a few thousand dollars. This can be especially hard to justify at a time when businesses are slashing marketing budgets, marketers are always on the lookout for where to cut costs without risking quality.

Switching to digital brochures helped GiveSmart’s previous Vice President of Marketing, Maureen Blandford, avoid expensive and time-consuming bottlenecks. She found that the fast-paced nature of her collateral meant outsourcing was unfeasible. An in-house tech-driven solution like Turtl quickly created mobile-accessible digital documents which looked polished, on a tight budget.

Maureen noted, “We have been able to produce more content, faster, of a higher quality, and without excessive spend.”

#2: Personalized for people

We understand the appeal of the printed brochure. The physical cue of being handed one at an event. The human interaction when the sales rep. directs you to the page you’re looking for. In the right circumstances, a good old-fashioned brochure can be hard to beat. But, if you think about it, a print brochure is a “one size fits all” solution.

But for a buyer, wouldn’t it be nicer to not have to carry around all the content that isn’t relevant to you? And for the seller, what about if your brochure could speak to prospects before, during, and after events? Well, the technology to achieve these already exists.

Digital alternatives to brochures allow you to create personalized content that only contains information relevant to customers’ interests and needs. As they move along the buyer journey, reducing the noise and encouraging conversion minimizes friction.

The fact is, personalized digital documents perform on average 45% better across every possible attention-measuring metric. It’s why personalization is now considered standard.

Businesses cannot afford to miss opportunities or damage their reputation by dismissing the benefits of personalized materials. Especially since 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.

Click to read The data behind personalization | Turtl Labs + Curious Reader

#3: Always relevant

All of the information you printed in your brochure was accurate in January 2022, but by March it’s only half true. Meanwhile, by the time we get to June, you might have reconsidered your product messaging or switched up your visual brand identity.

Printed brochures quickly go out of date. In extreme cases, they can even spread false information. There’s always the possibility that your outdated brochure is still in circulation. You simply have no control over it once you’ve distributed it.

Digital brochures, on the other hand, are easy to update and quick to edit. Plus, they are fast to roll out; you can immediately replace your old version if the URL is the same. Finally, you can alleviate concerns that your reader might be seeing something that is no longer true or on-brand.

#4: Reach and accessibility

One of the most challenging things about print brochures is that their distribution depends on physically handing them to someone. Often this happens at an event or office. Yet many events have moved online and work-from-home culture doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. So now, what’s the fallback? Mailing out your physical brochures is costly and doesn’t guarantee it finds the attention you deserve.

When the going gets tough, the tough get digital. Digital outreach allows people to access communications, and find what they are looking for wherever they have WiFi. The truth is you can reach far more people online. Meaning online brochures give you that boost to reach international audiences and capture more people’s attention at the perfect time.

Actually, postponed events allowed Turtl to prove the value of interactive digital content to Informa Connect. With more than 800 events canceled or postponed, the Informa Connect team needed to not just claw back lost earnings, but also deliver their clients the exposure they were looking for. They capitalized on the value that Turtl could add to their digital content to sell sponsorship packages on their digital documents that recouped more than $55,000 of direct revenue, at a time when the events industry was in freefall.

Click to read Informa Connect + Turtl | Case Study

#5: Engaging interactivity

We all like a memorable experience. In the world of printed brochures, that means shiny paper and colored ink.

Yet, in a digital world, memorable experiences are made of much more. Interactive online brochures feature impactful widgets like community polls, moving charts, embedded videos, enlargeable pictures, and shareable quotes.

As a matter of fact, interactive content generates twice as many conversions as passive content. So it’s no surprise that 91% of internet users say they prefer interactive content to static content. Meanwhile, 88% of businesses think interactive content separates their brand from industry rivals.

It’s clear that if you want to be remembered and convert readers to customers, you need to make your brochures interactive.

#6: Favorable sustainability

Since you’re reading an article about swapping from print to digital brochures, the chances are you really want to capture your audience’s attention and have them remember you. So make sure you’re remembered for the right reasons.

You might want your brochure to be seen far and wide, but that doesn’t mean you meant for your last copy to be seen blowing down the street half a mile from the venue where you handed it out. As digital documents and experiences become the norm, why even run the risk of having your print brochure end up as landfill, or worse, litter?

We’ve already established how digital brochures reduce costs, but going greener also improves your ESG rating, simplifies your carbon offsetting practices, and entices your community. Consumers are getting more and more in touch with their environmental impact, and are more likely to favor a greener alternative when it comes to deciding where to spend their money.

#7: See stats

There’s no way your paper brochure can tell you who read it, or how long they read long for. It also can’t analyze which parts they spent the most time mulling over, or if they shared it with someone else. The best statistic you can report with a printed brochure is how many have been handed out – but when it comes to the increasing demands on marketing to prove ROI – this just isn’t going to cut it.

Digital brochures can report everything from read times to bounce rates. So not only can businesses ensure digital brochures stay up-to-date (see #3), but they can change their online brochure’s layout or information based on reader engagement.

For example, Turtl allows access to an Analytics Dashboard so analysts and creators can see what people view for the longest and which pieces of content aren’t keeping readers engaged. So maybe your summary page is performing better than your introduction, or readers don’t care about point B as much as point A. That’s fine, because the insights from your digital brochure can influence any updates, atomization, or repurposing.

Meaningful analytics allow you to really see the benefits that switching to digital brochure alternatives can bring. After switching from static documents to Turtl’s interactive, multimedia-rich alternatives, Leading Edge Forum saw 1 in 3 readers returning to re-engage with their content and read times averages rose more than 8 minutes.

Click to read Leading Edge Forum + Turtl | Case study | Turtl

We’ve never had quantifiable data like this that I can take to executives and prove the value of what we’re doing.

Gareth Scragg

Marketing Director , Leading Edge Forum

How to create digital alternatives to brochures

Tools like Turtl make it easy for anyone to create quality, on-brand content without expensive specialists or wasting time going back and forth with outsourced agencies. Turtl is a superior digital alternative to print brochures that are scientifically proven to result in 10 times more engagement, greater messaging recall, and a positive brand attitude for businesses who use its brain-friendly online format.

With the right tool, you can keep your design in-house and empower your teams to make the materials they actually use. As such, Turtl comes with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, an in-depth Analytics Dashboard, and a variety of intuitive integrations so that any member of any team can create, personalize, publish and track interactive digital brochures.

Turtl takeaway

Switch to digital alternatives for brochures and see a difference

So, there were seven big benefits of digital brochure alternatives. Hopefully, it proves to you that the technology to empower everybody to create digital brochures already exists. Tech has revolutionized every other aspect of marketing, and it’s time for brochures to go digital and catch up.

Digital online brochures have the power to change pretty much everything about the way you do your marketing and sales outreach; from when you circulate your content to how your prospects engage with it. Access to meaningful analytics lets teams prove the value of these enhancements at even the most granular level. And digital brochures can even change the world (See #6)!