Business Card Design Secrets:

GET RID OF THE WHISPERING BUSINESS CARD…

The whispering business card: generic design, boring, ego-centric, boxed photo, little use of color or design, raised printing, foiled, on perforated paper, or have a printer’s info on your business cards… a good way to claim to the world that you and your services are just like everyone else’s; so WHY should they call YOU?

“He who has a thing or service to sell
and goes and whispers in a well
is not as apt to get the dollars
as he who climbs a tree and hollers.”
(Old Marketing Adage)

Put your business card to work for you: It is amazing how few companies take advantage of the least expensive marketing tool they have – their business card. Unlike the Japanese, who treat the card with reverence and respect, we throw ours around like Shriners randomly throwing Tootsie Rolls in a parade.

Take one of your cards out and look at it. What’s on it? Using a business card merely to convey contact information instead of your uniqueness is a waste or your money. Does it talk about you and what services you provide or what you stand for? Guess what? No one really cares about you, what you do, what you stand for, and even less about how to track you down. What DO they care about? Themselves: their needs, their struggles, their life. How are YOU going to help them? Is there anything on your card that addresses their needs?

Exercise: (not as easy as it sounds)

• List all of the features of your company down one side of a piece of paper
• Across from each feature, write the benefit of that feature.
• Pick the #1 benefit that you provide the world.
• Write why the customer should believe you can deliver on that benefit.
• Determine your dramatic difference.
• Develop your tag line that captures all of the above.

Benefits to doing the Exercise:

• It will capture who you are, what you do, and the difference it makes in the world.
• It will force you to focus on why you exist at all as a business – your customer.
• It will save you time and clarify every important business decision you make.
• It will create a spark in you because it has captured YOU, who you are at your core, and your most extraordinary benefit to the world.
• It will differentiate you from the competitive hordes, who are busy following other followers.
• It will make winning easier.

And, of course, it will take advantage of your least expensive and most frequently used marketing tool – your business card! Winners use full color professionally designed business cards to guerrilla market a specific business image that attracts new long-term clients. Winners actually enjoy handing out their business cards EVERYWHERE to EVERYONE!

Have you ever seen a WINNER using "free" (or !! GASP !! "perforated") business cards? -- ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Remember: You only get a few words that your customer will remember about you – make sure they’re the right ones, then get them on your full color business card as soon as possible. Until you do, I guarantee you, you are working too hard.

Excerpts are from Gary Jader, President of Ideas on the Wall,
as published in the Minneapolis St Paul edition of “The Business Journal.”

Other tips:
Have you ever received a business card and turned it over? What was there? Nothing? This is a waste of valuable advertising space. You can write a personal note. You can have some additional “tickler” information printed there. The key is to keep your message simple yet effective in getting the phone to ring.

Go to the SOURCE -- Business Card Source -- for assistance that will help you INCREASE sales!

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