Business Cards. Trust me - you need them.
October 1, 2007 by ShannonCherry
Filed under Entrepreneurship
Business cards are one of the most underrated – yet most used – marketing tools out there. Plus it’s an inexpensive way of getting your name out there to potential clients and customers.
A conventional card includes a logo and some basic contact information: the name of the organization, the name of the employee, his or her title, phone numbers, and street address. All of that’s important.
But what about the other side of your card? What does it say about you or your business?
The blank side of the card is valuable real estate that’s often overlooked.
It costs very little extra to print on the back. You can use this space to highlight the biggest benefits of using your product or service, add a teaser, list product lines or services you offer, give some relevant tips or leave space for customized information or an appointment time.
The more valuable you make this to a customer, the longer they will keep your card and the more they will refer back to it.
Here are 15 ideas to use on the back of your business cards:
1. admission pass to seminar
2. appointment times
3. before/after photos or artwork
4. books/articles published
5. seminar/event schedule
6. coupon or discount offer
7. courses you teach
8. frequently asked questions
9. humorous anecdote
10. merchants who’ll give discount when card is shown
11. quiz
12. reasons to purchase NOW
13. testimonials
14. thought-provoking question
15. tips
Those are some good ideas. however a blank space on the back is not always wasted. It can often be used to write an additional note related to the conversation at hand or if information on the card is gone out of date since they were printed.
Also one may want to consider other uses for “business cards” other than “business.” I wrote a post a few days ago on my blog about other uses for the traditional business card including a social networking card, blog card, special event card, graduate card, etc. The article is at;
http://www.spinningsilkmultimedia.com/do-you-have-more-than-one-type-of-business-card/
I think the most innovative use of the back of a business card if you are just dying to use the blank space is to actually put the word Notes: and then have the back of the card lined like an index card.
Ultimately I think that you have to purpose the back of your card in some way. On my card there is only a logo on the front…leaving me white space to write on. The back of the card has contact information, a smaller logo, the tagline, and a list of services to get someone’s mind going.
I love these ideas, Shannon. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how little you really have to change in order to stand out from the crowd.