4 Great Ways To Make Your Business Cards Stand Out

In the professional world, particularly in commission-based sales, business cards are important. They have the obvious function of holding your name and contact information, but a good business card—or a bad one—tells more about you than just how you can be reached. Spending a little more money on a better business card will come back to you. So here are four great ways to make your business cards—and you—stand out.

1. Hire a graphic artist: Chances are you’re not an artist, and even if you are, you’re probably not a production artist. If you don’t use registration marks (or even know what they are), do yourself the favor of hiring a professional.
2. Leave room on the back for notes: A business card is worth much more if it has information that is unique, and therefore valuable, to the recipient. By leaving room to write on the card, you can give a client your “secret” cell phone number, the price and model number they’re interested in, or special discount by contacting you again. Just remember if you leave a spot for notes: matte finish, not glossy.
3. Focus on your message: Your message is to convey who you are, what you do, how well you do it or why you do it better than the next guy, and how to get a hold of you. Instead of listing your title, why not list a concise version of your job description. Better than “John Wood. Mowley Construction. 317-012-3456,” is “John Wood. Mowley Construction. 2-time five-star award winner for superior service. Specializing in upscale kitchen remodeling and outdoor kitchens. 317-012-3456.”
4. Use a unique medium: Paper cards seem too boring? There are lots of other options out there. PVC business cards are flexible, durable, and colorful, plus they can have grooves and ridges giving a tactile experience to your card. I recently came across a card that allows you to include various rewards with your card: mp3s, ringtones, dvds, even pizza. Less traditional cards can be paper coasters, mini mouse pads (also great as coasters), or any promotional product.

Do you have any other suggestions? I’d love to know what they are, so feel free to share them.

Sink or Swim at Your Tradeshow

As I mentioned the other day, I attended a tradeshow last week. Now, most tradeshows are arranged so that you can look out over the floor and see a bunch of vendors at the same time. This means your (potential) customers or competitors can watch you; and you can watch them. Just like a predator can tell that its prey is weak, others at the tradeshow will be able to tell whether you’ll sink or swim. How you perform at tradeshow is indicative of how you run your business. I said in my last post that with everyone offering virtually the same product will make price easily the defining factor that separates you from your competition. But it’s really service that should be the big indicator. Taking it even further, in a word, what makes you a winner or a loser in business—or sports; or music; or life—is preparation.

When you show up to a trade show do you have all of your materials? Do you have samples or a demonstration model? Do you know your new products cold? If not, you’re in trouble. Someone will surely ask what makes the ’08 version better than the previous. Or they will think your spiel is great, but if only they could try one or take one with them to show the person who makes the decisions. If people stop by and you don’t have even some literature to show them, you’re just plain out of luck.

On Friday, everyone I met was knowledgeable about their product. That’s obviously a minimum requirement. Past that, there were some people who had a table full of samples; some who had a stack of catalogs and other information; some who had a big presentation setup. In a few cases, the company’s representative had all of these things. I bumped into many of my suppliers and it was easy to tell which ones would get an increase in business from me.

I’ve had one supplier that’s gone through the fire to get one of my jobs done and make my client happy. He was there. And you can bet he was prepared. We’ll call him “Adam;” because that’s his name. My coworker, Traci, came in with me to check out Adam’s setup. He had a giant presentation board with multiple samples of everything his company makes. And when Traci wanted to know if Adam made headphone clips, he filled her hands with samples for her to use. Adam knows it’s a two-for. If he’s prepared and does an excellent job, Traci and I will work with him again. But he also knows if Traci and I are knowledgeable and have samples of his product, we’ll get him even more business because we’ll be prepared.

So the next time you need to go to a tradeshow or send someone to a tradeshow, remember that you can’t fool people if you’re unprepared. Alex Rodriguez couldn’t succeed in the playoffs if he didn’t go to batting practice. And you can’t succeed in business if you aren’t prepared.

