Marketing Ideas

Even with all the technological wonders available today, you still need to print business cards. Why, you may ask, should I print business cards when I can just e-mail all my contact information? Here are just a couple of reasons why the business card is still so important:

• Personal touch - With all the digital dealings and electronic exchange of information, you need a way to connect on a personal level with your customers. Something as simple as business cards can make a world of difference and give your customers a point of connection that you just can’t make with an email.
• Generational gap - Not everyone is tech savvy. With generation X, generation Y, and the millennials all in the same work force, you need more than just one form of contact information sharing. Emails are invaluable. But many people, especially in upper levels of management, still rely on a Rolex and a book full of business cards to maintain their contact list.
• Brand recognition - Like any marketing manager will tell you, you need more than one medium on which to brand yourself. When people are exposed to your logo on the Internet, seeing the same logo on a business card works to reinforce their recognition of you. So, don’t neglect the business card as a method for exposing your customers to your corporate identity.

Don’t phase the card out just yet. You still need to print business cards. Your customers want to connect with you on a personal level, many of your customers do not rely on emails for contact information, and the business card provides one more opportunity to reinforce your brand. These reasons alone are enough to keep the business card around for many years to come.

When it comes to designing your business card, you need to consider several factors:

1. Will you include your logo? (If you don’t have a logo, you should create one, pronto.)

2. Does your logo include your company’s name? If it doesn’t, you need to decide what kind of font you want your company’s name to be in, along with the rest of your business card font choices. Your company’s name should stand out from the rest of the business card text.

3. What colors do you want to use? If you have colors in your logo, you’ll need to complement those colors with the rest of your business card. If your logo is colorless, choose colors that give off the look and feel of your brand. A baseball stadium using pink or orange for instance, doesn’t quite make as much sense as using green, brown or tan would.

4. What type of paper do you want to use? The heavier your paper, the more polished your business card will look, which will make people think your business is polished. Most business cards are printed on a 76 lb.- to 80 lb.-paper stock.

Once you have decided on these basic questions, you’ll be ready to design! Here are some design ideas to make your custom business cards effective.

Design your business card to read vertically instead of horizontally

This is an easy way to change up your business card design that will attract attention. Most business cards are designed horizontally because that’s the way they are stored in wallets, Rolodexes and other business card holders.

However, as long as you have a simple, striking design using a font that is easy to read, you can pull off the vertical design without making your card hard to read. You don’t want everyone craning their necks to read your vertical card in their Rolodex, so design it with simple, bold fonts and graphics.

Use a folded card

A folded card is the shape of a business card when folded, but with a panel you can lift to reveal info underneath. This design works well for businesses that offer a lot of services or products that most people don’t know about. If your company’s name doesn’t hint at what it does, like “XYZ Corp.”, you can place your usual info on the outside of the folded panel and then include a slogan and/or a list of what you offer on the inside fold.

Have your text trace a path

This is easiest and most effective for simple shapes, like a wave or a rooftop. Just design your words (most likely your slogan) to follow a curvy line or to trace what looks like a gently rolling wave or a rooftop with a chimney on top.

Special text effects

Using a special metallic ink that catches the light will make people look twice at your business card. Anything you can do to add visual spice, like embossing for texture or using foil stamping to color your text will make people want to hold on to your card.

If you have recently started a small business and have begun to market your company and its products or services, you may have come across the term “product differentiation.” You may know that this term has something to do with advertising your product’s unique qualities, but if you are like most small business owners, you have probably never had a marketing class before and don’t quite know all the ins and outs of this marketing strategy. You may even be wondering why you need to know the details of product differentiation. The reason is that becoming familiar with the term will help you advertise your offers successfully.

Product differentiation is distinguishing one product or service from another that you offer or from the products of the competing business down the street. Differentiation is merely creating the perception of a difference, even if there really is none. You are simply trying to make your product more desirable to a niche market by listing the differences between your product and another.

