Same as direct marketing, or direct communication with potential customers, is one of the most effective marketing techniques, your business card is your most important tool that will back up your marketing.
At the end of every conversation, or at least the business related part, depending on who you are talking to, you give away your business card. From a quick look to your business card, the interested party will be able to tell a lot about you and your company. And they will even decide whether they are going to look at your website or contact you only by the look of it, in a lot of cases.
So, lesson number one, design is important. You have to pay attention to all the details in business because they are more important then they seem to be.
Keep your business cards simple, without unnecessary elements or information. Have your name, email address, website, phone number and physical address on it. Of course, that again depends on the type of business you have, but these are the basic things that should accordingly appear on your business card. If you use social media, you will probably have your usernames on your website/blog, so I would suggest you don’t put them on your business card, too. It’s unnecessary and it becomes crowded; unless your primary communication goes through one of them.
Other cases include business cards made especially for a specific audience or an event you are about to attend, and freelancers who created a strong communication stream through one of those virtual venues.
Your business card really is your identity card in business. It’s one more way in which you can present yourself well; and it’s not optional, it’s mandatory.
Have your business card with you at all times. You meet new people when you do business, but you might also end up doing business when you don’t intend to do it. Every time you go out, to a public place, alone or with your friends you have a chance to socialize and meet new people. Sometimes some of those new acquintances will be interested in what you do, and not only for the sake of conversation. Since one of the most frequently asked questions is: “What do you do?”, it won’t be hard to sort through.
I’m not saying you should pitch your business every time you go out, of course. I’m just saying that when you talk about what you do, it’s good to always have a business card with you to give it to them if they ask for it. That way, the business card will remind them of who you are and of how interesting your story was.
They need to be able to take it some time later and be able to remember you; it needs to be attractive enough for them to want to find out more about you.
If you want to make your own business cards, I suggest Moo cards* where you will get great looking cards and tons of inspiration. Otherwise, make sure you find a designer who knows all of this and has experience in making great business cards that do their job.
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Do you have any memories of a great or a really bad business cards you got from someone? Care to share?
I would agree with the statement in the title of your blog – to a point. I’m finding that, today, people are using the business card a lot less than they did a few years ago. I think it has to do with the advent of sites like LinkedIn, and web apps like Outlook – where you can easily just exchange “e-business cards” or keep your contacts in the “cloud”.
I also find that, when collecting business cards from, say, a conference or event, the connections are more meaningful to me, when I do, in fact, go through the cards later and add selected people to my LinkedIn network.
You are right, we use business cards less then we did before, because we have more options to network and communicate. I would even add that probably no one wants to collect a bunch of cards and then try to find the right one when they need it. You go online and you find all the information you need in the same place.
I think, though, that we’ve both missed an important thing here. Whether we give out business cards, connect with people on linkedin or just get their email in our phones, depends on who our customers or clients are. It’s true that we have so many options online, but do they use them? Every occupation has different ways of doing this. Android phones are helping us stay in touch at every moment, yes, but the question is: “Is your target market using them?” “Are they on likedin?”, “Do they know what it is?”, that is what I want to know. When I studied architecture, my collegues connected through linkedin, so I know it worked there, though, I have to say that not everyone was on. So, what do we do in that case? Also, twitter wasn’t big in Europe two years ago; there was a lot of experimenting going on in other micro blogging networks. It’s still not as popular as it is in the US.
Artists, travellers, photographers can all connect on different social sites created around the “object” that brings them together. What happens when you have clients who could use social media to connect, but don’t know how much that would help them? Then you don’t use it to connect, you use it to teach. So, the way we share our information has actually a lot to do with the people we are targeting with our micro businesses. Another thing to have in mind when thinking about ways to get our word out…