When developing marketing tools, small business owners seem to overlook creating a catalog. We think that catalogs are only for big businesses, but catalogs are useful for any company that has an array of products for customers to choose from.
Developing a product catalog is similar to creating a brochure, yet it requires more detail and lots of attractive images. It’s a pretty simple concept, but the key to making a great catalog is having the catalog organized in a way that is comprehensible for your customer.
1. Decide what products you want to feature. Depending on how many products you have in your collection, you will need to decide if you want to feature all of your products, or certain ones that are most needed for that time of year. Whatever you choose, be sure to keep the selection large enough to give customers a choice, yet small enough to not overwhelm them. 10-25 items is a good start. 2. Feature clear, visible pictures. Make sure the pictures of your products are large, visible, and clear. The pictures should look as close to perfect as you can get them. Quality pictures may require the purchase of a pricey camera, but it is well worth the investment. 3. Create short, but detailed descriptions. Too often, big businesses have a very long description for their products. Although those businesses may be successful, the long product descriptions are a big no-no. Long descriptions bore the reader, and cause them to scan over it to get through it quickly. They end up skipping lots of information that may be important, and that causes them to purchase a product that may not be exactly what they want. And of course, once they find that the product isn’t what they expected, they return it. Try not to make that same mistake with your product descriptions. Add all the important details into the description without making it super long. 4. Use exciting words in your description. When telling about a product, use words like “New & Improved” or “Introducing” to create excitement within the customer. Also, go easy on the exclamation marks. One thing that scam ads usually do is feature exclamation marks after every sentence. This makes the customer think that it’s too good to be true, and they will become skeptical. So try not to feature too many exclamation marks. 5. Make the price visible. The price of the product should be in plain view just as the description is in plain view. It is best that the price follows behind the description. The purpose of the description is to get the customer interested in purchasing. One the customer is interested, the price will seem more reasonable to them. 6. Give helpful tips on how to get the best results out of the product. If a product is best if stored in a cool, dry place. It is helpful to add that someplace in the description. You don’t have to add the full instructions on how to use the product in the catalog, but adding that extra tip on how to use a product reduces the chances of the customer sending a product back.