While the digital age has really decreased the amount of print a business does, the traditional business card still carries some hefty weight. This small little marketing piece is an inexpensive way to drop your name, showcase your business to strangers, and connect you to customers and prospects alike. Here are a few tips on what your business card should include:
- Custom business cards – One of the themes you will see throughout all our Marketing from Scratch posts focus on customizing everything. While it makes sense to not recreate the wheel, we highly suggest customizing your business card as well. We recently had a client hand out her business card at a trade show only to discover another individual at the same show had the same one – only with the details changed. Needless to say, we received a frantic call from her asking for us to recreate her card. These little cards should not only represent who you are and your business, but definitely needs to not look anything like what someone else’s looks like.
- Paper matters – anyone can print on standard business card paper. It’ll even blend in with all the other business cards you have collected throughout the years. If you’ve ever encountered someone with a business card that has a “different feel” then chances are, you will be able to pull that one out of the stack of cards much easier (and you’ll even remember which one it was while you’re sorting through them). We recently had a real estate agent give us her business card and the suede-like feel put her in a whole different category on how it got filed in our card organizers.
- QR Codes – in an effort to merge the paper business card to technology, we’ve noticed several people attaching QR Codes on their business card. Now all we do is scan the QR code into our phone and the contact info downloads straight into your contact. How convenient is that? We can only assume how many valuable minutes you would have saved after your recent networking event had you had all QR codes to scan in.
- Keep it simple – you only have two sides of a small piece of paper, make it less crowded by including the basics of your contact information: name, title, logo, website, social media, phone numbers, and email. The business card contains all the information that connects people to your various marketing platforms – use those items listed on your business card to showcase your products and services and leave the rest of the space for your contact info and branding.
Now that we’ve gotten you connected to your prospects and customers, let’s look at the marketing platforms listed on your business card and how you can generate business from them.