What are business cards for?
- To tell people who you are
- To tell people how to contact you
- To reaffirm your brand
- To make it easy to ‘file’ you for future reference
What should your business card do?
- Inspire confidence
- Provide relevant, correct information
- Have a clear message – call me, contact me, email me!
- