WHY AREN'T YOU USING A CATALOG?
Why Focus on One or Two Products When You Can Offer Customers an Entire Catalog?
By Aaron L. Artis
One bright Tuesday morning, I awake to do my usual daily task. One of which is relieving my desk of its stack of correspondence answered the night before. As my drive to the post office is finished and I'm back home, the mail man is on my porch with today's mix of mail. I get him to take the mail into my office and I notice a Priority Package along with a few 9x12 envelopes. I know that the 9x12s are print and mail orders, but the Priority package is peculiar. I haven't had any dealers send their print and mail orders by Priority Mail. So I open the package. It's the booklet I sent off for last week. Enclosed was my product and another circular selling a different book. Right off the bat I can see that this company offers a lot of different products...and they need a catalog.
Every day, I see examples of unnecessary expense by companies offering one or two products at a time. Why not combine your best line of products and put together a four to 16-page catalog? If you don't have one, you should really look into creating one. It's not hard at all to put together a professional looking catalog that sells your company's best products and it'll benefit you in many ways. In short, a catalog will cut your marketing expense and increase your profits. And you don't need experience or expensive equipment. Anyone can produce their own catalog. Without one, you'll just be throwing your marketing dollars down the drain.
And it really hurts when you send a direct mail package blindly to a mailing list and offer one product with a cover letter when you have a complete line of products. It's true that offering one product increases your chance of a sale, but if you're going to just send out mailings to a list blindly, it would be a smart move on you and your wallet to send out an original catalog of your company's best-selling products.
Now, let me take a minute to set up another scenario I've seen much too often in mail order. I'm looking through one of my favorite mail order publications and I'm reading up on the articles and come across an interesting ad. So I read it carefully and decide to act upon it. About a week later, I get additional information and decide to purchase the product. Another week comes and I receive my product along wih a circular offering another product . I don't find the product interesting. About three weeks later, I receive another mailing from them, selling a different product.
Do you see the expensive mistake here?
The company is playing a guessing game, trying to figure out the next product I would be interested in purchasing from them. When they finally send a mailing with a product that I would be interested in, they will have lost a lot of money in marketing and their profit margin is reduced to nothing. Don't make that avoidable mistake. Invest in a catalog of your own NOW.
Aaron Artis is the owner of PNC Enterprises and his company offers a wide line of products and services. If you'd like a Business Helper Pack containing his catalog, a FREE report, discount advertising opportunities in over a dozen different well-know mail order publications and more, RUSH $5.00 to:
PNC Enterprises 1404 Sauls Street Wilson, NC 27893
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