Assessing Your Catalogs For The New Year: The Criteria

What do you think your grade is in terms of catalog printing? Are your print catalogs the top of the class with a successful track record of sales? Or do you have absolutely no idea if your print catalogs even had an impact with your market? Well, in this article, I will teach you how to assess your color catalogs for the new year. Below are the crucial criteria in judging a catalog's performance and a few suggestions on how really to judge it.

• Catalog Impact - A catalog's impact is basically measured in terms of the reaction or reception on people. Do they go wide eyed with excitement when they see your color catalogs, or do they just appear bored? Do they throw away the catalogs immediately or do they keep it for later reference. Try to observe this as you distribute your catalogs. It is subtle but you can easy determine if your catalogs have a good or bad impact. Of course, try to correct it immediately if things always look bad.

• Sales achievements - Of course, catalogs should have sales achievements. Catalogs are direct sales tools and you should try to determine which part of your whole sales figure comes from catalog promotions. This should really help you see if your catalogs are effective at making the sale, or if it your other materials that are doing it. You can easily set this up by adding a survey question in the order form for your products, asking customers where they saw the product first. If you always get catalogs as the answer, you will at least have a general idea of where most people get their product information.

• Originality - You should also judge your catalogs in terms of the originality of approach. Are your catalogs really unique and different enough from other rival catalogs or do most of them look the same. While it does pay to use something that works all the time, if your designs are just almost the same as the others then you are not really maximizing your competitive advantage. It is always best to have a distinction that makes your catalogs look different from the rest. Readers will remember that original catalog much better and will probably order from it more. So grade your color catalogs in terms of originality. If it flunks, you have lots of work to so.

• Value for money - Finally, money still talks in catalog printing and even if your design looks the best and most original of them all, it must of course cost in a way that is efficient. The printing cost for catalogs must be way down than the total impact it has on your sales. That is why it is good to keep catalog printing cheap and affordable when you can. Don't print expensive catalogs unless what you are selling is expensive as well. You don't want to spend more in promotions than what you are getting from the sales of the products.

So those are the major criteria that your color catalogs must be judged with. This should help a lot in your redesign of catalog printing for the next year. It is important to continually improve your catalogs to make things look fresh and new every time. Hopefully the explanations above can help you get those ideas faster. Good Luck!