What’s missing from your business card?
- What you write on your business card could be crucial to the future growth of your business
- And what you forget to write on your business card could cost you a small fortune!
WIIFM?
Your name, your logo, your brand name, etc. are all outrageously important to you but they’re of little interest to the client. She couldn’t care less if you’re called Improvability, Kim Bolsover or Pernicious Petunia.
All she cares about is what you can do for her, “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM)
Your swatch wallets are marketing tools
Think of the colour swatch wallets and fans as a marketing tool and make sure you include your business card in each one.
NB. The plastic sleeves in the fans have been deliberately sized to take a business card – clever, eh?
Your happy client will show her brand-new wallet to her friends, family, shop assistants, neighbours, work colleagues, etc.
Your contact details
To stand the slightest chance of these potential clients booking their own consultation with you, they need your contact details and some of them may not feel able to ask for them outright from your happy client so they’ll copy down your phone number when she’s not looking…
And for goodness sakes, tell people where you are!
If you’re based in London and your happy client visits friends or family 400 miles away in Edinburgh, they need to know how far they’re going to have to travel if they really want to consult you!
A mobile number tells no-one where you are located and unless you used to work for the GPO* in the 1970s, you are unlikely to have the entire country’s dial codes lodged in your memory either.
You don’t have to print your full address but something like ‘Lower Bugle and surrounding area’ will give you a fighting chance of getting further work.
Corporate work
If you’re intending to work in the corporate arena, then you will need to use corporate ‘speak’ on your business cards. You can’t get away with ‘Learn which colours are your best’ when speaking to professionals – they’ll just think you’re a hobby housewife with aspirations beyond your skill level.
Your website URL must appear on your business card for corporate work and you most definitely need your email address.
Using a free or cheap email service provider like hotmail, yahoo, aol, etc. will NOT enhance your professional status!
I’ve discussed this with so many professional business people who are just horrified that anyone could possibly expect them to do business with someone who won’t invest in their own domain name. It reeks of trying to save money (perhaps this could translate as ‘cheap’?).
If I saw this on a business card supposedly selling me a professional service, I’d find someone more professional pronto!
If you choose to provide services to both the personal and corporate markets, it might make sense to have two completely different business cards.
Interesting Info
* The General Post Office, or simply the GPO as it was more affectionately known, was once responsible for running both the Postal and Telephone Services of the UK.
Staff who worked for the GPO were sometimes referred to as ‘God’s Poor Orphans’ – my Mum was one of them, ‘poor’ darling! On 26th March 2001, the government-owned Post Office became a plc (public limited company) and with it came the controversial change of name to Consignia.
The new name was not popular in the UK and eventually, on 4th November 2002, was changed to Royal Mail Group plc. Thus the long-established and well-known names of ’Post Office’ and ‘Royal Mail’ could continue.
Now, aren’t you glad that you know that?
