Catalogs remain valuable marketing tools that every business should pay attention to. Catalogs offer a high return on investment and a more engaging experience compared to online marketing efforts and have a wide range of purposes beyond the traditional mail-order catalog.

In this blog, we'll explore the many benefits of using catalogs as a part of your marketing strategy. From increasing sales and customer loyalty to building strong brand awareness and attracting new customers, here is why catalogs work.

Why Catalogs Work

Catalogs work as a powerful marketing tool because they allow companies to reach and engage with their target audience in a tangible way. Unlike digital advertising, catalogs provide a physical product that customers can touch, flip through, and even keep for future reference. This creates a longer-lasting and more meaningful connection between the customer and the brand. Additionally, catalogs offer a level of personalization that digital ads cannot, allowing businesses to tailor their message and products to each customer's specific interests and needs. As a result, catalogs have proven to generate higher order values, repeat purchases, and overall return on investment for businesses that use them effectively.

Using Catalogs as Part of a Marketing Strategy and Their Impact

Mail Order Catalogs

Mail order catalogs are a list of products or services a business offers that can be ordered and delivered through the mail. They often feature product descriptions, prices, images, instructions, website URLs, and contact information to place orders. Catalog recipients can use the catalog to browse products or services offered by a company, make selections, and place orders via mail, phone, or online. Mail-order catalogs have been a popular and effective business tool for many decades. With the rise of online shopping, many companies have seen increased website traffic generated by their catalogs. In fact, 60% of catalog recipients visit the website of the business that sent them the catalog.

While the retail industry commonly uses mail-order catalogs for selling clothing, home goods, beauty products, electronics, and other consumer goods, they are also highly effective when used by service providers like home improvement businesses and nonprofit organizations as an effort to bring in donations and promote their cause.

Catalogs as Portfolios

A portfolio catalog's purpose isn't to advertise items for sale. Instead, they display examples of a person's work, like authors, photographers, graphic designers, and other artists, to generate interest and commissions.

Creative professionals often self-publish collections of their existing work in catalog format. This strategy allows artists to present their work to prospective clients. Portfolio catalogs are effective communication tools in several ways. First, they allow artists to showcase their work in a tangible and organized manner. This enables them to present their work in a format that is easy to flip through, creating a more memorable and impactful impression on potential clients than showing their work solely through digital media. Additionally, a printed portfolio catalog can easily be shared with others in various settings allowing the artist to extend their reach and generate more prospects.

Periodicals in Catalog Format

Periodicals such as magazines, newsletters, or newspapers that come out periodically are beneficial for showcasing company updates, educating readers about product features or service benefits, or announcing special events. Periodicals in catalog format are incredibly effective communication tools that build and maintain relationships with subscribers or customers. Publishers and companies can establish themselves as a trusted brand with expertise by offering consistent updates, insights, topics, and news to their audience. Also, catalogs sent out periodically can increase traffic and sales to a company's website or store. Publishers can successfully encourage their audience to engage with their brand and purchase by including special offers or discounts.

Digital Catalogs

Many businesses provide a digital catalog—also known as an "electronic catalog" or "e-catalog"—on their website or via email. Digital catalogs can be easily updated and customized, allowing companies to promote products or services that frequently change, keeping the offerings and messaging current. In addition to being easily updated, e-catalogs offer interactive features that can help enhance readers' experience while allowing the company to track engagement. For example, by including links within a digital catalog, businesses can track click-through rates and time spent on each page.

Boosting Revenue with Catalogs

Even in today's digital age, Catalogs are an effective marketing tool. Studies have shown that catalogs can generate a strong return on investment, with 84% of shoppers purchasing an item after seeing it in a catalog. Additionally, when people receive emails and printed catalogs, sales increase is an impressive 49%.

One reason for this success is that catalogs offer a unique and tangible experience that online media can't match. A printed catalog's physical interaction creates a more meaningful connection between the customer and the brand, increasing the likelihood that they will remember and revisit the catalog.

Another advantage of catalogs is their high visibility and longer lifespan than digital media. People are naturally drawn to printed materials, making it more likely that they will glance at a catalog and become a new customer. Additionally, catalogs stay on coffee tables or bookshelves for extended periods, providing multiple opportunities for people to read and engage with the content.

Overall, catalogs are a powerful tool for boosting revenue and customer loyalty, offering a unique and tangible experience.

