by C.V.Rajan

Created on: April 19, 2010   Last Updated: April 21, 2010

A business card is your virtual “second face”, that’s going to stay with your business acquaintances, for “talking” to you as and when the need arises. A business card is a mini store house of your business information. It normally contains your name, company name, address, company’s logo, contact phone and cell numbers, your e-mail ID and web page address.

 If you are a worthy executive in a publicly well known business organization, it may be enough if the business card contains just the above information. But, it’s not sufficient, if your company is small, its activities, products and services are not widely known and if your company name or logo offers little clue about what you do.

 One of the best strategies to promote your business, if it’s a new start-up venture, is to coin your company name itself very carefully to convey to your acquaintance on what you are up to. Assuming that you are starting a business service to do color prints and CAD plotting, a company name “Impressive Printers and Plotters” would be preferable to “Impressive Imprints” though the later looks more attractive. The former, though looking somewhat lackluster, may be more helpful to bring you customers who happen to see your business card.

 The second important aspect is your logo. Your logo should be eye-catchy, unique and impressive. Further, if its design could somehow reflect to the type of business activity you are doing, it will be wonderful. Such a logo in your business card is the first thing that rings a bell in your prospective customers’ mind about the service you are doing.

 Finally, do not shy away from utilizing the back side of your business card. Your business card’s back side space can be utilized to list out what your salient products and services are. In the printing and plotting example shown above, you can list details like “Digital Laser color prints” “A3 Inkjet color prints” “AO plotting” “Digitizing of AO drawings” etc.

 You can also use a flip-open type business card where the underside of the opened leaf can contain the list of your business activities.

 Promoting yourself using business cards will involve another element – distributing your cards as widely as possible. Do not shy away from handing out your cards to new acquaintances who may have nothing to do with your business. Even if it is thrown away, it doesn’t matter as business card’s cost is too meager; but if it happens to change hands and reach a potential customer, it is going to bring business for you. Leaving a few business cards unobtrusively at places where people may casually lay hands on (like the reception lounge of a hospital) is one tactic played by some businessmen.

Distributing your business card along with your pamphlet through mailers is another strategy. If you participate in exhibitions, you have the opportunity to distribute your cards (along with pamphlets) to hordes of potential customers in a very short time.

 Using your business cards to do the sales promotion for you is by far the cheapest advertising promotion you can ever imagine. Do not underestimate its potential.

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