Welcome back!  It’s officially Cyber-Monday, another of the biggest shopping days of the year so today we’re going to offer you a helpful little business card tip that might just save you some bucks!  As we’ve pointed out, we firmly believe that the single best business card strategy to help market your business, whatever that business may be, is to have a few different cards to hand out to different people, an arsenal if you will.  We stand by that and today’s tip should help you add yet another simple, effective and just plain cool, card to your list.

The owners of this awesome little business card did a very smart thing:  They made it themselves.  While the up-front cost on this idea might be a little big higher, once you have the initial cost covered you can make your own business cards over, and over, and over again.  This business card looks to be simple card-stock paper in black with a brilliant stamp created to take care of all the information actually on the card.  Depending on the price of having a stamp custom made, the card stock paper you choose, and the kind of ink you choose, these are your only costs for making your own business cards!  The cool thing, to me, is that each card will have its own separate look and feel, making each one completely unique based on how the stamp was pushed, the amount of ink used and even the shape and cut of the card stock you choose to use.  How cool!

So, why not check out prices of custom-made stamps online or in your local community?  Think of the possibilities for getting wildly creative you can come up with!  A simple stamp and you’re able to make just about anything that can hold ink, a custom made business card.  Perfect.

Popularity: 45% [?]

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Another common marketing message that can be easily printed on a business card and used in a variety of ways is “Thank You.”

Conveying gratitude for someone’s decision to do business with you is something you can hardly overdo – but it’s sometimes difficult to say it in a meaningful way.  Saying “Thank you” is polite but when it becomes a standard, everyday, automatic response, it’s just not the same.

So why not create a “thank you” business card?  It’s unusual enough to be noticed, and people will appreciate the fact that you thought to do it!

Say you have a card like this printed for your business.  You could:

• Have employees give them to their clients.
• Tuck them inside a shopping bag along with their purchase.
• Stick one in an envelope along with correspondence.
• Staple them to receipts, or to packages.
• Put a stack at your desk.
• Pass them out at trade shows.

And on this US holiday of Thanksgiving, we’d like to thank YOU for reading our blog posts and sharing them with your friends!

Popularity: 2% [?]

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One day until Thanksgiving!  Hopefully by now you are already where you need to be to celebrate the holiday with your friends and family.  If not, you’re probably one of the millions that make the day before Thanksgiving one of the busiest travel days of the year.  So, in honor of today, and in hopes that each and every one of you find your way home swiftly and safely, the business card we found today is one that wants to travel as much as you do.

Check out the craftsmanship, the creativity and the absolute Wow factor of today’s business card!  Not only does the card display all of the information you’d need about the business in question, it does so in a manner in which anyone, anywhere would be proud to display it on your desk.  Imagine the looks, the comments, the surprise you’d have when you gave this little baby away.  Yep, it’s a business card airplane and yes it’s just about the coolest thing we’ve seen in a long time.

While technically this business card actually looks like multiple, and it actually appears that this was custom made to be an airplane, we can’t help but marvel and wish that our business cards could magically transform into some other mode of transportation.  I’m envisioning an entire line of business cards shaped like planes, trains, cars, buses, taxi cabs, you name it.  If it teaches us one thing this fine Travel Wednesday it’s the age old rule we’ve mentioned on here many, many times:  Fit your business card to your business and you’re ahead of the game.  When the two meet in the middle, you’ll blow people away!

Now, have an amazing Thanskgiving Holiday and we’ll see you back here bright and early Monday Morning!   From all of us here at Business Cards Land:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Popularity: 25% [?]

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The small size and inexpensive price of business cards make them suitable for all sorts of marketing messages, not just contact information.  If you’d never heard of a “business card”, and had a nice stack of business-card-sized paper in front of you, what type of messages might you jot down on it?  Especially if you’d been trying to come up with some more creative ways to promote your business?

Using a business card as an inexpensive platform for other marketing messages is a great idea, and something few of your competitors are probably doing!

The card to the right is a very clever example – it’s a “Bee Back” card, and it’s given to restaurant patrons to encourage them to come back for another meal.