Catalogs for Brand Promotion

Catalogs offer businesses a powerful tool for attracting new customers and building brand awareness. Rather than just a way to select and order merchandise, catalogs provide a tangible and engaging experience that can create a longer-lasting connection between the customer and the brand.

Direct mail catalogs are particularly effective for informing prospective customers about a business's products and services. In fact, studies have shown that over 90% of consumers browse catalogs and keep them for around a week, making them highly effective and impactful marketing materials.

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How Catalogs Are Effective Communication Tools

Catalogs are a highly effective communication tool because they offer customers and prospects a tangible and interactive experience. Unlike online media, printed catalogs can be physically held, browsed through, and marked with notes or bookmarks. This allows an audience to engage more deeply with a business's brand and products, as they can revisit and consider the catalog at their own pace. Additionally, catalogs have a longer shelf life than digital ads, making them a more persistent and visible way to promote a brand. Furthermore, catalogs are more likely to catch the attention of people passing by. They can be shared or passed on to others, increasing their reach and impact. Overall, catalogs offer businesses a unique and valuable way to communicate their message and connect with their target audience.

Who Offers Catalog Printing Online?

Most catalog printing companies now offer online catalog printing services that make ordering catalogs extremely easy with easy-to-use tools that offer instant pricing for various catalog specifications. Some online printers also provide mailing services that allow businesses to mail catalogs directly to their audience while enabling them to create custom, targeted mailing lists. Additionally, many printing companies also offer digital catalogs so that companies can email them directly to their audience or embed them on their website.

When looking for an online catalog printer, look for one that offers high-quality materials while also providing cheap catalogs, easy-to-use catalog ordering tools, direct mail services, and free catalog design templates to ensure your artwork is prepared to print at the highest quality.

At Conquest Graphics, we offer all of the above, plus with our team of experts available when you need them and our in-house mail center, we can ensure that you create the perfect catalog that meets your goals and budget while also ensuring that your catalogs are delivered exactly when you need them too.

Start Using Catalogs Effectively

Catalogs work, and they're an effective communication tool that offers businesses a tangible and interactive way to engage with and reach their target audience. From mail-order catalogs to periodicals in catalog format, digital catalogs, and even portfolio catalogs, there are many ways to use catalogs to promote products and services and build brand awareness. Catalogs offer a unique and personal connection between customers and brands, allowing for extended engagement and higher ROI for businesses.

With advancements in printing technology and online printing services, catalogs have become easier and more affordable to produce, making them accessible to businesses of all sizes. So, what are you waiting for? If you want to increase your revenue and connect with your target audience, consider adding catalogs to your marketing strategy. Check out our catalog printing services to get started today.

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A product catalog is a type of marketing collateral that lists essential product details that help buyers make a purchase decision. These details include product features, descriptions, dimensions, price, weight, availability, color, customer reviews, and more.

 

The best example of a product catalog is the Amazon marketplace, where you can get a host of information in a single click. Think about a book that you've been trying to buy - Amazon lists all the information that you need. It includes the book title, author name, publisher's name, number of pages, a brief snapshot of the book, price, dimensions, offers/discounts, reviews, and more.

 

These documents are quite common both in the B2B and B2C domains.

 

"A product catalog is a type of marketing collateral that lists essential product details that help buyers make a purchase decision."

 

Who Needs Product Catalogs?

 

Product catalogs are useful to several business users and groups such as sales reps, inside sales, buyers, store clerks, field marketers, and managers. Here's how each group uses it:

 

• Sales reps and inside sales teams use a product catalog to convey vital information about a product or a service to their customers. They can refer to it while communicating with their prospects and customers about the benefits of using their products.

 

• Buyers and decision-makers need it as reference material while making a purchase decision. It helps them to compare different products/services from various vendors and decide the most suitable option for their business.

 

• Store and warehouse managers, shift managers, and operators use it to know about the details of the inventory in their godowns. 

 

• Field marketers can use it while they are walking customers through demos of their products and solutions. It helps them dive deep into their offering and offer value to their customers as the latter group is experiencing the product.

 

• External parties such as agencies, partners, resellers, and value-added sellers use it to get information about a product and service and sharing it with end-users.

 

9 reasons why you need product catalogs

 

Before we go any further, let us understand why we need product catalogs.

 

• To Glean Information

 

Information such as technical information and features about products is impossible to memorize. Recording them on documents in a usable format helps the user know about a product in detail. Publishing information on product information packs that find a place on websites allows customers to know about it without a sales rep's interference. 

