Business Cards Land

You’ve seen loyalty cards for “buy 10 get one free” offers; why not print one of your own?

The “loyalty card” is by no means a new idea, but it’s a really effective marketing technique for all small business owners. It’s cheap too – the price of a couple of sets of business cards is all it costs!

If your a coffee shop owner, then you’re probably well-aware of the benefits of creating loyalty cards to pick up repeat business. It’s such an easy, risk-free promotion. You create a business card that you can stamp everytime a customer buys a coffee – buy 10 cups and get a cup free! This same technique could also be applied to just about any other small retail business, i.e, local bakeries, frozen yoghurt stores, dry cleaners, fast food places, etc, anywhere that sells repeat business items.

This is how Gareth Blower who owns La Dolce Vita, an independently run coffee shop in Detroit, created his cards:

He designed a set business cards titled “loyalty card” – using his logo brand.  He added a little blurb about the offer (for every 10 cups of coffee the customer buys they receive a free one.) He also added a row of small block- spaces to his design, to create a place for the card to be stamped.

Gareth also purchased a stamper to mark off the coffee cups purchased. He sent me a link to the “stamper” that he uses on his customers cards.

Another really good idea is to make your business card into a coupon for a free consultation, a discount, or a free gift with a purchase. Make sure that you include an expiration date on them and  hand them out to all your customers. This technique would work particularly well for web-retailers who can add discount codes to the checkout section of their sites.

This small business furniture store created discount code business cards

Popularity: 41% [?]

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I have 4 or 5 sets of business cards stashed somewhere in my office that I’ll probably never use again.  Other than as bookmarks.  Or scrap paper.  Or to stick under that wobbly table leg.

I was proud of these business cards at one point, and had high hopes for them.  Some were pretty effective marketing tools, in fact, and I used them for quite a while.

But today all of them are obsolete.

Why?   I’ve changed my address.  Or my phone number.  Or I’m not with that company any more.  Or I’ve moved on to something else that I’d rather promote.

All that wasted money, effort and paper was really bugging me, so I decided to take action.

What did I do?  I ordered more cards.

Before you dismiss me as crazy, let me explain.  These business cards are different, and I fully expect to use all of them up and order more.

My newest cards are very simply designed.  I used a template (a pre-designed business card background, which is an incredibly easy way to design a classy card) that looks like one of those “Hello, my name is” name badges.

All I put on the card is my name, my cell phone number, and my main email address.  That’s it.

These three snippets of information are highly unlikely to change.  They don’t brand me in any way, which is sometimes a good thing.  I can use them in casual, personal or business situations.  I left the back side of the card blank, so it’s easy to simply write in a website URL or a different phone number.

Maybe these cards are a bit too generic for some situations – and not everyone has such “fluid” business card information, I’ll admit – but are these handy?  You bet!

Popularity: 3% [?]

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I’ll confess.  I’ve thrown away a LOT of business cards – and I’m an expert on them! I’m always looking for well-designed business cards that function effectively as marketing tools.   You’d think that I’d have a huge collection, right?  Unfortunately, ordinary business cards (or poorly designed business cards) are much more common.  And there’s simply no reason to keep all of those.

Research shows that most business cards are thrown away very soon after they’re received.   So what can you do to make sure yours are kept?

It helps to have some insight into why people hang onto business cards in the first place.  Dr. Lynella Grant, author of “The Business Card Book” (500 pages long but a good, comprehensive resource), gives eight reasons why people keep business cards:

• as a link to a potential customer or client;
• as a link to a resource or supplier;
• as a link to a colleague;
• for social or non-business reasons;
• to use for referring business (to pass on to someone else);
• to update information they already have;
• reluctance to part with it because “you never know”; or
• just because of something likable, unusual, or useful about the person or their card.

Some of those factors you can control, some you can’t.  And business cards are cheap enough that they’re worth using, anyway.  But still – what can you do, either by your actions or as part of your business card design and marketing – to create a business card that prospects will keep?

Worth thinking about.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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