Catalog Printing Services Fargo ND

Sometimes, the key to promoting high-tech online sales is going low.

Strange as it may seem in a time when billions of dollars of commerce is taking place on the Web, old-fashioned ink-on-paper can be a very potent tool for goosing sales and cementing customer relationships.

“When Web sites started to show themselves, they replaced things like catalogs, stores, telephones, answering centers,” says Eddie Bakhash, president of AmericanPearl.com, a high-end New York-based jewelry company.

Now, Bakhash says, the world of online selling is “reaching maturity. Every site reaches a threshold where you’ve built a great site, you’re in the search engines, you’re spending money on cost-per-click advertising and your business cannot expand on the Internet anymore.”

That’s the time to look back, and reconsider another time-tested promotional tool – catalogs.

Catalogs say you’re here to stay

Mario Barth saw a 12 percent increase in sales when he started circulating fliers for his online tattoo supplies business, The Tattoo Superstore.

“With all the Internet sites out there, if there is not some form of printed material supporting what you do, people think it’s not real,” says Barth, who runs four high-end tattoo studios and the online supply company from his Rochelle Park, N.J., headquarters.

A year after Barth sent a catalog to his customer base, online sales had increased by 1,045 percent. No joke.

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