You don’t need to hire a graphic designer to modify a business card in this way – it’s fairly easy to find an image of a bee, and you can just upload it when you’re using the design tool at OvernightPrints.com.   The rest of the card is pretty simple

If you did print cards like these, you could use them in a variety of ways – you wouldn’t have to hand them out all the time, for example.  Say Monday is a pretty slow day – only hand them out on THAT day, to encourage people to come back.  (You COULD even print the cards to say that they’re only valid on Mondays.)  You could give out two at a time, asking your guest to give one to a friend.  There’s a lot you could do!

Popularity: 2% [?]

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It’s Monday, again, but this week Monday actually feels a bit like a Wednesday for many of you out there, as Thanksgiving is Thursday and if you’re lucky you get Black Friday off too!  So, saying that, here’s hoping that you’re one of those few that do get the days off!  Now, on to business…cards. 

The card we stumbled on this fine Monday follows a bit of a different path from many of the cards we feature on this blog.  Instead of going high-tech, very modern and smooth, or ultra-designed, they opted to go much more natural, dare we say Au Natural.  No, they aren’t nude business cards, but they do feature a very pleasing, very natural design of water droplets on an awesome color palette.  All of this is set off and finished by a very simple square designed logo stating the companies name.

In the fast paced world of business, sometimes the best way to really make a strong impression is to get as far away from that as humanly possible.  By stepping away from the dark colors, gothic fonts, straight lines and structure, you’re stepping away from the hustle and bustle of the business world and if we’re honest, who doesn’t need that each and every day at some point?  So, to add to your business card arsenal, why not try your hand at some other natural designed, or at least natural inspired business cards?  Water, oceans, trees, whatever you can find to relate back to you, to your business, and away from corporate.

Try it, design a few business cards today, you’ll be impressed and surprised to see how people’s attitudes change just by handing one to them.  What do you have to lose?!

Popularity: 29% [?]

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It appears that this week we’re all about simple.  Simple ideas on Wednesday, the praising of old-school and vintage simple designs.  Today to end the week on a high-note, I decided that the best thing to do was show you a business card that was right up my alley in that it’s for someone in the very same industry as I am.  I’ve been a photographer for years and have always struggled to come up with the best possible method of designing my business card.  Like the card below, my personal card is very simple and I actually ordered it directly from OvernightPrints.com.  What I didn’t do, and now regret it, however, is add the amazingly simple and awesome camera focus icons!

Check out how much it adds to the simple design by just making it look like you’re actually looking through a camera’s viewfinder.  It instantly tells every person looking at the business cards exactly what business you’re in and exactly how stylishly you do it!  It just goes to show you that sometimes, the biggest design advances come from the smallest additions to your business card.

Over the weekend, why don’t you try adding a few simple things to your existing business card designs.  I think you’d be shocked and pleasantly surprised with how just tweaking a few minor things can produce some seriously big results.  From photography to accounting, landscaping to being a dentist, everyone can use a little help!

Popularity: 21% [?]

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I’ve been known to be a bit forgetful at times.  My mom used to tell me that I’d lose my head if it weren’t attached.  So whenever I attend an event and come home with more than one or two business cards, there’s a good chance that I’m going to look at that stack of cards and draw a blank.  What was I talking to that person about?  Was I supposed to send something?  Did she expect me to call?  Is this person a really hot prospect or someone only mildly interested in what I do?

It helps enormously if you develop a system to help you remember such details.  Some people make a habit of writing on the card itself – which works but can be problematic.  It’s almost impossible to write on some coated cards, you don’t always have a pen with you, and it can just be inconvenient or downright rude to be writing on the card while someone is talking to you.

One way to surreptitiously mark business cards you get for appropriate follow up is to bend their corners according to some system that makes sense to you.  It’s not at all conspicuous to be “fiddling” with a card while someone is talking to you, or to hold it in such a way (horizontally, face up) that you can fold corners without looking at it.

Your system might be that folding down the top-left corner means you’re supposed to call; top right corner means make an appointment; bottom-left corner means send info, and bottom-right corner means pitch the card as soon as you can do so, politely!