Many factors affect product differentiation but, contrary to popular belief, are separate marketing strategies. Branding, changes in the product itself, and distribution are all different marketing tactics that can influence product differentiation but are not differentiation itself. For instance, your brand is simply a packaging difference, not what makes the actual product unique.

When using product differentiation to reach your target audience, compile a list of what makes your product better than the rest. This list should be tailored to the consumers you are trying to reach. Some examples are differences in quality, price, features, or design. You may also want to reveal the limits of the competing product. Remember that the purpose of product differentiation is to make your product appear different even if it is very similar to competitors’ products. Your job is to take a stance in advertising that influences customers’ perceptions of your product. For successful product differentiation, you must make consumers believe that your item is the best out there.

The low cost and easy design and printing of postcards is not the only reason that they tend to be one of the most popular direct mail ventures. They can also be incredibly easy to mail. Just follow a few simple guidelines to avoid returned mail or information covered by postal markings.

Mailing Layout

The back of the postcard can contain other information besides the mailing information but must follow postal placement rules. The bottom 5/8^th inches of a standard 5x7 postcard should be free of information, since this is where the post office prints bar codes. Keep the mailing address on the right, preferably no higher than 2 3/4^th inches from the bottom of the card. Also be sure to keep it above the bar code area. Leave enough room for the postal stamp in the upper right hand corner along with the postal date that the post office will stamp onto the card. If you include any other address on the back, besides the return or mailing address, be sure to leave off the state and zip code. The post office scans the lower 2/3^rd of postcards for the mailing address.

Mailing List

Whether you address the postcards yourself or use a mailing service, an updated client mailing list will save both time and money. One way to keep this list current is by including your return address. That way, the post office will be able to return the postcards with invalid or outdated addresses, and then you can delete those from your list. Two programs that can also help keep your list current are the NCOALink 18 and NCOA. These two programs alert you to whenever a change of address has been made at the post office. The difference between the two is that the NCOA keeps track of 48 permanent address changes, while the NCOALink 18 only provides information of 18 changes per address.

Use these guidelines for easier mailing whether you do it yourself or hire a mailing service. Just be sure to check with the service providers for their postcard mailing requirements, if you do decide to use help.

A lot of people don’t really understand just how broad advertising can be. The standard and well-known forms of commercial printing are not the only ones out there. And of course, even if you are using an often-used style you can still find ways to tweak things so they go beyond the norm.

First, let’s go over some of the different styles of commercial printing just waiting for you to take advantage of. Have you ever considered invitation printing for your advertising? What you do is have a number of letters printed up that look like formal invitations. This is great for a store opening, or a big, upcoming special.

Don’t go for the normal, over the top large letters screaming sale, and instead send something subtle. You don’t have to always be loud to get someone’s attention, and when a person is handed something they aren’t used to seeing they’re more likely to take the time to look at it.

But let’s look at the better-known forms of advertising as well and see about adding a unique twist to them. While a lot of companies use them, have you ever considered something like magnetic business cards for your company?

This won’t work for every kind of industry, and you’ll have to ask yourself first whether or not this will be right for you, but you might be surprised at how many companies fail to take advantage of something so simple like the magnetic business card.

Part of the charm will always be handing something to someone that they weren’t expecting to get. This can get a conversation started right away. Once that talk is over with you’ve handed someone something they can easily put on the fridge to help them remember you.

Unique images are another way to add that extra bit of flare to your advertising. If you send a lot of postcards out, think about getting some art postcards made up. Find a painting or image you particularly like, and goes well with your company, and augment your postcards with this wonderful picture.

After all, a postcard needs to stand out in the pile of mail people are going to be sorting through, and nothing will help you better than a colorful, unique picture when it comes to being noticed.

There are all sorts of ways you can add spice to what would otherwise be a normal advertisement. If you’re hiring someone else out to handle your graphic designing, ask them if they know of anything different to try out that they think would work, and if you’re designing your own advertising with programs like InDesign, take the time to look at all the features open to you.

There are a lot of options out there for you. Figure out which ones work the best.