Copyright 2004 Carol Ann Waugh

Spring catalogs are flooding the market as you read this article and since most companies in the education market mail the same week (generally the end of December to the 1st week in January), educators are inundated with hundreds of marketing messages during a short period of time.

How can you make sure your catalog gets put in the "save" pile, opened and read at some point in the buying cycle, and then, generates an order for your products or services?

Here are some tips that will help you accomplish this important process.

Don't have two copies of your catalog arrive on the same day to the same school.

This might sound like a crazy mailing plan and might cost you some additional postage and handling costs but consider this. If a school secretary is putting the catalogs into the mailboxes and gets a tied bundle of 10 catalogs, what do you think her initial reaction will be? It just might be to put one catalog in one teacher's box and ditch the others. Or, the secretary might grumble at the waste of money, printing all those catalogs, and trash the entire stack. I'm not saying this is true for all situations, but it's worth testing. An easy way to do this is to split your list on an nth name basis and drop your catalogs over a 5 day period. You still mail the same number but you are covering your bets that the mail won't look overwhelming to anyone in your target market.

Design your front and back cover to be different from your competitors.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to prominently display your best-selling products on the front and your new products on the back. Even if you use distributors to buttress your sales channels, they won't devote their covers only to your products. But, using the same, tired images of students working at a computer, reading a book, interacting with kids and teachers is a dangerous approach because these images have been over-used for so long. Take a look at your competitors new spring catalogs and make it a "mission" for Fall 2004 to keep your branding but develop a way to "stand out" from the crowd.

Tell them why they need to "open up" your catalog.

Educators glance at the covers of your catalog to get a feeling about what products are inside and how they might help them teach. Copy such as "aligns to your state standards" are helpful when we all know this is a "must" in educational product development these days. But other copy such as "Buy one Get on Free" is also helpful as educators are constantly looking for ways to stretch their budget. "Look Inside!" is a wonderful marketing device for Amazon.com. Picking up good ideas from outside our market is one of the keys to being creative in ours!

Give them something free - inside the catalog.

Another sure-fire way to get in the "to save" pile and accomplish the "open and read" step of the ultimate buying process is to have copy that says "Free poster inside!" or "Free Product Sample inside!" While the poster can be a costly addition to your catalog, it can also be a powerful selling tool in the classroom. Educators love posters and they love free stuff so they will tend not to throw away that catalog if they can see something is in it for them. A simple way to test this approach is to use it to see if it increases response from your customers. If it does, try it with some prospects.

Getting that order!

To get educators motivated to order now, some companies use a dated offer such as "order by midnight, June 30th, and get a free whatchmacallit". But let's face it. Our Spring catalogs are mailed to arrive in January and we know that most educational products are bought after much consideration and deliberation (hense, the 6 month later dated offer!). So, how effective are these offers? I think that tying a discount to the total dollar order is not only more effective in raising the average dollar order than offering a free whatchmacallit, I also think is a powerful motivator to educators to order from your company and not your competitors.

Happy cataloging!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This article was written by Carol Ann Waugh, President of Xcellent Marketing, a marketing and new business development firm specializing in the educational and library market. Xcellent Marketing offers a variety of marketing services to help publishers increase their revenues and profits from identifying new markets, providing critiques of web sites and marketing communications such as direct mail, catalogs, advertisements, etc. as well as developing effective traditional as well as Internet-based marketing plans. Carol can be reached at (303) 388-5215 or at cwaugh@xcellentmarketing.com.