Generating sales using your catalogs requires at least an annual catalog makeover. For many businesses, much more frequent changes are being made on advertising materials or marketing tools.
The main thing to keep in mind during a makeover is the purpose behind catalogs: to generate customers either through catalog orders or through bringing them to the store to make purchases.
Here are a few more tips to remember when giving your makeover.
Maintain an Integrated Look
Consider printing in relation to your whole marketing plan. Websites, direct mail
pieces, brochures, and poster campaigns should all work together with your newly redone catalog. In addition to reinforcing the new look, catalogs and all other advertising media should keep the look and feel of your brand, the company’s identity. Any advertising media produced for your company needs to be quickly and easily identified with your company by viewers.
Remember Your Target Audience
You must know who your customers are in order to market these effectively. The whole style of the catalog printing will need to reflect what your target market likes to see. This includes details as small as choosing the font to larger details like organization of products. Customizing your catalog printing to your customer’s preferences will ensure that customers are more likely to spend time in it once they pick it up.
Make Ordering Easy
Be sure that your catalog includes several contact methods. This should include but not be limited to: toll free phone lines for ordering or questions, website address, email address, or store location information. Order forms also fall into this category. Surprisingly enough, customers still use order forms to keep track of merchandise they would like to order as they browse the pages of your catalog. If you want to encourage readers to order through your website, be sure to put a note on the order form to that affect, perhaps including a discount code for online orders only.
Interesting yet Uncluttered Design
Keep the layout of simple, almost roomy. Sales per square inch are not necessarily the best way to judge the success of an advertising material. One common addition being made is writing editorial type articles featuring a product or designer or end-use customer story. These are a great feature to keep readers in the catalog printing long enough to see something they cannot live without.