2. Promote
Your digital catalog is fully prepared for success and published. Now what?
Printed catalogs are an already established format. Shoppers expect to find them in-store and in their letterboxes at regular intervals.
However, the same established behavior is still not as ingrained, when it comes to their digital counterparts.
Digital catalogs — like all other digital channels — require promotion, to maximize their reach, and thereby their business results.
Maximize the reach of your digital catalog
Ensuring the success of your digital catalog involves both visibility and engagement with your target audience. The more you attract, the greater the potential for converting shoppers into customers for your business.
Actively promoting your digital catalog boosts the potential for conversions. Neglecting promotion, however, risks your digital catalogs going unnoticed by potential customers.
Fortunately, effective promotion can be straightforward when employing trusted tactics.
44%
The percentage of shoppers using digital leaflets and catalogs to inform their online purchases.
Your digital catalog is a natural extension of this. As an important sales, and marketing channel, don’t hide it away in the footer of your homepage: ensure you capture your customers’ attention by giving your digital catalog the website real estate it deserves.
Promote your digital catalog with:
Your digital catalog's strength lies in being able to offer either a swift overview of the latest deals with just a few page-flips, or deliver an inspirational experience that vastly differs from your webshop.
The result?
By promoting the digital catalog on your website, you can present time-sensitive promotions such as weekly deals, or showcase inspirational content, without having to constantly update your homepage.
First impressions count!
When promoting your digital catalog on your website, make sure it stands out:
Nowadays, many online consumers frequently discover and interact with brands via social media.
In the European Shopper Survey 2023, we found that 46% use Facebook, 41% use Instagram and 25% use TikTok to get inspired about products or search for deals and promotions.
By leveraging your social media channels to highlight your digital catalog, you can generate brand awareness, and inspire potential top-of-funnel customers.
By displaying your best deals and products in your digital catalog, you also incentivize familiar, determined shoppers to buy.
Tailor your promotion strategy for your digital catalog based on your target audience's digital preferences, and consider creating a dedicated social media marketing strategy for your digital catalog.
At the very least, ensure promotion of your digital catalog across digital channels where your business has a presence.
The result?
Simply exposing your digital catalog more will lead to more views.
43%
The percentage of shoppers who use in-store catalogs as inspiration for their purchase decisions
Take advantage of the widespread global use of mobile devices by allowing users to effortlessly browse your latest catalog in seconds. This can be done simply by scanning a QR code.
If your business doesn’t have the time or budget for rearranging or decorating your store, this low-cost tactic might be just what your store needs to create an inspirational experience combining physical and digital.
With digital catalogs, shoppers can browse the catalog anywhere, anytime.
29%
With 29% of shoppers using store apps for searching and learning about deals, prices, and products (European Shopper Survey 2022), this offers retailers a golden opportunity to plug and use their digital catalogs to provide a more engaging browsing/shopping experience than the white grids of a web shop.
Smart retailers with a mobile app should make full use of this additional platform to promote beautiful digital catalogs that can complement the ease of in-app shopping.
The result?
On top of creating more interactive elements in your digital catalog, pop-ups can serve a variety of business purposes, from promoting deals or drawing attention to specific products.
Leverage push notifications
People carry their smartphones all the time, and an additional benefit of promoting your digital catalogs through your app is the ability to be present, wherever your customers are, through push notifications.
By informing them directly through your app, you maintain a high level of brand familiarity, and lower the barrier for entry into your online store.
El Corte Inglés Portugal uses iPaper digital catalogs in their retail mobile app, and 78% of the views of their digital catalogs are on mobile devices.
If your business runs different promotions, offers, or collections on a set cadence, you'll want your digital catalogs to match these. With Scheduling, you can choose which digital catalogs are displayed when, and for how long, while maintaining a single, static URL.
And shoppers find it to be a huge benefit:
Examples of static URLs
Static URLs can be either branded, or unbranded (iPaper System URL).
The result?
You can set up when your digital catalogs are available in advance. You reduce time-sensitive manual work and human errors, while ensuring that your digital catalog is online at the right time.
The iPaper platform and its infrastructure ensures we can easily and without any complexity publish online catalogs in 27 markets each week.
When you combine the benefits of Scheduling with the advantages of a Branded Domain, your shoppers only ever need to remember one on-brand URL to make sure they always land on your most current digital catalog.
The result?
You ensure the right digital catalog is available at the right time on the right (static and branded) URL. This can…
- Increase the traffic to your digital catalog. If a shopper has read a previous catalog, they always know the URL to find the latest.
- Create a habit of shoppers checking the new digital catalog because it’s always made available at the same day and time.