Business Cards

Many people overlook the value of having a professional business card that accurately reflects your brand image, yet this small piece of paper can be an important part of your collateral package. It’s often the first item prospects receive from you, so it’s your first opportunity to make a strong, positive impression on them.

The preponderance of do-it-yourself online business-card printing companies is an interesting and somewhat troubling phenomenon. With limited exceptions, it’s fairly easy to spot an inexpensively produced card. When you choose to “go cheap” on your business cards, what message does that send to those with whom you wish to do business? Are you really doing yourself any favors by missing out on the opportunity to start building a positive brand image right from the start?

Cheaper isn’t always better when it comes to first impressions. Give clients a great first impression .

Enlist the help of a professional designer unless you have the requisite skills to design your business card yourself.
Ideally, this person’s also tasked with designing your other collateral (letterhead, brochures, website, etc.), so it’ll be intuitive to carry your brand image through from those pieces to your card.

Keep it simple.
Business cards are typically just 3.5″ x 2″ (except when they’re not–see below), so you don’t have too much space with which to work. Don’t make your logo too large, don’t make the type too small to be comfortably read, and don’t be afraid to use white space.

Keep to the standard business card size–unless you’re the adventurous type.
There are things you can do to a 3.5″ x 2″ card to differentiate yourself (e.g., rounded corners), but going with an unusual shape can be tricky. A round card, for instance, is quite memorable, but it certainly won’t fit in standard business-card holder devices. You must be willing to trade convenience for memorability if you choose an unconventional shape or size.

Content Tips
Be deliberate in choosing the information to appear on your card.
What’s most important? Your name certainly needs to be there, along with the name of your company (via your logo), your phone number and your e-mail address. Space permitting, you can add your physical address, fax number, cell-phone number and company website address, if desired. Don’t clutter things up too much–as with the design, simpler and cleaner is always better.

Keep the back blank, or use it for non-critical information.
How often will people see the back of your business card? Traditional card storage modes assume that side is blank. If you do wish to put copy on it, be sure the information is of a supplemental nature: e.g., your company’s mission or tagline. While business cards should promote your brand identity, they shouldn’t be confused with advertising.

The Bottom Line
Think about how you use other people’s business cards when you make decisions regarding your own. Do you get frustrated when you can’t quickly find the information you need? Or the type is too small to read? Or printed in a font that’s hard to decipher? Do cheaply produced cards make you think less of the person or company represented? Does it take you a while to realize whose card it is, or what company that person works for?

Don’t make those same mistakes when designing your business card. Make sure it’s a positive reflection of both you and your company, and it mirrors your well-defined brand identity.

Flyers are a type of leaflet or postcard, designed to be handed out to people, either by hand, by post, inserted in local newspapers for distribution, left in venues, shops, restaurants, cafes, libraries.

You get the idea.

Deploy it ANYWHERE where they will catch a persons eye.

Ideally, the flyer should have a front side and a back side. The front should focus on the name of your product, service or event. The back should detail any extra information you want to get across and also contact details and any essential small print.

Just remember, its not a competition to see how many words you can fit on a flyer… It should be stylish, targeted towards the people you want to attract and to the point.

It really is worth getting your artwork done properly. The images and text should be very high resolution. If not, your flyer may look like something just copied of the internet and made bigger… what should have nice crisp edges, ends up looking square and jagged, we call that ‘pixelation’ It can ruin a good flyer.  Find someone who can design. Or talk to us, we can do it for you

Print advertising can be very effective. It can work more efficiently than TV, and incorporating print into the media mix can contribute to media-multiplier effects.  But there are several key differences between print and TV advertising. Print media need to actively grab attention, so ads in low-interest categories need creativity to draw the reader in. Unlike TV, print advertising wears out rapidly, so long-running campaigns need multiple executions to minimize this effect. And, because of the way magazines are read over time and sometimes passed on, magazine ad exposure builds gradually over time. This is an important issue for both media planning and evaluation.

All advertising has to engage viewers, readers, or listeners, but print advertising is especially challenged in this respect because there is a product category effect that we don’t see in TV.

Because print is consumed actively, an ad has to immediately give a reader a reason to look at it before they turn the page. Some categories are inherently interesting and some are not. If you have a relevant message in a high-interest category, excessive creativity can be counter-productive; a very direct image or statement may be sufficient to draw in the interested reader. But it is still possible to have a successful print ad in a low-interest category; ads just have to find a way around the “interest filter.”

But as well as capturing attention, it is important to set up a clear route through the ad to ensure that the brand is noticed. In one example, the heatmap shows that attention is caught by the headline and the model, but the brand itself is almost entirely missed.

However, even when an ad captures attention, consumers may not scan the ad as expected. Within the ad, their attention will be drawn to what is most interesting; thus key messages can be missed if they are not creatively highlighted. Consumers spend an average of two or three seconds looking at a print ad; the creativity needs to quickly lead the reader into both the message and the brand. Our database shows that only 25 percent of ads succeed in clearing those hurdles.

A sales presentation is “what you say to the customer when you have the floor.”

It is not a conversation, a questioning session, or a rapport-building chat. It is what you say when you must literally “stand and deliver”–whatever selling proposition you have to offer.

I recently had a conversation with the scintillating Terri Sjodin, author of New Sales Speak: The 9 Biggest Sales Presentation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. Here are some quick pointers to make your presentations better:

Make certain it’s the right time.

Never make a sales presentation or pitch to an individual or even to a group of two or three people. If the size of the group is small enough to have a conversation–that is, a real give and take of ideas–have a conversation.

You still may end up making the same points, but if the meeting is personal, it’s more effective to have the points evolve from the conversation rather than presenting them in a one-to-many format.

Don’t give a keynote–or a lecture.

Some people wrongly believe that sales presentations should be like keynote speeches–entertaining but without much meat. Other people are believe that sales presentations should be like lectures–informative and instructive. Both groups are wrong.

The purpose of a sales presentation is to persuade a large group of people to make a collective decision. Any entertainment or information that’s included must be subservient to that all-important goal.

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.

Therefore it makes sense to understand that branding is not about getting your target market to choose you over the competition, but it is about getting your prospects to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their problem.

The objectives that a good brand will achieve include:

• Delivers the message clearly
• Confirms your credibility
• Connects your target prospects emotionally
• Motivates the buyerConcretes User Loyalty

To succeed in branding you must understand the needs and wants of your customers and prospects. You do this by integrating your brand strategies through your company at every point of public contact.

Your brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot.

A strong brand is invaluable as the battle for customers intensifies day by day. It’s important to spend time investing in researching, defining, and building your brand. After all your brand is the source of a promise to your consumer. It’s a foundational piece in your marketing communication and one you do not want to be without.