So you’ve taken delivery of your latest batch of business cards, and you’re rearing to dish them out. Hopefully, they should get into the right hands, and tick off enough interest to drive new customers your way. What’s next?
Can you make those pieces of paper into powerful marketing tools?
You certainly can. Although it’s important that your business cards be designed to make people take a second look, your own strategic moves could multiply whatever conversion potential they already have.
This article discusses some of these strategies. From handing them out at regular networking events to leaving them at local office desks, you’ll find a few ideas that work just fine for your kind of venture.
1. Propel Referrals
Encourage satisfied clients to share extra business cards with people they know. Offer gifts or discounts to any new customer who’s referred to you and can present the card with which they were directed to your place.
2. Use it as a Reminder
Share a business card with someone with whom you’ve agreed to have an appointment as a reminder they can use. It could keep your company in their minds long after the meeting. You never know what it could achieve with them.
3. Attach Business Cards to Invoices or Receipts
How about sticking a business card to an invoice, receipt, or anything else you send out of your office? It’ll remind them that you’re always available for more business, whether it’s from them or from someone they know.
4. Place Them in Products You Deliver
Maybe you want to be selective with whose package you put your business card in. Perhaps it’s okay to place it in any product your deliver. But if it agrees with your mind and your budget, you should definitely try it out.
5. Get Related Businesses to Share them
This is much easier to do if the other business involved offers products or services that compliment yours. If you’re a graphics design firm, you could have your cards placed on the desks of a print house; while you also let your customers have the print house’s cards.
6. Create an Events Version of Your Business Cards
Promote your event with special versions of your business cards. The new design should include details such as the date, venue, and other important things about the event.
7. Arm Your Employees with Them
Personalized business cards will give your employees an extra sense of pride in being part of your company. With their names and contact details on the cards, they’ll be more motivated to hand them out to every prospect they meet.
8. Let Your Family Have Some Too
Your family and friends could be the biggest cheerleaders of your business’s pursuits. They could do more if they had stacks of your business cards to give out to their own contacts.
9. Leave One in a Book
Fix a piece in one of those books or magazines you read at the offices or public spaces you visit. You have a better chance of reaching the right people with this if the book you use is about something related to what your business does.
10. Make Notes for People with Them
While you’re giving them some information they need, you’re also letting them know they could use your services, just in case.
11. Try Your Clients’ Favourite Spots
If your clients tend to fall in specific demographic groups, you may be able to figure out what their outing habits are. For example, if you cater to top business executives, you could find out where they’re likely to be found on a Saturday morning, and plan a visit. Go there with a few cards and a lot of smart discussion points.
12. Share at Events
We’ve presented this one last because it’s the most obvious.
But we’re not merely talking about business events here. If you’re enthusiastic about growing your venture, you’ll be picking out opportunities to give a card out at different kinds of settings. Of course, you don’t want to turn a wedding ceremony into a networking arena. Just watch for an appropriate chance to put a piece in someone’s hands, and take that chance if it comes.
Featured image source: Master File
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