Monday, September 24, 2007

The Personal Touch Of Printed Catalogs Over Online Catalogs

Business owners will tell you of the success they’ve had with using print catalogs for their direct marketing strategy. Since time immemorial, catalog printing projects have been very popular promotional tools because of their visibility and effectiveness.

Nowadays, with the proliferation of the telecommunication technology via the Internet, more and more business owners have been using this technology to reach out to a larger target market and more diverse prospects. In fact, it’s no surprise anymore that a lot of entrepreneurs and marketing strategists have used online catalogs as their promotional tool to convey their message to their target audience.


With the advent of the Internet, more and more business owners have depended on online catalogs to provide them with a dynamic, flexible, and responsive marketing medium for their business.

The Internet has become a significant medium in the marketing field. With a fast paced lifestyle that describes our society today, almost everyone has access to anything online that is why most business owners, whether small or big companies, understand the value of having an online catalog to advertise their products and services. Websites are now very much part of any industry’s marketing campaign. It’s almost like you’re not part of the game if your company doesn’t have a website to boast of.

Websites have become widely accepted because no matter how big or how small you are in your chosen niche, you can benefit from an online catalog printing project. Your online catalogs allow you to reach out to a much larger client base, with the number expanding not only to your local area and country, but across the globe. You now have in your hands the opportunity to enhance your investment returns by being able to tap with your online catalog printing project even the international markets. The Internet therefore, provides for business that is available 24/7, with complete access on proceedings and customer service, without the barriers of difference in time, language, and even culture.

Even conducting business online has become efficient because now, consumers can go online anytime to check on their orders, hence, reducing additional costs produced by multiple errors, as well as improving the time of delivery. With an online catalog printing project, there is no reason to use paper as orders and re-orders can be quickly placed by just clicking your mouse.

With all these advantages, it’s no wonder that most people can get too keyed up on the almost endless possibilities that online catalogs can bring to your business.

However, current research shows that there is a remarkable difference among consumers who shop using print catalogs versus those who go for the online versions. Studies have shown that a lot of decisions to use one of the two forms of catalogs are based on factors such as reliability, tangibility, as well as consumer risk. It seems that even with the ubiquitous web, consumers tend to choose print catalogs as their medium for shopping because it’s (1) more reliable, (2) more concrete, and (3) there is less consumer risk involved unlike when you shop online.

The choice of catalog printing for most business owners has a long history of marketing success. Your catalog printing project gets more attention just because consumers have this predilection to browse the print catalogs first before they go online to buy a product or avail of a service.

Even the tangible characteristic of a print catalog makes it ever popular because it helps your catalog printing project to become visible for weeks and months, and even years.

And there’s still the question of maintaining the personal touch in your catalog printing project. Consumers have an issue on getting their products and services from an impersonal online catalog that provides no personal customer relations at all.

One marketing analyst suggested that we not forget the value of human interaction in our business dealings. Every business has its own personality and image that makes it more acceptable to its clients and customers.

Hence, the personal touch that a print catalog can give your prospective clients is often enough to build a lasting relationship with them. And most people still need personal interaction to make a decision. Many still believe in using print catalogs just because it provides the personal touch to doing business.

This just proves that not all our target readers’ needs can be satisfied via the online catalogs. There are still more of us who consider print catalogs as the more appropriate marketing medium just because we believe in maintaining a personal relationship with any business.


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