 

• Reduce Business Cycles

 

Imagine having to go back and forth with customers on emails sharing information endlessly, which leads to no positive outcome. Instead, sharing information on digital catalogs can help move the deal from one stage to the other. With information available to customers efficiently, it reduces clogs within the business cycle.

 

• Help Sales Reps Sell

 

Sales reps have just one primary responsibility - to sell. Collecting product data from different sources inside a business to disseminate to customers is not what they are paid to do. That is why digital catalogs help them share information effortlessly to their customers and generate sales. It saves them valuable time as all the information they need is available on their fingertips.

 

 

• Improve Conversion Rate

 

Product catalogs help businesses improve conversion rates as salespeople, and customers/prospects can have contextual conversations instead of spending time on problem discovery and solution. When customers have all the data that they need, they can seek approvals, make decisions, and buy products more efficiently. 

 

• Enhance Branding

 

Product information documents are useful places to promote a company's brand. Using distinct colors, images, caricatures, cartoons, logo, font family, and a call to action can enable your brand to stand apart from the rest. Some businesses record their history and journey to establish a connection with their audience without being physically present. This enables users to easily recall a brand after browsing through its product catalogs.

 

• Smooth Flow of Information

 

It helps in a steady flow of information between internal and external stakeholders from the origin to the final destination. Product marketing teams, who are responsible for catalogs, can publish information on content management systems (CMSs) for end-users (sales teams and customer success teams) to use. There is no fretting over stale information in emails, CRMs, storage repositories, desktops, and libraries.

 

• Generate Sales Offline

 

Today, buyers research products online and make purchases offline - in malls, shops, events, etc. In such instances, it is important to help customers with information on their mobiles and iPads to fast-forward the buying process. Websites, landing pages, and microsites enable customers to research the requisite information to make up their minds.

 

• Enhances User Experience

 

When customers have product information in a PDF or a webpage embedded with images, links, reviews, price information, it enhances their user experience. Especially when all information is consistent across different product categories, it moves them one step closer to a purchase. Product marketers must anticipate buyer needs and create catalogs that match them instead of presenting general information.

 

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• Reduces Training Effort

 

When information on products and solutions is in a digital form, it reduces the need to train and onboard salespeople, partners, retailers, and other users. It shrinks the learning curve as well because users do not need manual intervention. ​​​​​​

 

Ingredients of a Product Catalog

 

What are the ingredients of a product catalog? What should they have to help different stakeholders meet their objectives? A business cannot have multiple documents for various stakeholders unless there are different use cases.

 

To save you the trouble, we analyzed documents across industries to come up with a broad list of must-haves. These are not specific to any company/industry, so pick the ones that are most suitable for your company:

 

Product Details (in alphabetical order)

 

1. Call to Action - What do you expect the target audience to do after seeing your brochure? Download/email/call you/share it socially? Append this information to let users contact you.

 

2. Certifications - List the certifications earned by the product such as ISO 9001, ISO 27001, etc.

 

3. Constituents - Mention its core constituents, e.g., copper, steel, alloy. This element varies based on your industry.

 

4. Customer credentials - Include credentials from customers who have given a thumbs-up.

 

5. Description - Briefly describe it so users can quickly scan it for reference.

 

6. Dimensions - Call out the length, height, breadth, weight, the volume of the product.

 

7. Discounts - Are there any early-bird/seasonal discounts for your product?

 

8. Features - Include the top features of the product.

 

9. Guarantee/Warranty - Specify any guarantee or warranty clauses applicable to the product.

 

10. Ideal conditions of usage - Indicate the best conditions and criteria for using the product. e.g., temperature, surroundings, etc.

 

11. Name of the product - What is the product name? If you have a brand name for it, don't forget to include it.

 

12. Pictures - Pictures speak more than words! They are the most critical component of a catalog.

 

13. Price - Mention the price of the product and the currency/geography applicable.

 

14. Returns - Under what conditions will the company accept returns of the product?

 

15. Safety measures - If your product requires safety measures before using, include them to inform and educate users. 

 

16. Size - Name the size of the product.

 

17. Terms & Conditions - Call out the most typical terms and conditions of using the product.

 

18. Version - Name the version/release/series of the product. e.g., Windows 2016.

 

19. Year of the launch - Which year was the product launched?

 

Product Catalog Management

 

Product catalogs are detailed documents that need to be organized and managed to ensure higher utility. Here are the different aspects of product catalog management: 

 

• Storing/Organizing

 

A business has diverse needs to publish and store product catalogs - such as teams, geographies, campaigns, marketing themes, business units, industries, types, etc. 

