Business Card Design – How to Stand out and Get Noticed
One of the most powerful, yet over looked weapons in your
marketing arsenal is your business card. If designed properly
this little 3 x 2.5 piece of paper will not only let people know
how to contact you it will also tell them why they should
contact you. In order to be effective and get you more business
your Business card must stand out, and get noticed.
How a distinctive business card resulted in a $5,000 Sale
A friend of mine and his wife recently went furniture shopping.
By the end of the day they had gone to 8 stores and had 8
Business cards. 7 of the Business Cards were your garden variety
white cards with one or two color writing on them.
One card was a little different. The salesman, we will call him
Bob, had decided to make his card stand out a little by putting
his picture on it along with a couple of color pictures of his
furniture. Bob’s business card made an immediate impression.
The next day they flipped through the all the business cards
that they had received the previous day. They immediately
remembered Bob from his business card. They went to Bob’s store
and spent over $5,000! All because of a business card.
5 Tips to make your Business Card Stand out
1 – Use Full Color Printing
In the old days full color printing (4 color printing) was
extremely expensive. You could pay over $200 /1000 for high
quality full color cards. Prices have dropped and you can now
get beautiful full color cards printed for about the same price
as a plain two color card.
2 – Use a Tagline
A “tagline” is a one sentence benefit statement. Think of your
Business card as a “Mini Billboard”. Pretend that you are
writing a classified ad for a newspaper. You only have a small
amount of space to describe your product or service in an
intriguing way … what would you write to describe it? For example: A Realtor could say “Helping Build dreams one home
at a time”
3 – Put a picture on it!
I highly recommend that you put a picture on your business card.
Studies have shown that people are more likely to hold on to a
Business card with a photo on it. It could be your picture, a
picture of your product, or a combination of both. Picture
cards get attention!
4 – Don’t use Business Card “Templates”
There are websites you can go to online where you can choose
from pre-made business card designs called templates. The
problem with this is that the more people who use these
templates the more you card starts to look like everybody
else’s. You want to have a business card that stands out
from everybody else’s, not one that gets lost in the crowd.
5 – Let a Professional Design It
Unless you are a professional graphic designer designing your
own card is like performing root canal on yourself. Its going to
take a lot of time and you may not be happy with the results.
Leave the designing to the professionals and use you time doing
what you do best … selling your product or service!
Copyright
Business – Visiting Cards
You can define a a business card to be – a small card identifying a person in connection with his or her business, given to a client, potential customer, etc.
Business card in some parts of the world is also called a visiting card. It is one of the most important elements of a business. A business card introduces you to the others. It informs the others about your name and the activity you are involved in. A business person cannot live without a business card. It is the most important and elegant way of introducing you, your services and or products to the others who may be interested in what you have to offer.
Now there are two types of business cards that are available to you. One is the print business card and the other is the email business card. The print business card is used in the real world where you do meet people in person and give it to them. In the virtual world, that is on the Internet too you pass on your business card and it is called the email business card.
So how do you go about getting yourself a print business card? The best way is to have a designer design it for you. Where do you find the designer? Look in the local yellow pages or get onto the net and do a little research. You would find one. Though the professionals suggest that an entrepreneur should seek the help of a designer, a cash-strapped individual may not be able to afford one. So what is the other alternative?
The solution is you should observe the business cards of the others. You must have come across plenty of business cards over the years. Go through them. Write down the best features that you find on those cards. Make note of all those features that in your opinion you should incorporate in your card. It may not be always possible to have all those features on your card for various reasons. It depends on the paper stock, the number of fonts, their size, the ink colors used and the size of the card itself, leave alone positioning it. Business cards come in various sizes and shapes. They may be vertical or horizontal. It could be a simple card, a two fold card or may be even a three fold card. Some times there could be something struck on the card itself. The so called simple card could also have some content on both sides of the card.
Now what should go on your business card? The name of your business of course. Along with the mission statement you have coined after considerable thinking. Now look at the elements that should go into the card.
The first thing is obviously your name. This should ideally be given with the designation / title. You can also indicate your academic qualification right next to it. For example:
Joe Bill, B. Sc – Sales Executive
You could mention your affiliations if any here along with your other professional and or academic designations.
You will also mention the department / division name followed by the name of the company. You will give the full and complete address of your company along with the postal code. You will also mention the land line numbers along with cell/mobile phone numbers. You will provide the company url along with your own email id. Of course you will also present the logo. In fact it is the most visible item on your business card.
While you can choose a simple single card and provide all the information on the one side, an innovative way of using the blank space would be to provide the address along with a street map or driving instructions on the other face of the card.
If you have a partner you can both share the same card. This is ideal in case of a wife and husband team. You both can use the same card giving out the details on either side of the card. In these times of recession it is only ideal that you save money where ever and whenever possible.
An innovative insurance sales person pasted a dime to his business card just so as to remind his clients politely, ‘you are never broke’ with my services.
