How to Make a Product Paper Catalog and Flyers
Creating a paper catalog and flyers can be an excellent way to market your products. Consumers enjoy leafing through catalogs, and may save especially compelling ones, referring to them repeatedly. This can boost both brand awareness and sales. Paper product catalogs can be both distributed in your retail store and mailed to customers, often at reasonable rates. You can also include a PDF version of your latest catalog on your website if it is particularly popular with customers.
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Things You'll Need
- Camera
- Layout and design software
- Light box for photographers (optional)
Instructions
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Photograph all products that you wish to include in the catalog. Attractive photographs are essential to promoting your products. If the products are small, you may wish to put them in a photographer's light box to ensure even lighting.
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Captions should enhance creative photography with clear, concise descriptions. Write compelling descriptions of each product. Specify the features, including sizes and colors, but also focus on the benefits of the products, such as good fit, durability and style.
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Determine the size of your catalog. Get quotes from several printers for different sizes of paper, and different numbers of pages. Decide what you can afford, bearing in mind the number of products you have to sell, and trying to use as few pages as possible to minimize the environmental impact of creating your paper catalog.
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Lay out the photos of products and the accompanying descriptive text in a simple, attractive design using your layout software. If you are an amateur at design software, try a simple layout, such as columns, rather than aiming for elaborate effects. Use of attractive fonts, background images, and page borders can enhance even a simple design and make it look professional. For the cover, your logo, a photo of one of the products or a group of products, and the date of the catalog makes for a simple, appealing, traditional layout.
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Get pricing on how much it will cost to mail your catalog. Mail your initial catalog to all current customers for whom you have addresses. Include a phone number they can call if they wish to be removed from your mailing list and not receive further catalog mailings.
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Decide which products are important enough to be featured in flyers. Take the photo and the text for each product from the paper catalog and use them as the basis for the corresponding flyer.
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Print flyers on slightly heavier paper. Distribute flyers in-store, or mail them to selected customers.
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Tips & Warnings
Be mindful of the environment in all steps of the process. Only print as many catalogs as you feel you will need. Use recycled paper stock and responsibly sourced and manufactured inks.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit momkey and magazine image by Pali A from Fotolia.com Model woman in dress & jeans image by Fatbob from Fotolia.com
