Catalogue – success in business calls for good advertising strategy and developing product portfolio awareness. Check our free tips on how to use catalogue to this end.
A Piece of Literary Work?
It’s not easy to provide a single and exhaustive definition of a catalogue. Usually, when you think of a catalogue, you mean a sort of list or record that is arranged in a systematic way, or itemized. But just like with brochures, the form and content of catalogues vary considerably.
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Should an attempt to narrow the definition of a catalogue be made, one could say that catalogue is a sort of trade literature. This peculiar type of literary work covers any printed material in the form of a book or a brochure. Needless to say, such items need to serve certain purpose—it this case: advertising, as well as building brand and product awareness.
The history of trade literature, and catalogues in particular, goes long back. And is usually considered to be inter-connected with the development of mail ordering. But not until recently has it risen to prominence due to the dawn of online shopping and market globalisation.
Why You Shouldn’t Miss the Benefits of a Catalogue?
Because your aim is to succeed in your business venture. No other answer could be more obvious than that. In order to accomplish this, you need a powerful tool. A tool that will help you to advertise, but also a tool that—like no other—will let you point out, highlight and emphasise your strong points. Trade catalogue is exactly what you’re looking for. And mastering complex DTP formats for your catalogue, as well as understanding the requirements for a catalogue to be a professional publication are both a must.
Any business entity may benefit from a professionally drafted catalogue. But not every is, in fact, in need of a one. Thus trade catalogues are usually published by:
- retailers
- manufacturers
- wholesalers
If only aware of the power of a well-designed and professionally printed catalogue, they prepare them carefully in order to:
- present company’s details
- present company’s portfolio
- provide detailed description of products and/or services
- promote sales objectives
- advertise
- provide instructions on using products and/or services
- boast with testimonials and credentials
Aims you may obtain with the use of your catalogue are quite extensive. But you should be cautious. At a first glance, given the abundance of online resources with access to templates, preparing a professional, eye-catching catalogue may be easy and simple. But the trick is you need to stand out. Otherwise, work, time and resources consumed for preparation of a catalogue may be wasted.
And ‘standing out’ means fulfilling the goal of soliciting your strong points. Showing how and why your product and/or service is the best and most appealing, why your target group should consider your offer to be their first choice. By no means you should even assume that anything short of flawless would do good. Unprofessional design, illegibility, or incomprehensible content of your catalogue will bury your advertising ventures.
When You Should Consider Using Catalogue
If you’re a retailer, manufacturer, or wholesaler you are in dire need of going public with your offer, to make it known to your potential clients. Or to expand your target group of customers. Especially, if you are in mail ordering or online purchasing business.
With growing prominence and market share of electronic commerce, a need for means of direct presentation of sales portfolio grows stronger and stronger. Traditional channels for advertising actions—television, radio, billboards, and newspapers—as well as the more recent ones: the Web, with social media in particular, and whisper (or word of mouth, or buzz) marketing are all useful and have their undeniable strong points. But none of them will help you in making impact with detailed presentation of your products and services. Simply, in order to achieve this goal, you need a solution allowing you to overcome restrictions of the above advertising channels:
- lack of time to present whole portfolio in a short TV or radio ads
- limited number of billboards
- lack of space to highlight more than one product in a newspaper
- difficulties in exact positioning of your advertising action via the Web
- possibility of considering your whisper marketing as a cheap trick
All this makes catalogue a good solution for anyone thinking of achieving the aim of being recognised as a well-established and worth-considering service provider and goods seller.
Importance for Electronic Commerce
When you are an e-tailer, in a mail ordering business, or simply run an e-commerce branch of your business venture, you must reach your clients and customers with your products and services. In traditional selling and buying business, you benefit from a direct face-to-face contact with your customer. Quite often it doesn’t really matter whether you are (or not) a natural born salesperson. You have little (or no) trouble to convince your client to become a customer for your goods, products or services.
It’s all different with e-commerce and mail ordering. If you are deprived of the possibility to advertise your offer to the client directly, you need a ‘sales tool’ to do it for you. And here comes a catalogue. Depending on the size and format of the catalogue, you may vary its content: information about prices, contact details, ordering and payment methods, product and service descriptions, charts, photos, illustrations, etc. Catalogue gives you the freedom of establishing the right edge—catching clients’ attention, before they turn their focus to another offer.
Popularity of e-commerce and mail ordering comes not only from availability of technological solutions and dedicated services, but also from the customers’ needs for comfort and convenience. Given this fact, there is no easier way to engage client’s attention, than with a nice piece of a catalogue.
How to Reach Beyond Borders
When you come to a conclusion that you need a catalogue to properly advertise your portfolio, you need to consider what is your target group. The question is: Are you going worldwide? If you plan to cross the national borders with your offer, you need to plan how to, for example, do English – Polish or English – Russian translation.
The question is more serious than it might seem. Online automatic translation tools will do nothing, but simply waste your efforts put in preparation of the catalogue. You need professional solutions in this respect. Thus you need to consider reliable partner. Slavis Translation Agency will not only provide you with accurate translation of your content, but will also help you in preparing it for publication. If professionalism is the key feature of your business, you need to exemplify it in the preparation of multi-lingual portfolio of your products. Slavis Translation Services has got what it takes, to assist you.