Break Away From the Box

By Colleen Davis

I swear that every time I open a catalog it seems to be the same thing.

I see rows and rows of little boxes with the various products in them. Some catalogs are almost nothing but these grids of boxes, each page identical to the last save for the actual items in those boxes.

If I find a catalog to be boring I'm not going to have any interest in actually looking through the entire thing to find out what those boxes contain. A great catalog is about more than just the products you're selling. A person has to be able to enjoy just flipping through it or else they aren't going to bother.

Many people pick up a catalog without expecting to find anything to buy. They're just glancing through it for the entertainment it might provide. This gives you the potential for a lot of sales if you know how to capitalize on them and get their interest.

Little boxes aren't the best way to make an interesting catalog.

If you're going to use catalog printing you need to be sure that you have a nice variety of different layouts for your catalogs that do more than just show people products. The way you present a product can be just as important as the products themselves.

Think about those commercials for the Ipod that showed the black silhouette of people dancing to popular music. What kind of information did this give about the Ipod? None at all, but they were still popular because of the way they mentioned the Ipod. They didn't need to say much because the format still made people interested.

Catalog printing needs to contain some of that element. Don't just show people a product, but present it in an interesting way. Give them something to latch onto, something they can enjoy looking at, and you'll find more people taking interest in your products.

If you make something look cool then people start to view it as cool. Repetition does have its place in marketing, but not when you're trying to keep people reading each of the catalogs you send out. If they start to feel as if they're reading the same thing over and over again they'll stop bothering.

Give certain products more attention and give them the star treatment for your catalog. The first half of your catalog should be filled with popular products that are presented in interesting ways. Get a strong design team together that can help you beef up your catalog designs, and do your best to vary things up every time you release another catalog.

This will obviously take more work, and that's what many companies try to avoid. The more work you put into something the better the end results. In the world of catalog printing, the better your catalog is, the better your sales will be, which will more than make up for the extra time you put into it.

For more information, you can visit this page on catalog printing