A brochure or flyer is the print version of your services page, and an AI you already pay for can write its copy, panel by panel, in a single sitting of about an hour. This is a Skill job: you paste one good prompt with your real material, read the copy that comes back, cut it to fit, and check every fact. The AI does the writing and the trimming. A print shop, or a template in a design app, does the layout and the paper. Plan for twenty minutes to gather your inputs, a few minutes for the AI, and the rest for cutting words, checking claims and reading the copy on a printed proof.
- Shape
- Skill
- Sitting
- one sitting
The shape: Skill
A Skill job is one good brief you can reuse: paste it with fresh notes and a new piece comes back each time. There is nothing to connect and nothing that runs on a schedule. That fits print: each piece is written once and printed in a batch, but the same brief writes the next flyer, the reprint, or the version for a new service.
The AI helps here for two reasons. First, most of the words already exist. Your services page, your about page and your best reviews already say what you do; a brochure is those words, shorter and in a fixed order. Turning a long page into six short panels is exactly the kind of trimming an AI does well and an owner finds tedious.
Second, print has hard limits. A panel holds only so many words, and a flyer read from a counter holds even fewer. An AI can write close to a word count, and write three lengths of the same panel so you can see what survives the cut.
What this shape means for you: the copy can only be as true as the material you paste in. If your services page is vague, fix that first, because the brochure will repeat the vagueness on paper you cannot edit. Our guide to writing website copy with AI covers that job.
What you give the AI
Gather these before you open the chat. Plain notes are fine.
- Your services page text. Paste the whole page, or the key paragraphs. This is the source the brochure is cut from.
- Your about page or a short paragraph about how you work. The inside panels usually need one or two lines on why you and how working with you goes.
- The format and its limits. A one-sided flyer, a two-sided flyer, a trifold or a bifold, and the paper size. If your printer has a template, note how many panels it has and roughly how much text each box holds.
- The one job this piece does. Get people to an open house. Explain a new service. Leave something behind after a quote. One job, written in one sentence.
- Where it gets handed out. A counter, a trade show table, a door hanger route, a waiting room, a mailed envelope. The setting decides how much a stranger already knows.
- What customers say before they hire you. Three or four phrases from calls, emails or reviews, in their words. These make the headline.
- One or two reviews you have permission to quote. Only real ones, with the customer's OK to put them in print.
- The contact details and the one next step. Phone, website, address, and the single action you want: call, book online, visit, scan a code to a page.
- What to leave out. Prices that change, staff who might leave, seasonal dates, and any words you never want to see, such as solutions, premier or one-stop.
If you can only gather two things, gather the services page and the customer phrases. The page gives the AI the facts; the phrases give it the words a stranger will recognize.
What comes back
Paste the prompt below into ChatGPT or Claude, with your notes in the brackets. It asks for copy by panel or by side, at a word count, with a shorter version of each, so you can fit the template without rewriting.
You are helping a small business owner write the copy for a printed piece.
A print shop or a design template will do the layout; we only need the words.
About the business:
- Services page text: [paste]
- About page or how we work: [paste or summarize]
- What customers say before they hire us: [three or four real phrases]
- Reviews we have permission to quote: [paste, with the name as it may appear]
- Contact details: [phone, website, address]
- The one next step we want: [call, book online, visit, scan a code]
About the piece:
- Format: [one-sided flyer / two-sided flyer / trifold / bifold], [paper size]
- Panels or boxes in the template, with rough space for each: [list]
- The one job this piece does: [one sentence]
- Where people get it: [counter, trade show, door, mail, waiting room]
Write the copy panel by panel (or side by side for a flyer).
For each panel, give a headline of eight words or fewer, then body copy at the word count we listed, then a shorter version at about half that length.
Rules:
- Use only facts from the material above. Do not invent services, numbers, awards, guarantees or years in business.
- Use the customers' own phrases where they fit, especially in the front headline.
- Do not include prices, staff names, hours or dates unless we listed them.
- One next step only, repeated at the end (on the back panel of a brochure or a two-sided flyer).
- Plain words. No exclamation marks. Never use: [your banned words].
After the copy, list every factual claim you made, so we can check each one.
