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Catalogs come in a variety of sizes and styles. The choice is yours. You may make this decision based on creative ideas, or you may consider the cost effectiveness of each choice. Here are a few tips on catalog printing and mailing to help make your choice easier as well as to make the process go a bit smoother. Continue reading »

Catalog printing is a costly process, so catalogs need to be as effective as possible. In general, your catalog needs to work like a good sales person: it should describe product benefits, talk about quality, assure customers they are making a good choice, and make it easy to purchase products. Here are some ways to improve your catalogs so they will generate more sales. Continue reading »

One of the more fantastic print advertising tools that marketers have at their disposal is booklet printing.  Good reasons abound for booklet printing, but one of the most important opportunities you have is to create a reference tool for your customer.  Traditionally, booklets are not as lengthy as catalogs, so you cannot be quite as thorough.  Still, a well crafted booklet can create an important reference tool for your customers. Continue reading »

The best way to increase your profits is to provide everything people need in one place; just look at the success of Wal-Mart Supercenters or Super Targets. You can create this same atmosphere through cross-selling and up-selling techniques in your print catalog. All you need to do is brainstorm about what people need — what will help them solve their problem the most sufficiently. Here are some ways that you can use cross-selling and up-selling in your print catalog for encouraging a larger purchase.
Cross-sell Products that Go Together
Consider your main products and what people will need to use that product. Then offer those other products along with your main product. Very often, consumers will never see the importance of purchasing more than the one product they have set their mind on without some help. So not only will you increase your profit by selling more stuff, you will be helping consumers better fulfill their needs.

Cross-sell Services Along with Your Products
Some products are difficult to use and so customers need services to go along with them. For instance, if you sell computers and software, most customers would appreciate help with the installation. Either offer such services at a low price, or include it with the cost of the software as a promotional perk.

Up-sell Products that Work Better
Up-selling is simply getting customers to upgrade to a better product from the one they were originally going to buy. When you create your print catalog, you should describe the benefits of upgrading to a better model in glowing terms. In the computer catalog example, tell how much faster and more efficient a higher quality computer would be.

Sell Packages at Bargain Prices
Customers love to buy everything they need in one package when it saves them money. In your print catalog, spell out how much they will save by buying everything together. On the pages with your big ticket items, give a bullet list of complementary products that go with it along with their separate prices, and then print the bargain package price in large, bold type.

Cross-selling and up-selling can take your struggling business and make it thrive. Just keep the above tips in mind and your print catalog will be one that customers feel they can trust to truly fulfill their needs.

A successful brochure printing can be similar to an athletic event: you too can take that shot that an athlete takes to make the winning score in the final seconds of the game. A good athlete will not let that chance for success pass them by and great brochure printing will not allow a consumer to pass by either. This chance is not a result of pure luck. It is the result of preparation and opportunity crossing and resulting in success. With a few simple tactics and phrases on your brochures, they too will seize the opportunity more often than ever before. Here’s how:

Action Phrases

Action phrases are the best way to motivate your customer.  Don’t sell your message short by being to timid for the action phrases. Most ads use “Call Now! or Purchase Today” to motivate the customer. Your brochure printing should too to move your customers to action.

Free Trial

Don’t just show confidence in your brochure printing; show the consumer that you have confidence in your product. Offer a free trial period in which they will be billed after the fact, if the product is not returned. By establishing a trial period, this will aid in getting that sale when the opportunity arises. Use a “Satisfaction Guaranteed!” for the action phrase in this type of advertising. Delayed billing and a time limit will especially attract new customers.               

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Ever see an eye catching catalog arrive in the mail season after season and wonder how each one can be so different, but still so attention getting? With these three aspects of powerful catalog design, you can achieve this same result. Great design, high quality images, and professional printing will produce a great catalog as well as a great value. The value added incentive is the interchanging of past great catalog design to create an even better catalog for the next season or year.        

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Catalog printing is well worth the share of marketing dollars it uses but some techniques yield a higher profit than others. Careful design and planning in these key areas will greatly increase the value of your investment. Here are some failproof tips for catalog design:

• Standard size formats are more economical to print and mail, try to resist the temptation to use creatively shaped catalogs. Ask yourself when you last got a catalog from a major company in a non-standard size. The answer is probably “never”.
• 16-page increments are the most economical. If your catalog content lends itself to this constraint, 16-page increments are the way to go (16, 32, 48, etc). 8-page increments are the next best option.
• When planning the layout of your catalog printing, designate more space to products with higher profit margins.
• Cross-sell related products either by placing them on the same page or using the copy to send readers to the related products. Call-outs can also be used. Continue reading »
  

Advertising is important in creating your brand presence, but a strong brand is more than a name and a logo: it must generate an emotional bond with the customer to keep them coming back. It must be memorable enough to gain the attention of potential customers and differentiate it from other brands. What is it about your brand that is special? Why should a customer choose your brand over others? Your advertisements should build and then communicate these things to the customer. A strong brand should seem relevant to the lifestyle of the customer to keep them coming back even after they have made an initial purchase.

