Last updated on August 26th, 2021 at 01:46 pm
Catalogs are a powerful marketing tool. They allow you to present your products in a way that tells a story. People engage and respond through stories, and when they feel inspired, that reaction is infinitely stronger. Catalogs work as a substantial customer retention tool as they not only serve as a powerful piece of direct mail, they also drive customers to digital experiences. Catalogs can entice your audience to make a call, visit your website, or visit an in-store location, as well as spend a significant amount of time browsing through the pages as if it were a magazine. Here are our catalog printing tips to help you take your marketing to the next level!
Plan your goals
The most important step is always the first step: planning! Before you even start to design your catalog, you want to establish a few things. What is your goal? Do you want your customers to place an order through your catalog, or would you rather them visit your website or store? Who is the intended audience for your catalog? There are quite a few things to consider before designing any print marketing material really, though each piece is unique and most likely has a slightly different goal. It’s important to establish all of these things prior to designing, as you may find that you need to redesign all of your hard work to fit your goals. The more tailored your designs are, the more likely your audience is to flip through your entire catalog and take the action you want.
Narrow down your content
Now that you have established what your goals are with this catalog, you can get to the fun part! Narrow down the content that you want to include in your catalog. Remember, the more of a story you can tell the better. While this is not a magazine, you want your audience to treat it like it is and take their time flipping through the pages. The more invested in your content and inspired they feel, the more likely they will place an order, visit your website or store, or do whatever it is that you want them to do after reading through the catalog.
Choose your design elements wisely
When it comes to your design elements, you’ll want to take care in choosing things such as fonts and images. Odds are, you’ll have some text in your catalog. Try to limit your catalog to the same font family if you choose to use multiple different fonts. This will help you keep your catalog on brand and easy to read.
When it comes to the images you include, it’s important to pay attention to the quality. You don’t want to include any with a resolution less than 300 dpi. This is because the quality of an image will significantly decrease if lower than 300 dpi and the printed result may be very pixelated and hard to interpret.
Two of the most important things to consider when choosing design elements is the quality of the elements and if they align with your branding. Choosing low quality elements will result in a low quality catalog that will not impress your audience. Similarly, elements that do not fit with your branding may confuse your audience. Taking care to put together a quality catalog that aligns with your branding will show your audience that you care about their experience with your business.
Pro tip: use headings, subheadings, images and graphics to guide your audience to the important information in the catalog.
Establish distribution methods
Another thing you will want to consider before jumping into your design is how you plan to distribute your catalogs. This will help you figure out product specifics such as size, material, binding and more. Do you intend on mailing the catalogs? Handing them out at conferences or in your store? Either method has its pros, but you can always opt for both methods. Order a set of catalogs to mail, and keep a portion of them to hand out in person.
With Printivity, you can print your catalogs in perfect bound or saddle-stitch, as well as in a variety of sizes, including custom sizes. Saddle stitch booklets are ideal for catalogs of 64 pages or less, while perfect bound booklets are perfect for catalogs ranging from 30 to 200 pages. No matter the needs of your catalog, Printivity has options that will fit them.
Review your file for printing
Once you have finished designing your catalog and setting the file up for print, you’ll want to give it another look. Having multiple sets of eyes will help you spot discrepancies, typos or anything that just stands out in a negative way. This will help streamline your printing timeline and hopefully help avoid going back and forth trying to get your file print ready. Sending a file that is print ready will help your printer get your product on the press and in your hands in no time at all. The preferred file format for printing is PDF, but DOC, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, AI, PSD, PUB, and PPT are also accepted.
If you are ready to place your order, or have any questions about the process, contact Printivity at 1-877-649-5463.
