Catalog marketing is worth all the investment when you can excite and engage your audience. Today we are going to tell you in detail how to make your catalog looks unique, which information should be included and how to present your products most attractively.
1. Your Story is Your Advantage
Thousands of catalogs are circling the online and offline spaces. Your main goal is to stand out. Good news, it’s not that complicated as you might imagine. Most of the existing catalogs look similar and are nothing but the compilation of the products’ information.
The first thing you should do is to start thinking about your catalog as a way to tell your story. All people love stories because a good story involves an emotional connection. Use it to create brand loyalty among the customers. A catalog should be an extension of your brand and should support whatever messages you stand for.
What part of the catalog is mostly responsible for that? Every single one! Every photo and every product description is a chance to transform your values and ideas to the target audience.
Looking through hundreds of catalogs of our clients, we also want to admit the usefulness of the introduction page. This is exactly the place where you can mention what you stand for or shortly describe the history of your company. It works well, especially if you are presenting a family business. Use this as a chance to invite a customer to your world!
2. Keep Your Customers in Mind
Talking about your business, don’t forget who is going to read it. No matter how great your values are, if they contradict your customers’ values, no one will be your client. For example, you are selling wooden furniture, and you don’t want to mention deforestation even briefly. However, a point about eco-products in your life will work out well.
Your customers want to read only what they really care about. How will your product impact their lives? Which problems will they solve with their help? The answer should be included in your product description. Remember, people are buying fridges not to keep their meals cold, but prolonging the time before expiration.
3. The Power of the First Impression
It’s a matter of a few seconds, whether your customers are going to like your catalog or not. That is why you should think carefully about your cover page. It’s the first thing your customers will see.
Cover Page
How to make a good cover page?
The cover must be aesthetically appealing. Think about everything, colors, fonts, images. Here are a couple of tips from the Catalog Machine designer.
Use Adobe Color to find great color matches. All you need to do is to type in the name of the color you are interested in, look through the proposed colors combination, and select the one that suits you the best. After that, click on the selected palette and copy HEX (ex. #010D00)number of the color. Paste the number into the Catalog Machine color selector.
You have multiple font options at Catalog Machine with different styles. All of them look good, so we would recommend selecting from the offered base to stay safe. If you want to be creative, you can find more fonts at Google Fonts, create an image from the text and insert the image to your cover page.
Be sure you include your logo on the cover page. If you are in B2B (business-to-business) and prepare the catalog for one or a couple of specific clients, insert their logos into the cover page as well. This will make your catalog more personalized, and your customer will appreciate such an individualistic approach.
The content you include to the cover page also matters. Depending on the category, an offer or hook can pique interest, or create a sense of urgency.
Structure your content
Other than the cover page, your catalog should be structured well. Remember that larger catalogs should have a table of contents, folios, or tabs.
We would also strongly recommend you to leave enough white space. Even if you have hundreds of products, don’t put 16 of them on 1 page. It looks a little bit messy and hard to concentrate. The optimate number of products per page for the companies with a huge product base is 9 (3×3 grid).
If you have a lower number of products, the best option for you is to have 1 or 2 items stand out on the page, whereas all other elements as the lending support.
Be consistent with the fonts and colors. Select 2 main and 3 supporting colors. The shades also count as different colors. Whereas #0C19CC and #0D18B2 are both dark blue, they look slightly different, so we count them as 2 separate colors.
Same with the font. Use Bold or Italic style to stand out a piece of information, but don’t mix different fonts. Check the fonts of your footer and header. People usually forget about them and leave them with predefined settings.
4. Photos
It’s probably one of the most important parts of each catalog. Why? Images are helpful in two main aspects. They contribute to building brand identity and make navigation through the catalog easier. That is why the best catalogs are highly visual.
Here is some advice on how to make your product images look nice.
Make sure about the lighting and resolution for printing. Most printers recommend 300 dpi for the resolution (the higher, the better). Make photos at studios, because it’s easy to regulate the lightning there.
It might be a good idea to hire a professional photographer, so you will be sure about the images’ quality. Although it might be a little expensive, you will have material not only for the catalog but for future marketing campaigns.
The perfect photography is where the person is interacting with your product!
Don’t put too many products in one photo. It looks unclear to the viewer. The best option is to group images of separate products by category.
Focus on top sellers and position them with products that compliment them rather than items that could replace them.
5. Increase Chances of Sale
How?
Clear Ordering System
It should be obvious at first glance how to order the product. Since it’s the main purpose you’ve created a catalog. It should be a bright visual sign or a clear statement that’s easy to find what customers should do to order the desired product.
Good for you, if you are using the Catalog Machine all you should do is to enable your customers to order right from the catalog.
Highlight promotions and sales. It’s always nice to hear about free shipping or a discount.
Insert Contact Info
Insert your company’s contact info on every single page. Include both phone numbers and email to connect the customer with your salesperson. It’s always a good idea to post your website url.
Summing up
Follow these 5 simple steps to provide your customers with a memorable experience and boost your sales. Your catalog is similar to the logo or a business card, as all of them are creating a business identity, which makes you unique.
Next time before publishing your catalog, make sure it is both functional (easy to read and intuitively designed) and appealing (looks clean and professional).
The Catalog Machine team is happy to offer you a new service. From now you can order your catalog from us, so all you will need to do is to provide us your product information.
Sign up at https://www.catalogmachine.com and message us about your catalog preferences.