How to manage your product catalog with a PIM?

At the heart of the customer relationship, the product catalog remains an effective communications tool, prioritized by brands. Whether for B2B or B2C, the catalog is an essential tool for marketing and sales forces. A means of accelerating sales, it can exist in multiple formats: digital, printed or interactive catalogs. While it has the capacity to create an emotional link between the customer and the brand, a product catalog must be beyond reproach.

With thousands of references and constantly updated product news, businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to produce a large volume of catalogs while maintaining the quality of product data. To rise to these challenges, PIM, product information and omnichannel publication management solutions are gaining ground among businesses. Recognized as a means of simplifying and accelerating the production of catalogs, how do PIM software solutions really help? How and why does a PIM rise to a company's marketing challenges?

Producing a product catalog, what stakes for the business?

At a time when 80% of the information memorized by the customer is visual¹, the catalog remains a crucial channel for attracting and appealing to the consumer. All visual and text elements must be impeccable and participate in building the brand image in the mind of the customer: marketing descriptions, high definition photos, graphic charter…

While every detail is important, the catalog production process involves a succession of time consuming tasks which increase the risk of errors occurring in the information communicated to the end customer: gathering thousands of product references, sorting products per type, controlling the design and page layout, revising and correcting proofs, managing the back and forth with the graphic artist… A long and complex process which can easily last several months.

Finally, faced with a constantly evolving product offer, the Product and Marketing teams must regularly produce different versions of the same catalog to adapt to all situations: international distribution (different currencies, translations, adaptation to local standards…), a new target industry (B2B, B2C…), marketing news (launch of a new product..) or a change in season (Christmas offers…). So how can you produce a contextualized and high-quality product catalog when you have thousands of references to list?

PIM and catalog: manage your publications efficiently

The PIM (Product Information Management) solutions enable you to improve the efficiency of the catalog production process and of marketing tools more generally. Thanks to its centralization capacity, the Marketing and Product teams can use a unique product reference source to gather the information that will appear in the company's product catalog.

PIM solutions also provide numerous advanced functionalities allowing for rapid contextualization and updating of your product catalog. Among these functions: translation management to adapt the different multilingual versions of your catalogue and make your products known abroad, calculated fields management to automate the calculation of price reductions and adapt your rates to the seasons or the capacity for product data synchronization in real time so as to constantly guarantee the exhaustiveness and reliability of product information on all distribution channels.

To take it further: Goaland/Adobe InDesign Server

While the exhaustivity of a catalog is of the highest importance, what draws the consumer's eye to your products is a high quality and differentiating layout. A survey by the Harvard Business Review, carried out in the US in an e-commerce company², found that a catalog which has a strong visual impact has a positive influence on increasing sales.

According to the people surveyed, the catalog makes the product come alive by increasing the consumer's capacity to visualize the product's appearance and to imagine themselves using it. It's a key element which increases consumer engagement and their enthusiasm in the decision to purchase. Therefore, a catalog's graphic design is essential for conveying the brand experience and appealing to the consumer at first glance.

To meet these challenges, the Goaland solution based on Adobe InDesign Server unites all the functionalities required to quickly create professional quality contextualized catalogs. The print module naturally integrates with Goaland's PIM or any other PIM/MDM, e-commerce platform (PrestaShop, Magento, Akeneo, Riversand) already in use in your company. As such, the Goaland solution enables you to centralize, organize and manage all the stages of your publications (brochures, catalogs, flyers…) through to their distribution.

Thanks to its powerful assisted layout functions, you can manage the automated or semi-automated production of all types of marketing documents directly through your web browser.

¹(2018, 02). Pourquoi les images sont si importantes pour votre e-commerce. ecommercemag.fr.
²Z. Zhang, J. (2020, 02). Why Catalogs Are Making a Comeback. hbr.org.