Insights From A Trade Show

On Friday I attended a trade show for those of us in the promotional products industry. It was here in Indianapolis, actually just a stone’s throw away from PDA. My fellow colleagues and I headed over, put on the obligatory name tag and began to circulate. Below are the take home messages from my latest trade show experience:

• Hosting a trade show in rooms of a hotel is incredibly aggravating. The rooms are too small to allow adequate flow in, around, and out of the set up.
• The promotional products industry is full of copy cats. Everyone seems to offer the same product, making the only thing that differentiates one company from another is price or service. Some clients will choose price, but in my experience service should be the clear winner. There isn’t enough money in the world to make you look good when you deliver an empty promise of a promotional product the day after an event.
• Despite what it seems like, there is more to the success of a promotion than just buying pens. There are lots of options; you just have to make sure your supplier isn’t lazy and will work to find the right solution for you. For example, there are lots of new and innovative products and ways of making products that might work for you. It just might be worth it for you to spend the extra x% and get your product sublimated.
• The trend in 2008, as I’ve mentioned before, is green promotional products. Pens made out of corn, travel mugs made out of potatoes, tote bags made with organic cotton, 100% biodegradable plastic Frisbees; eco is everywhere this year. I saw each of these items at the show on Friday and even got to take a few of them back to the office. Think about going green so that you’re seen as a leader in your industry and not just the next guy to jump on the bandwagon. You’ll then be able to say, you were green before green was cool.

Chick-fil-a’s Free Breakfast Model

If you’ve checked out my blog roll, hopefully you’ve already come across Übereye Marketing’s Seinfeld on Marketing series which runs on Fridays. Two Fridays ago, just before the Super Bowl, Übereye brought up an excellent Seinfeld moment when Jerry tries to give away Super Bowl tickets to George. Read the entire dialogue on Übereye and come back; I’ll wait.

The idea of giving away something for very little or nothing at all is not new. Obviously, by signing up for a new two-year agreement Verizon can afford to give you a phone for free. You’re probably going to be spending $60 a month with them for 24 months before you try to jump ship to get your next free phone from T-mobile. Using loss leaders is known as the “razor and blades business model” because it’s the model the Gillette company’s founder used. Ever gotten a free razor in the mail? If Gillette spends $5 sending you a razor and a blade cartridge (and you love the product) you’ll buy the high margin blades and Gillette makes more money.

Like George, I would see free Super Bowl tickets as a bill for $1500. Sure I’d save a few hundred, but that doesn’t mean I have $1500 in disposable income. So, when visiting Chick-fil-a for breakfast this morning I had to love their current promotion. To fully set the stage, I have to go back a few weeks. I was on my way to work and for some reason saw a Chick-fil-a cow standing on the side of the road in his pajamas holding a sign. I assumed it was something like “eat mor chickin” and looked over as I drove past. The sign said, “free breakfast“.

Too bad for me I already drove past the cow; maybe next time he should stand before the turn into Chick-fil-a, not after it. Somehow I ended up finding out that this wasn’t an isolated incident. Apparently every Wednesday for a few weeks (at least here in Indianapolis), each vehicle that stops at Chick-fil-a during normal breakfast hours gets one free breakfast entrée. They say, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” and that’s what Chick-fil-a is counting on. Every Wednesday more and more people are lined up in the drive-thru at Chick-fil-a to save maybe 3 bucks and get some delicious Chick-fil-a breakfast. How many people do you think just get the free entrée and move on? Not many, I’m sure.

Maybe someone buys a drink; maybe they get a drink and hash browns to complete the meal; maybe they stop with a car full of kids and feed them all. So Chik-fil-a is giving away all this breakfast, but they’re also doing two things, 1) they’re creating a buzz between people telling others where to get free breakfast and by people seeing the crazy line at Chick-fil-a which means they must be doing something right, and 2) they’re racking up sales that add on top of the free entrée: sides, drinks, and additional entrées.

When doing a marketing campaign, don’t just give away a promotional product or coupon. Give people something of value. Give it to them without strings, but have more to offer them if they like the freebie. In another instance of Chick-fil-a marketing, just last night I got a coupon for free breakfast from submitting my info online. They’re always happy to send me coupons and I’m always happy to get them… but who can argue with across the board free breakfast? Black, white, rich, poor, smart, stupid, healthy, or sick just show up and chow down

…just be sure to wash that down with a beverage!

