The Rise of Digital Catalogs and Their Impact on Sales
Digital catalogs, sometimes called electronic catalogs or e-catalogs, are the virtual descendants of traditional print catalogs. While paper catalogs have remained relevant to an extent, the glossy mailers of years past have experienced a radical makeover in the digital age.
In fact, today, digital catalogs are helping businesses drive sales like never before.
But how? What is it about digital catalogs that makes them so impactful?
Below, we’ll walk through what exactly these online catalogs are, why they’ve become such effective digital sales tools, and how you can take advantage of them.
What are digital catalogs?
First things first: digital catalogs are virtual documents hosted online, allowing greater access and interactivity than their paper counterparts. They can communicate important news to customers and prospects, showcase your products and services visually, and educate readers on how they can benefit from your business, among other uses.
There are many varieties of digital catalogs; some of the most common are:
- Digital product catalogs that showcase merchandise
- Service catalogs explaining specific service offerings
- Marketing brochures, advertising promotions and deals
- Industry-specific documents like menus and travel brochures
These online, interactive catalogs allow businesses to reach audiences worldwide without needing to print and mail materials. And, even better, they allow for unparalleled user input and engagement that drives sales dynamically.
Benefits of digital catalogs
Digital catalogs offer several advantages over their print counterparts and other approaches to marketing and sales. The main benefits are reach and engagement.
As mentioned, hosting catalogs online allows for far greater reach and accessibility. Traditional media is losing ground to new and alternative approaches across the board, from news reporting to magazines and other publications. New and old readers are consistently turning to online sources for their overall media consumption.
Ultimately, putting your catalog online means meeting audiences where they are.
On another level, digital catalogs allow for unprecedented engagement through dynamic updates and interaction:
- Easily make changes in a timely manner when new information is available
- Encourage and empower readers to interact with features like live links and surveys, connecting them to your business holistically
The impact of digital catalogs on sales
Just as digital marketplaces have boosted growth for online retailers, digital catalogs have the potential to supercharge businesses’ sales and digital marketing strategies.
The specific ways digital catalogs impact sales include (but are certainly not limited to):
- Distribution: Hosting online allows you to reach a bigger and more diverse audience in any location, and it offers accessibility features for inclusivity.
- Conversion: Digital catalogs enable instant, frictionless conversion by reducing the steps to purchase a product or sign up for a service.
- Cost: Digital catalogs minimize costs by reducing or eliminating printing and mailing. It’s easier and cheaper to engage existing and prospective customers.
Another major impact digital catalogs have is the ability to track readers’ reactions and behaviors associated with the resource. In a sales context, catalog marketing often attempts to turn readers into buyers. With built-in data analytics on which parts of the catalog are most effective, you can take a lot of the guesswork out of the equation while saving on costly reprints and mailing.
Best of all, you can reap these benefits quickly and easily.
Integrating digital catalogs into your sales strategy
Taking advantage of digital catalogs is a simple process. You’ll need to create the documents, upload them to a reputable hosting site, and drive traffic.
The catalogs can do as much or as little as you want them to do—they can replace or supplement an existing print catalog campaign or open up new avenues with user interaction and shopping experiences directly from the hosting site.
The best hosting partners can even streamline the catalog design process with templates and themes you can tailor to the exact needs of your business and its clientele.
Optimizing the design and engagement features will go a long way toward gaining new readers and retaining existing ones. Even better, linking to the catalog from your most visited web pages or emailing it to users directly will increase traffic.
Fortunately, FLIPpages’ sales catalog software makes optimizing your pipeline extremely easy.
Take advantage of a digital catalog today
Ultimately, digital catalogs provide all the benefits of traditional mailers without many drawbacks—cost, difficulty tracking, etc. And they also boast several unique advantages, such as greater reach and engagement, that are ideal for getting more people into your sales funnel and converting them as efficiently as possible.
FLIPpages is one of the best ways for small and growing businesses to get their digital catalogs up and running for the first time or build on an existing campaign.
Start a free trial to see just how impactful electronic catalogs can be for your sales.