Then tell us which panel is weakest and why, in two sentences.What comes back is a set of labeled panels, each with a headline, body copy and a shorter version, followed by a list of claims to check and a note on the weakest panel. The claims list is the most useful part of the answer, because it turns fact-checking into a checklist.
If the copy is close but off, say what is wrong before asking for more. "Too formal", "the front headline is about us, not the customer" or "panel four repeats panel two" does more in one round than three fresh drafts. If it overflows the template, ask for the panel again at a lower word count rather than cutting it yourself mid-sentence.
How to judge it
You can reject most weak copy in a few minutes. Cross out any panel that does one of these:
- The front headline is about you. "Smith Plumbing: a tradition of excellence" makes the reader do the work. The front should name their problem or the thing they want.
- It could be anyone's brochure. If you can swap in a competitor's name and the copy still works, it says nothing that makes someone keep it.
- It asks for more than one action. Call us, follow us, visit the site, sign up and stop by is five asks. One wins.
- It claims something you did not give it. A number, an award, "licensed and insured", "guaranteed" or "the area's best" that was not in your notes. Delete it, or check it and keep it.
- It carries something that will go stale. A price, a season, a staff name, a phone extension. Paper outlives all of these.
- It is too dense to skim. If a panel is one block of text with no headline and no break, a reader in a waiting room will skip it.
Then test the survivors on paper. Print the copy at real size on plain paper, fold it the way the printer will, and hand it to someone who does not know your business. Give it back to them after thirty seconds and ask what you do and what they should do next. If they get both right in their own words, the copy works. If they hesitate on the next step, the back panel needs work.
What stays with you
The AI writes words. These parts stay with you.
The facts. The AI only knows what you pasted, and it can still blend two details into a wrong one. Check every service, area, credential and claim on the list it gave you. A typo on a website gets fixed in a minute; a typo in a batch of five hundred brochures stays.
The rules for your trade. Licensed and regulated businesses often have rules about what advertising may say, and a brochure counts as advertising. If you work in health, law, finance, insurance or real estate, check the copy against your own rules before it goes to print.
The permissions. A review in print needs the customer's OK to use it, and a photo needs the rights to print it.
The offer and the next step. Only you know which offer you can afford and which response you can handle. A flyer that brings in calls you cannot answer does harm.
The layout, the paper and the proof. Type size, photos, color and fold decide whether anyone reads the piece. That is the print shop's or the template's job. Always order or print a proof, and read every panel on the proof, not only on screen. Check phone numbers and web addresses twice; one wrong digit spoils the whole run.
The match with everything else. The brochure should sound like your website, your card and your profiles. If you have not done the card yet, the business card job is the same problem in one line.
An example, labeled as one
This is an invented business, used only to show the method.
Say you run a small window cleaning company in a suburb, and you want a two-sided flyer to leave at doors in a neighborhood where you just finished a job. Your notes might say: you clean windows inside and out for houses, most customers are people who cannot reach their second-floor windows, and the phrases you hear most are "I can't get to the upstairs ones", "they've never been done since we moved in" and "do you do screens". The one job is to get a call from a neighbor this week.
From inputs like that, the front of the flyer might come back as:
Can't reach your upstairs windows?
We clean them inside and out, screens included.
We were on your street this week.
And the back might carry two short lines on how a visit goes, one review the owner has permission to quote, and a single next step with the phone number. The owner would check that screens really are included, cut the third line if the flyer goes to a street they did not work on, and print a proof before ordering. Nothing here is a result; it only shows how the customer phrases become the headline.
Flyer or brochure
There is one real choice before you write: which format the job needs.
| If the piece needs to | Why | |
|---|---|---|
| Get one action this week, such as a call, a visit or an event | A flyer | One message, one step, read in seconds |
| Explain what you do so someone can decide later | A trifold or bifold brochure | Room for services, how it works and proof |
| Do both | A two-sided flyer | Front for the action, back for the short explanation |
If you hand pieces out at events, a brochure tends to fit, because people take it home to decide. Our guide to trade shows with AI covers what else to bring to the table. If the piece will be pinned to a board or posted in a window, it is closer to a sign; the signage job covers writing for a reader at a distance.
When you are done
Save the prompt, your notes and the final copy in one file. The next time a service changes or you need a different piece, you change the notes and run the prompt again, instead of starting from a blank page.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