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With the advent of the spell check tool in Microsoft Word and now in most blog applications online, it seems that more typos are turning up than when copywriters had to edit the old-fashioned way. Today, we see writers relying too much on spell-checking tools and completely skipping good ole’ manual editing, resulting in many typographical errors both in online and print advertisements.

The problem with too many typos and consistent grammatical errors is that people won’t see you as the professional brand of excellence you claim to be. How many people do you think believed the Stratford Hall Catalog when it mispelled a word right on the front cover of their printed catalog, “Reliability…always upholding the highest standards for every detal.” It’s downright embarrassing.

Sometimes you may use the wrong word completely, but the wrong word spelled correctly. This happened to the student newspaper from Brigham Young University when a front-page caption referred to leaders in the Mormon Church as “apostates” rather than “apostles.” The newspapers were pulled from the stands as quickly as possible, as you can imagine. Blog and Twitter updates, brochure and catalog printing - any marketing piece that holds too many grammatical or spelling errors can give your brand a bad reputation.

The “Typo” in Spellcheck
Because the spell checking tool is only programmed to alert you to words it doesn’t contain in its “memory,” it won’t let you know when you’ve used the wrong spelling of the word, such as “it” and “it’s.” Nor will it let you know when you’ve missed a letter and typed a completely different word altogether, such as leaving out the “o” in the word “hello.” And as with the catalog printing mistake mentioned above, spell check does not catch when you unknowingly use the wrong word. Even worse, it doesn’t let you know when your message implies the wrong meaning. Without thorough editing, it can be easy to let such errors slip through, only to show up blatantly after you’ve already printed a thousand posters.

Tips for Better Editing
Here are some methods you can use for a more thorough editing of your writing. Combine the use of at least three of these methods for the best results.

• Continue to use spell check, as this tool will quickly eliminate the most basic spell errors in your document.
• Use the grammar check tool in your word program to help you catch basic grammar issues.
• Wait to edit your article after putting it aside for awhile.
• Read the article out loud while editing.
• Have someone else proofread your copy.
• Print the article to edit it one last time before sending to your printer or posting it.

Bottom line: don’t rely solely on the spell check tool in your word software. Take the time to edit everything you write for your brand, so that you don’t end up with a newspaper caption or tagline for your catalog printing that gives readers the wrong impression.

The tendency exists to view catalog printing as something meant only for ordering products and not for advertising them. The truth is a catalog can be just as much of an advertising tool as a standard postcard or flyer.

There are two very important things you need to know about a catalog to really appreciate the marketing potential: the placement of the products and the information you’re giving people.

I guess a lot of it deals with whether or not you’re going to assume that people are only looking into the catalog to buy something, or if you’re trying to get people who look in the catalog to buy something. Understand the difference?

You need to be worrying about the latter of the two. This is a method of marketing. Here are the basics you need to be aware of.

Your prose needs to be simple and it needs to get to the point as fast as possible. This is about selling your product, sure, but it isn’t about going into detail about how great the product is. You need to provide people with the facts, which happen to be so great people can’t help but have interest in buying your product. How could they pass up an opportunity like this when you’re offering them such a great product for such a low price, right?

A catalog is selling the product based on the merits of how good the product is. You need to use simple, straightforward sentences that detail all of the great things about your product. That’s all. If you try to focus on too much selling people aren’t going to come away with enough to know whether or not the product is right for them. A company telling me the product is right for me isn’t the same as seeing all the facts and coming to that conclusion myself.

Next is the placement. Don’t give equal space to every product and don’t shove your best selling products into the back of the catalog. Give the best sellers special treatment. Give them half a page, give them a front seat, and treat them like a king so that your customers will be able to see that this is the product to buy.

You’re selling it to them not in words but in placement. They can see you’re giving this product so much of your attention that they’ll start giving it a lot of their attention, until you’ve got a sale on your hands.

Catalog printing services should be able to explain a lot of this to you if they know what they’re doing. Hey, don’t just trust me. Research the topic and ask your printing companies. I have a good feeling they’ll tell you exactly what I just have.