Corporate Blogging as Marketing

This afternoon I took part in an hour-long webinar on corporate blogging hosted by Chris Baggott, founder of Compendium Blogware. I’ve actually been enamored with the idea of corporate blogging since the moment I first heard of it. Compendium is based here in Indianapolis and I actually had some contact with Chris between the time that Compendium’s formation had been announced and the time Compendium went live. I would have jumped at the chance to work for him if for no other reason than I think his idea is so innovative, but all impressions that I’ve gotten are that he not only knows what he does, he’s a real good guy.

So Compendium handles the behind-the-scenes of corporate blogging. Blogging is an important way to be found for businesses—especially small businesses. Blogging is just the current (and one of the most effective) marketing trends. If your company wants to start blogging, but wants to only focus on the content and not hiring an IT guy just to run the blog, Compedium is the type of place you’d go. To give you an analogy, if you want pizza you could get all the ingredients and make it by hand or you could call the best pizzeria in town. Either way, you’d be eating good pizza for dinner, it’s just less hassle when you don’t have to make it yourself. (There are a lot of pizza examples here on Marketer Synergy, aren’t there?).

Long story short, keep an eye on Compendium’s website for the next webinar if you’re interested in the new wave of corporate marketing. I’m going to send my boss to the next one he offers, which based on their attendance today, will probably be again in the next month or two.

And with as much respect as I have for Matt Mullenweg, he offers a completely different product, so I don’t feel like they’re competitors at all. If I knew Matt, I’d probably have just as many nice things to say about him. And I do love me some WordPress!

Create A Successful Promotion – Part 4

Today I wrap up my 4 part series “Create A Successful Promotion.” Over the first 3 posts, I introduced Promo-smart, PMRT, which are the keys to a successful promotion.

1. Product
2. Message
3. Recipient
4. Timing

I already explained the first 3, and in today’s final installment I’ll cover the last one, Timing. For a quick recap, in the first post, I said it’s not enough to have a good product, you have to have the right product for the person you’re trying to reach. In the second post, I let you know that an effective message isn’t your logo alone; rather you must include a call to action. And in the third post, I gave you an example of how targeting specific groups to deliver your message is the most effective way to do a promotion. The final essential is:

4. Timing

What’s the difference between the latest, hot tech product and a piece of junk? Timing. It wasn’t long ago that we carried around floppy disks to transport our files. Now there are online storage sites, flash drives, portable hard drives, and even Blu-Ray burners. And in a few years Blu-Ray will be laughed at by the next generation they way you laughed as you used your Tandy, Apple II, or Commodore 64 while your parents did their resume on a typewriter.

Timing is also vital to your promotion. Sending out a promotion that doesn’t arrive at the right time is a waste of resources. Think about a floral shop. A promotion in June might not be very effective since Mother’s Day is in May. On the other hand, a promotion in January might give them a chance to get husbands and boyfriends to place orders for Valentine’s Day. The florist can better forecast what resources they’ll need to meet demand and the men don’t have to worry about picking up wilted flowers from a gas station on their way home from work on February 14th.

I’ll give you another example. A car dealer wants to sell more service. Knowing how much mileage the average driver puts on their car in a year, the dealer can offer promotions to get people to bring in their car for the expensive regular maintenance, such as the 30 and 60,000 mile check ups. If a promotional product shows up when you’re at mile 55,000 you’ll likely be a lot more interested in a 60,000 mile service than if you’re at mile 80,000.

“Better late than never” isn’t always true. A Christmas card from your insurance agent in March will actually make you think twice about keeping your business with that agent.

As always, feel free to comment. I’m sure you’ve all done something with bad timing, so I won’t ask you to relive the embarrassment.

Create A Successful Promotion – Part 3

In my first two installments of “Create A Successful Promotion” I introduced you to the 4 keys to a successful promotion: Promo-smart, PMRT, stands for:

1. Product
2. Message
3. Recipient
4. Timing

I covered the first 2 keys to a successful promotion, Product and Message. To ever so briefly recap, your product can’t just be a good product; it has to be the right product for the intended recipient and your message can’t be just your logo; it must make a call to action in order to be effective. Today, I’ll cover the next step in a successful promotion using Promo-smart (PMRT).

