Sometimes the age old marketing standbys cannot be topped. One of the oldest ??“ and best ??“ methods of marketing are business cards. The reason for this is that when you can someone a business card you are conveying vital and critical information: who you are, what your business entails, where the business is located and, most important of all, how to contact you. Seriously, do you want to fumble for a pen and scrawl your contact information down on scratch paper when someone asks for your number?
Or, worse, when someone asks you for a business card do you really want to say to them “I don’t have one”? this is not the type of impression you want to make! So, whether you are handing your card directly to someone or leaving a stack of cards at the front counter of various establishments all over town business cards will help in promoting you and your business.
Here are some of own experiences with business cards and how to go to market with them… (Test and see if these really work for you)
Double sided cards are better then single sided cards; the cost of printing is more or less the same
More graphics are better. (I have tested both, graphics stand out than text)
Prominent Red and Black colors standout, do not go with one color
Just highlight your website (www.yourname.com), you do not need your email, contact info on it. (Again this works me because I want to channel my contacts thru my site)
When attending seminars, workshops and events, people run around and hand over cards to as many people as they can. This process is in a way more or less equivalent to spamming and in my experience yields nothing most people collect business cards and do nothing with them at the end.
Your T-Shirt, Your Pen, Your Jacket, Your Laptop can be converted to business cards in one sense. Try to imprint your website name on these and maximize your reach when you at live events or even in starbucks for long hours!
In today’s day and age of a 24 hr Kinko’s stores in every town there is no excuse not to have a business card. These cards can be made quickly and cheaply so why not invest the dollars into having the cards produced? They will pay for themselves many times over.
Want more sophisticated cards for free you can certainly try Vistprint.com which gives out 250 cards for free.