Marketing Your Product : How to Make a Product Catalog DIY Tutorial

You have great products, fabulous ideas - why not show them off! Here's a novel idea of a product catalog that has been used to promote the Fall / Winter 2009 jewelry collection at Glitzer.

A catalog is used to provide a good snapshot of the range of products you offer. Especially with jewelry, you may not be wearing or carrying all your pieces around, or your friends and family may be helping you to promote your brand. With a lipstick size catalog, easy to carry around and the ideal size for customers to pair it against their ears for earrings, and neck for necklace, for an indicative view of how the products will look on them.

Product Catalog Do-It-Yourself - D.I.Y Tutorial

Follow these few simple steps and yeeha! you will have a product catalog too to market your own products:

1) Plan the content of your catalog

• Around 4 to 5 key products will be adequate. The objective is to show your design direction for the season or product range and scope.
• Remember to have a cover page. It is a catalog, like a book, it will need a cover.
• Include contact details as you want people to contact you for your products.
• Possible use of a few clear, simple, buzzwords to promote your products.
• Brand, brand and brand - don't forget to include your branding wherever necessary and align your product catalog to suit your brand with colors and fonts.
• Product prices, I consider a sensitive topic, there is no right and wrong of whether you should include it or not. I do not include prices on the catalog as it gives room for negotiations and the focus of the catalog is really on the products and the design. We would like to keep some things to ourselves at times and not reveal too much! Most often, the prices are already on your website or your price quotations.

2) Since you will have product photos Reuse them! Transform them into printed photo cards. My preference is to use Minicards. Quick and simple service provided by Moo.com - format your images, add your contact details, pay and checkout and a couple of days later you will say "Yay!" when you receive them.

3) Once you have done your printed photo cards bind them together to form a catalog. I have used metal eyelets to bind my catalog as it is a secure way and it provides the flexibility to fan out the catalog. Therefore:

• Stack your product catalog in a chosen sequence
• Hole punch the stack
• Add a metal eyelet to the stack and bind them with the puncher. Instead of using metal eyelets other alternatives include binding the catalog with ribbons, strings, beads, metal chains etc.
• I find the Crop-A-Dile the best hole punch to work with - a great hole puncher and eyelet binder all in one.

4) Leverage on your network and distribute the product catalogs out!

Timeline: It takes around 2-3 weeks to complete the catalog. Time allowance is for the delivery time of the Moo cards.

A note on Minicards by Moo.com

The minicards created by Moo.com are a great versatile, fully customizable and great quality printed card product. You have a wide spectrum of options to:

• include as many different images as your card pack allows
• great inventory of ready made design templates that you can use
• add your contact details and use them as name cards
• hole punch them to use them for as hang tags or gift tags
• celebrate a memorable occasion with them e.g. birthdays, weddings, anniversaries etc

You will say Yay, Yay and Yay! when you receive them!