3. Recipient

As I said, in the first installment, you must know who you want to target. Wanting everyone to be your customer is okay, but how realistic is it that with only one promotion you can win over 100% of everyone who is not already your customer? If it only took one promotion, there wouldn’t need to be thousands of promotional product distributors and suppliers in the U.S. So in order to maximize the effectiveness of your promotion, you have to determine which group is the most likely to be interested in what you’re selling. Here’s an example:

Saf-T-Boot sells steel-toed boots direct and wants to run a promotion to cover the entire Indianapolis metro area. They decide on a good product and have a great message. In the mail goes the widget with the great message to 1,000 randomly distributed people in the Indianapolis area. Some of the people who get the promotion in the mail are accountants, teachers, salespeople, postal workers, photographers, and just about any other profession you can think of. You can bet accountants don’t have much use for steel-toed boots, so the response rate is pretty low—we’ll say 2% (which is considered a decent to good response rate on mass mailings).

Now, instead of picking 1,000 random people to send the promotion to, what if they would have focused on their recipient? Using the same good product with the same great message, this time Saf-T-Boot sends their promotion to every contractor, construction worker, and heavy machinery factory worker they can find. It’s hard to imagine that a good product and a great message going to such a specific, targeted group of people would have a low response rate. It could be 10% (5 times as much as the random mailing); it could be 20% (10 times more effective than the random mailing).

For its next promotion, Saf-T-Boot can target retailers of work shoes. Changing the product and/or the message makes the promotion entirely new to this second, targeted recipient. Again, response rate can be much higher than it would have been by randomly distributing the promotional products.

Who you target is just as important as what you say and how you say it. After making sure you target a specific audience for your promotion, there’s only one Promo-smart (PMRT) step left—Timing—and I’ll cover that tomorrow.

In the meantime, feel free to comment. Have you ever done a marketing campaign without thinking about targeting a very specific group and gotten a terrible response rate?

Create A Successful Promotion – Part 2

In my first installment of “Create A Successful Promotion” I introduced you to the 4 keys to a successful promotion and a nifty way to remember them. PMRT, or Promo-smart, stands for:

1. Product
2. Message
3. Recipient
4. Timing

I covered the first of the 4 keys to a successful promotion, Product, and pointed out that it’s not enough to have a great product. In addition to a great product you have to make sure your product meets the needs or otherwise reaches the specific audience you’re marketing to. Following Promo-smart (PMRT), here’s the next step in a successful promotion.

     2. Message

Many companies think that splashing their logo on a promotional product, whether a shirt, pen, magnet, hat, or any other kind of widget, is a good use of marketing campaign dollars. But it’s not. Do you recognize the following logos?

Unless you haven’t seen a television in a few decades, you instantly recognize Nike, Apple, and Pepsi. Nike, Apple, and Pepsi can put their logo on anything, but unfortunately for you, you’re not Nike, Apple, or Pepsi. These 3 can pull it off because they spent gobs of money on corporate branding so that when someone saw their logo they would know what it means. So, if you’re going to tap into the next biggest athlete the world has ever seen, ala Nike signing Michael Jordan, you’ll be able to stick your logo on anything and people will know you.

What Can You Do?

You need to focus on the M in Promo-smart (PMRT). Your message isn’t only who you are, but why someone should choose you. You need to induce an action. Let me give you an example.

A pizza place just moved into a great spot near a big university just outside of Indianapolis. They go to the quad and student union on a beautiful spring day with 250 Frisbees. They are white and imprinted in red letters, “Empire State Pizza.” Not bad. College students like Frisbee and would rather toss a Frisbee than sit through another discussion of The Canterbury Tales. But what has the pizza place gotten? Not much. They have no way to know if the message was a success.

Now, let’s say the message changes. This time, using 250 white Frisbees with red letters, they pass out the following message: “Empire State Pizza. Across from Dodd Hall, next to the laundry mat. Bring this Frisbee in by May 1st for a free slice when you buy a slice.” The words “Empire State Pizza” are now smaller because the same size space contains a lot more info. But, the message calls the students to action. The Frisbee says why they should eat at Empire State Pizza—because when they buy 1 slice, they get another free. Attracting new customers is much easier if they know where to find you, and Empire State Pizza told the students exactly where the pizzeria is located. Finally, the message called for a specific action, bringing in the Frisbee, and contained a deadline, May 1st. This makes the promotion timely and easy to track—all you have to do is keep a running list of the number of people who show you their Frisbee.