It is helpful, however, to have something besides your name and location-just not too much. This distinguishes you from the competition. A minimum number of different typefaces should be used. A card should be simple in design yet eye-catching without being gaudy in color. Study other peoples cards to see which combinations present themselves best, and consider them for your own.
When you are making your calls make sure that you are fully prepared with ample business cards ready at hand. Keep your card where you can easily whip it out. Do not put them in your wallet or stash them in your briefcase. There are business card holders that would help you hold a number of cards. They keep the cards clean and in shape. They help you avoid giving out dog eared and or soiled cards. Put this card holder in your suit or shirt pocket. You do not have to dig it out of your back pocket while you are seated.
Try to find innovative ways of exchanging business cards while you are at parties or get to gathers, meets, conferences. A business card exchange need not necessarily happen at a formal business meet. When some one asks you where you live, pull out the card and give it.
At a restaurant or when you go out for a lunch, dinner let a card be there on the table. It would help someone reach you. Once in a while leave a card at the bank when you are filling in that deposit slip. Leave your card on the counter.
This little story appeared in a magazine. When this visiting British person, while in a Malaysian Hotel, asked a Japanese person in the swimming pool, “what do you do?”, the enterprising Japanese person, pulled out his business card from the trunks he was wearing and held it out.
With a little bit of searching on the net you can get some excellent free templates to help you create your very own business / visiting card.
Online Business: How to Sell T Shirts Online
Knowing how to sell t-shirts online could provide you with a turnkey online business that takes little maintenance other than advertising your website. There are many advertising techniques available that you can use to promote an online t-shirt business, and many of these are free and hence involving no advance outlay by you. So how do you start selling t-shirts online?
1. Find a Supplier
Like any retail business operating on the internet, you have to find a supplier of the t-shirts. Few online businesses actually manufacture the articles they sell themselves. The product is produced by others and sold by you, and you either pay for stock that you the resell at a profit or you operate on a drops hipping basis where you take the orders and the supplier delivers. You then either receive payment and pay the supplier their invoice or it works the other way around, and the supplier collects the payment and then pays you.
2. Get Products to Sell
Check out the standard stock and designs and then advertise these along with your own offer to customize the logo and text as required by the customer. You can then put these offers on your website. This involves setting up your own website, auto responders, shopping cart and payment portal all of which can be very expensive.
The alternative is to sell t-shirts online using a website supplied by the t-shirt provider – that will have all of these elements already installed, and will cost you nothing. Orders placed will be passed automatically from your website to the supplier who will collect the payment deliver the product directly to the customer, and then pay you each month. This is the best option for those with little online marketing experience.
3. Get a Domain Name for your Website
You will need to get your own domain name, but that isn’t difficult to do. Go Daddy or any of the other domain name registration firms online will be able to register a domain name for you at under $10/month for a.com name. Domains Bot will be able to spin a few domains for you from your initial keyword input and tell you what names are available to use. You can normally choose a template for your website and change its colors if you want.
4. Get Your Designs
Get your own designs together. You might be given some designs to start with or you may have to use your own designs from the beginning. It’s generally better if you can get your own designs together because then you will be offering something unique when you sell t-shirts online. That is important.
5. Open a PayPal account.
You might have heard bad things from some people about PayPal, but it is generally a good way of paying and accepting payments. Unless you want to pay a great deal of money for a merchant account enabling you to accept credit and debit cards, PayPal is the best available. You will find that most people buying and selling online use it and that your supplier will also likely want paid using PayPal.
6. Advertise your Website
You have a website, but to sell t-shirts online you then have to advertise your website. There are many ways to do this such as pay per click and paid adverts but these two techniques cost money. Article marketing is free and you could also run a blog using Blogger or Word press (both free), on which you can promote your website, products and also offer useful information about using t-shirts for publicity, commemorative and other purposes.
7. Wait for Customers
Sit back and wait for the money. It is slightly more complex than that in that you have a certain amount of work to do, such as designing the t-shirts, and advertising your website or writing the blog, but there is no need to carry out complex or expensive promotions.
You also have to set your prices based upon your wholesale prices. The wholesale price for a printed green t-shirt might be $17, so you can charge $34 for it and make 100% markup. You could offer a special promotion at $25 and still make $8 on the sale. You could also create a membership site where your members pay a monthly fee and are given for example, t-shirts free for their membership or at silly price such as $5. The minimum you can charge without making a loss is $17 for the above example, so you would still gain if the membership was $20 monthly.
The simplest way to sell t-shirts online, and use it as a money-making online business, is to offer the shirts at 100% over the wholesale price. Use your site as a simple retail website, and once you are making sufficient money online you can break out and expand into other areas such as general apparel, other merchandise or other printed promotional items for corporate events.
For now however, if you want your own online business then learn how to sell t-shirts online and follow the above steps and you will have made a good start.