 

Based on the unique needs of a business, content management systems can publish and store product documents for their users to access and use. These digital documents must be searchable - which means CMSs must attach tags and attach descriptions to them.

 

• Timely Updating

 

All products change - while some of them are subtle changes, the rest are complete overhauls. For example, a hardware product such as a laptop or mobile phone may undergo several upgrades within a year. In these instances, it is vital to update product information continually. Moreso, in the case of sales teams because they are in touch with customers.

 

 

• Retrieving

 

Product catalogs must be easily retrievable by users who need them the most. For example, an event marketer must be able to pull up his product datasheet on his iPad when he is staffing a booth or to talk to prospective customers on the sidelines. Content management systems help event marketers to deliver the right marketing collateral at the right time to the right prospect.

 

• Distributing to Users

 

Product brochures must be distributable to enhance the user experience and help buyers compare products and decide instantly. One way of getting the attention of buyers is by creating personalized microsites with multiple product brochures, each of which conveys vital information. This way, buyers can glide through different brochures, and choose the one/s that suit them.

 

• Tracking/Analyzing Performance

 

Users must be able to gain insights from the usage of product information sheets. It includes the number of views, downloads, re-shares, and time spent on each document. CMSs are powered by analytics capabilities that help product managers, marketers, and sales reps to efficiently analyze product performance, boost sales, and deliver a personalized user experience.

 

For example, in an email campaign, sales reps must know which product catalog is providing the most value to buyers. It helps sales reps engage with customers meaningfully in sales conversations and fulfill their needs meticulously.

 

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Product Catalog Examples

 

Now that we have a fair idea of what is a product catalog, here are a few product catalog examples that designers could use to become inspired. Some of these are suitable for B2C companies, while others will be apt for B2B companies. Click on the image below to download any of these to get started right away.

 

Click on the image below to access the wide repository of 12 product catalog examples across different industries and companies that will inspire you create one for your business.

 

 

For starters, Rockinger's product catalog is 142-pages long, vivid in its imagery and has a detailed description of all its agriculture and forestry products. The product diagrams are accompanied by features and tables and have all the details that buyers will need before making a purchase decision. The document is in a two-sided format in English and German languages thereby catering to both target audiences.

 

 

The marketing team at Alberta Agriculture and Forestry knows how to design a catalog. It begins with a brief description of the Alberta region in Canada, its agriculture, and then delves into individual product categories such as bakery, beverages, cereals, etc.

 

It lists the suppliers and vendors (along with contact details) for each category accredited by the Canadian government. The images used in the product catalog speaks volumes of the effort that has gone into promoting the region's agriculture business.

 

 

Par Pharmaceutical's online product catalog is simple, yet effective. It lists down the different drugs, their dosages, generic names, package size, etc. An adjacent PDF document describes the molecular formation, indications, usage, and warnings.

 

Cambro is a 69-year old company with a vision to make a hospital meal tray of the highest quality possible. catalog caters to its business in the insulated transport, merchandising, ware-washing, and other categories. Each product captures details around the build, weight, dimensions, price, optional accessories, voltage, energy efficiency, etc.

 

The longest among the several product catalogs that we researched, it helps users understand the importance of granular details of such products.

 

 

Life Fitness's product fitness catalogs are a treat for the eyes. Their target audiences are owners/administrators from gyms, corporates, clubs, hotels, military establishments, and fitness boutiques. It includes the entire suite of products, apps, and services that the company offers to its members across different age categories.

 

Every fitness equipment has details around its design, build, material, and usage mechanism. With pictures of fitness specialists using the equipment, it enables buyers to easily relate with it and decide the best choices suitable for them.

 

 

AlphaBio has been providing solutions for dental implantology procedures for 30 years. The company's 2019 product catalog captures details of all their products, design features, composite material, dimensions, instructions, and clinical advantages. It is a universal document that helps dentists, surgeons, patients, partners, and distributors know what is on offer and how they could benefit from it.

 

 

Product Catalogs - What You Still Need to Know

 

Buyers need to make decisions quickly, and businesses need to make their journeys seamless. Product catalogs must feature content that provides them with all requisite information. Hence, marketers must know what makes their product a must-have for buyers and include that information.