Using the right message is a vital component of a successful promotion. You might think that the right promotional product and the right marketing message is enough to ensure success, but there are still 2 more keys to success in the Promo-smart (PMRT) method. Next time we’ll discuss the Recipient.

In the meantime, feel free to comment. Have you ever done a marketing campaign using just your name or logo and felt it wasn’t a success?

Create A Successful Promotion

Everyday I deal with businesses that know they need to get their name out, but don’t know how to go about it. There are 4 things you need to do to pull off a successful marketing campaign involving promotional products. These rules apply whether you’re a local dry cleaner or a Fortune 100 company.

The 4 factors for success were passed to me; I just came up with the easy way to remember it. The mnemonic I’ve created is PMRT. An easy way for me to remember it is just like “smart” except the “P” means “promotional”. “Promo-smart” for short; here’s what it stands for:

1. Product
2. Message
3. Recipient
4. Timing

I’ll tell you how to be Promo-smart in 4 installments, but I’ll give you the easiest one first.

1. Product

It isn’t enough to have a great product. The latest and greatest kitchen gadget might impress a local pizzeria owner or even a 5-star chef in the finest restaurant in downtown Indianapolis, but it wouldn’t mean very much to a construction foreman or an accountant. Your product has to be right for your audience. The first thing you must do is determine whose attention you’re trying to grab.

You must know your target market. If I ask who you want to be your customer and you say, “everyone,” then it’s likely your promotion will fail. It’s fine if you want to do 5 different promotions to 5 different types of prospective clients, but trying to win over everyone with a generic product shows one thing: you’re generic. And if you’re generic, you’re not special. If you’re not special, there’s certainly not much reason for anyone to do business with you when your competitors are right there on the same side of town.

Next up in the PMRT, Promo-smart, list is Message. I’ll tackle that at the beginning of next week.

In the meantime, feel free to comment. Have you ever done a marketing campaign using a great promotional product, that didn’t work just because it wasn’t the right product?

Environmentally Friendly Promotions

Environmentally friendly (“green”) behaviors and products have fallen in and out of favor in the U.S. for years. I’ll spare you the history lesson, but if 2007 was any indication, 2008 will surely be a big year for being green. There was a time when being green meant sacrificing. It’s likely many people still think they can’t have the best of both worlds. But in 2008 we’ve started to reach a place where luxury, functionality, and environmentally friendly have intersected.

I recently learned about Dell’s new site geared towards promoting being green, while reading a recent blog entry by Lewis Green (last name completely coincidental).

Aside: Even since I read Lewis’ post, there’s been another green post over on Marketing Profs Daily Fix, this one by Stephen Denny; also very much worth a read.

The first thing that struck me about Dell’s new site was “the wall” at the top of the page. In a font that looks like it was handwritten, scrawled across the wall were people’s answer to the question at the top of the page: “What does green mean to you?” Intelligently and completely answering that question is the key to having a successful green promotion.

In addition to answering the question, you’ll need to decide why you want a green promotion. Of course all promotions are designed to increase sales, but is the primary goal of choosing an environmentally friendly promotion:

• to convey to your clients or prospects you share their concerns about environmental issues?
• to retain customers and increase referrals by showing that you’ve taken socially responsible action?
• to break stereotypes of the people and companies who would invest in green ideas?

Certainly I think each is a justified reason to consider a green promotion. However, I do think the most important message to convey to your clients and prospects is proof you’re more than just a buzzword magnet. People want to work with companies and people who “walk the walk.” I think sharing concerns with any group of clients or potential clients is a great way to build value-based relationships and breaking stereotypes is always a noble cause.

To me, green means accountability. No more pointing the finger, we are the only ones responsible for our own actions.

I’ll probably be featuring more green topics in the future. More and more vendors are offering an increasing number of green products that can be used as part of your solution. Just remember a successful promotion depends on more than just finding the right product.

I invite you to both leave your comments on the post and answer the question, “What does green mean to you?”