And maybe if it’s really urgent, you fold the whole card in half!

When you get back to your office or hotel room, you can sort the cards by the fold and take the appropriate action.

Naturally, you’ve got to come up with a system and stick to it – and it’s helpful if the people you work with use and recognize the same system.

Wouldn’t this be a great topic for your next staff training or marketing meeting – or as part of some pre-tradeshow-prep?

(Be sure to order a fresh supply of business cards from OvernightPrints.com before you go!)

Popularity: 1% [?]

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Who says that the best business cars are the ones that cost the most, involve the most insane or unique design or take the longest to make?  Certainly not us.  I think my colleague Diana and I have more than expressed our belief that nine times out of ten, a business card that is exactly suited to fit your business is a lot better than a fancy business card that has nothing to do with it.  That said, another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes, yes sometimes, the most simple and old-school design you can think of will be sure to turn heads, a lot of them.

That’s exactly what the designer of this business card did, and I have to say, they pulled it off perfectly.  I can’t quite tell if this is literally just a piece of notebook paper, or if it’s actual business card stock paper that’s perfectly designed to look like it.  Whatever the case may be, both would have been exceptional and completely innovative.  Either way, we love the old-school design that literally looks like someone slid a piece of wide-ruled paper into a typewriter and created a new, quick and easy business card.  They even included the hole punch in the upper left hand corner.  How genius, how completely original.

So, as you head down the design road to your next business cards, why not think old-school, vintage and throw-back.  There are a million things you could do to bring the old-school back in and switch it up on all those people that opt to go super-modern and high-tech. Old-school is in, and old-school is now new-school.  Remember that!

Popularity: 25% [?]

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I hate to give anybody an excuse not to have a business card.  Usually, it’s an embarrassing situation when someone asks for your card and you don’t have one; you come across as unprepared or incompetent, someone not to be taken seriously – hardly the impression you want to convey!

But there are times when you might be able to get away with it – if you’ve planned appropriately.

First, if you have something of more value to give away, such as a book you’ve written or product samples – that can certainly be seen as more significant than a “mere” business card and stand in its stead.  I know an online search engine expert named Justin Brooke who wrote a report about SEO, put it in book format, and who gives them out to hot prospects instead of business cards.  (I have one of his books and have thought about adapting this idea for myself!)

Second, if you want to maintain control and do a little pre-screening at the same time, you can collect business cards from others instead of handing yours out.  When they ask for your card, you say that you’ll send it to them along with some additional information.  If that person then seems reluctant to give you their card, they probably weren’t truly interested.  Of course, you do need to follow-through with this one and get whatever materials you promised to them promptly.

Front of Donald Trump Business Card

Finally – and if you have to ask if this applies to you, it doesn’t – there are some people who are so well known that they simply don’t need a business card, at least if they’re in their circle of influence.  I’ve never met such a person, and I actually have business cards from Bill and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – if they need business cards, odds are you do too.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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It’s Monday again, and we’re getting closer and closer to the Thanksgiving Holiday.  Hopefully you’ve prepared adequately by systematically starving yourself to make room for the onslaught of turkey, stuffing, pie and mashed potatoes.  That said, today we’re going to dive into something a bit different:  Uses for business cards that extend BEYOND business.  Yep, they are handy little buggers, and you can use them for a heck of a lot more than just networking your actual business.

We stumbled on a pretty awesome little article that was packed with ideas on how you can make the most out of your business cards, without making them about business.  Check out some of my favorite ideas:

• “Print something other than a business card on biz card-sized cardstock
• Print a short survey on a card
• Other things you might print on this size cardstock include:  Hangtags, Nametags, Tickets to Events, Tiny Greeting Cards.
  
• Make your business card a referral card for your organization or club
• Turn them into appointment cards”

By adopting any number of these, it makes sure that you’re not only switching things up when it comes to your business cards, you’re also ensuring that you have some fresh ideas that will make you stand out even further in the minds of each and every person you hand one out to.  Not comfortable not handing out your business card, worry not, you can still slide one of yours in too!

Popularity: 8% [?]

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