Business cards are an essential part of business. In fact, I am sure there are some who go all modern and trendy and say they only use social media. But I bet you, they’ve still got business cards.
So are you making the most of them? Are you maximizing the return? Or are you just using it as an address and a phone number? Because it should be more than that. Much much much more.
This is where you get somebody’s attention. Doesn’t matter where it is, whether it’s at an exhibition, you talking to them on an airplane, on a train, you bump into them in a street, at an event, in your office, wherever.
When you give someone your business card, for that brief second you have their attention. They will look at it. So have something else other than just your address.
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Now of course you can have your address, do you actually need it? There’s a thought.
You Need a Logo
So on the front, obviously you are going to have a logo. Now we are all going to have a logo. So first of all, make sure you don’t over crowd your business card.
And don’t have too big a logo. It doesn’t matter. They are not really interested. As long as your logo is there, as long as it’s on the brand color, that’s fine.
It can be small, it does not need to be large. They are not going to go, ‘wow that’s a nice logo.’ Okay.
Have your name, have your personal email address. Don’t just have some generic company one. Don’t say, don’t go all, ‘Wow I’m so important that if you email to the company, someone will forward it onto me, if it’s for me.’ No that’s rude.
Have your personal email address. Now generally your email address is, say for instance mine would be Jon@marketingforowners.com.
Therefore beneath that, do I really need to say what the website address is? Do I need to put www.marketingforowners.com? Not necessarily, most people will be able to figure out what the address is, your web address. So you can save a line there.
And by the way if you got a name like MarketingForOwners.com, write it, capitalize it. So capital M, Marketing. Capital F For. Capital O Owners.
And then it makes the long words easier to read. So Fire Protection Online would be capital F, capital P, capital O. like that. It makes it much easier for people to read, and it will not make any difference if they enter it into an internet browser like that, it will still get to your website. Don’t you worry.
Social Media
The next one is, do you have social media? If you are on twitter, if you are on Facebook, they are the general ones.
Now if you use LinkedIn all the time, of course put that. you don’t need to have every single social media address, they’ll figure it out.
Generally you will be the same name on most of your social media. Hopefully you are. So you don’t need to have a couple.
So I would suggest twitter, Facebook, or if you actively use LinkedIn. Something like have LinkedIn instead of one of those others.
I mean if you are heavily into snapchat and if you’re heavily into Pinterest, Instagram, of course have those. But then drop the others. Don’t have them all, okay. Because that just crowds it out.
Now as far as your address, your physical address, it’s not always necessary. But it depends what your business is. So for example, if you are a consultant or if your business is online, do you really need to say your full address?
They are going to find it on your website hopefully. Don’t hide it by the way. I am just trying to save you some space. Stop overcrowding it.
But if you are a business where you’ve got premises and you need deliveries from suppliers, things like that. Then perhaps it’s sensible to have it. Just save them the bother of looking that up.
Wasted Space
But now, the reverse. You know when anyone, and I can’t help it, when anyone gives me a business card, the first thing I do is turn it over to see what’s on the back.
The number of times it is blank, it’s white, it’s just plain white. I, it just kills me. Why on earth would you do that? That’s like having a van or truck sign written on one side and blank on the other side. Really. Think about it.
And the card companies these days do not charge an extra for printing both sides. And if they do, you are using wrong card company. You should use the specialist. We’ll come to that in a sec.
So on that back side is where you are going to make some form of offer or something special.
So what I recommend is if you’ve got a lead magnet on your website which is something you should have, which is one of those things that come along when you go to a website, go to what we call a landing page, and it says something like, ‘Here grab a, download a free copy of my ultimate tools guide or my free course, or my cheat sheet, or my top 5 resources. Just enter your email and I’ll send it to you immediately.’
That’s kind of thing. That is what we call a lead magnet. And that is essential.
So you should have one and that is what should be on the back with pretty much the same wording. Get a free copy of something that is going to get them onto your email list.
And again we’ve discussed email list before. If you haven’t, just search it on the website, on www.marketingforowners.com, find the search box which is on the right hand side, in the side bar I think. Somewhere down there, and just enter in email list or list building, things like that.
And you’ll find plenty of reference to it, of why this is important.
Because that person you want to be marketing to, and don’t forget that when you offer services, even your suppliers, even your friends may wish to purchase what you sell.
So everybody should be on that list. Now if they are not interested, they’ll unsubscribe. If you’re doing it properly and no, no big deal.
That’s nothing wrong with that. That’s everyday life. But if they’re interested, you wouldn’t know it. So make sure that’s on the bag.
If you don’t have something to offer at the moment, talk to me about it. But how about offer, offering some of your time if you got a calendar.
Remember people need help. So for example, me I talk about marketing, I talk about the 5 questions and help people with growing a business or removing themselves from their business to have, buy back their time, have a much better business work life balance and all that kind of thing.
And you can talk to me for free anytime, you can go to www.MarketingforOwners.com/freetime. In fact you can do it now. Go look at their and you’ll find there it’s a calendar. Again there is a link to it, I think it’s in the side bar. There’s a calendar.
You can book a 30 minute call with me. Wherever you are in the world, I will contact you. We generally do it via skype but if you don’t have skype, I’ll actually phone you at my expense, even if you live in Timbuktu.
So something like that is another way of doing it. Now if you are a consultant or if you, no matter what it is, you can offer help.
Eeveryone needs help, everyone wants information. That’s a fantastic way of establishing your expertise with a potential customer. And you are not trying to sell them anything.
When you get on a call with me, I am not trying to sell you anything. But in general most people at the end will ask me do you have anything else.
Do you do this as can I have more help? At which case I will point them into a particular direction. But try it, I won’t try and sell you anything. But by the end of that call, most people think, ‘Wow Jon. You can help me.’ That’s what I am going to try and show.
Anyway, so get something on your business card. Think about it.
Where to Get Business Cards
Places to get them printed. Personally I recommend absolutely Moo cards. Just go to www.moo.com.
Simple as that. They are all over the world. I think, just do it. Moo.com. you can go to Vista Print but Moo are cheap. Great prices, fantastic service. That’s how a company should be. Simple.
Monday Book Recommendation
Funnily enough, the book for the week. I am going back and re recommending fantastic books and today it is ‘Purple Cow’ by ‘Seth Godin’.
But if you google Purple Cow, it’s available from all top book sellers. It is fantastic. The premise is very simply, if you saw a field of cows, they are all black and white, and one was purple.
That would stand out. So how about making your business that purple cow. It’s, it’s a quick read. Fantastic book, well worth the money. I’ll be back with you tomorrow.
