Zero-G Creative

Anyone (really, anyone) can have a great business card

Oct 18 2007

The other day, someone told me that they cringe every time they hand out their business card. He wasn’t shocked to learn that a lot of people feel this way. But if you’re a business owner — or you have the influence to sway the business owner — this is a very solvable problem. And there’s a little bit of strategy behind it.

First of all, business cards are important. Very important. Often times it’s the first piece of printed marketing collateral we give out and it’s also the piece with the most longevity. The business card I give you today could end up in your rolodex, business card binder or file for years. Postcards and brochures don’t last that long. It’s probably the most important yet under-appreciated tool in your arsenal of printed materials.

A distinctive business card, one that reflects thought and effort, shows that you care about how your customers perceive you — that you want their respect and that you want to impress them. Cheap business cards — I’m talking about flimsy paper with no company logo, perhaps a “templated” background from and online printer and with or without that gunky raised type — don’t impress anyone. The classic rebuttal: “But I want to get noticed for the quality of my work NOT because I have a fancy business card.”

Consider this… Let’s say you were a CPA. Your target audience — business owners and entrepreneurs — know LOTS of CPA’s. I can think of four that I know just off the top of my head. If I went back into my file, I wouldn’t be surprised to find four more. So let’s say that I was in the market to hire a CPA. Purely hypothetical in case my actual CPA reads this. The first thing I’m going to do is go back into my file and pull the cards for all the people I know. I’m not saying that I evaluate people strictly on the quality of their business card. I don’t. But the business card does reflect on the quality of the business and how much they care about what other people think of them. It will always play a role in a decision-making process whether consciously or subconsciously.

The same principal would apply if someone asked me to refer them to a good CPA. If I’m going to hand out someone’s card on their behalf, I’m going to choose one that reflects well on me. If the card doesn’t look professional, what does that say about me when I give it to someone else?

So step one in having a great business card is to decide that it’s important to you and that it will make a difference in your business. The next step is to partner with a designer or firm that is going to show you at least two options on design in the first round. Be sure to request that at least one of your designs be a little “wild.” Let the designer get creative. It’s always easier to start with something wild and reel it in a little than it is to start with something conservative and then try to push the limits.

There is no reason NOT to go with a two sided card. It’s only a small investment in design and printing to do the second side and it makes a tiny piece of paper (just 2″ x 3.5″) twice as big. There is also no reason NOT to print your card in color.

The front of the card is for information. Keep it clean and simple. Easy to read and — if your audience is corporate and likely to use business card scanners to track their contacts — easy to scan. For example, I learned the hard way that most scanners don’t like white type on dark backgrounds. If you want to be scanner-friendly, go with a dark color on a light background. You don’t have to do black type on a white card if you don’t want to, but make sure you’ve got a lot of contrast.

The back of the card is for “wow.” Add your marketing message, add some great imagery, or maybe just call attention to your URL if your web site is important to you. The back of the card is also a great way to address different market segments. For example, if your business was event planning and your business was split between weddings and corporate events, you could do one card back that addressed brides and one back that focussed on corporate. For a fairly minimal expense, you could have business cards that directly addressed two very different audiences without alienating either.

Here are some business card “don’ts”:

• Don’t overcrowd your card with information. No one wants to be overwhelmed with text or have to read 6 point type.
• If you have to put your picture on your card, try to do something creative or artistic with it. If you’re in real estate or insurance or another industry where its common to have your photo on your business card, imagine how much more your card would stand out from the crowd if it had a creative element to it and didn’t just look like a drivers license.
• Don’t go for “gimmicky” cards. Rounded corners are OK, but squares, circles and odd sizes present problems for people that store cards in a business card portfolio or folder. It makes a GREAT presentation when you hand it to someone, but they are hard to keep. I got a business card from a design firm once that was a perfect square. It was cool and innovative, but got folded and mangled in my book. Now it looks like trash.
• Don’t do anything you’re uncomfortable with. You need a card that you’d be proud to hand out to anyone you meet.

What started out as a quick post about great business cards has turned into a manifesto of sorts. A sprawling scrollfest of text all about the ins and outs of 7.5 square inches of paper. But they may be the most important 7.5 square inches in your entire marketing toolkit.

Published by Erik Wolf under Business Cards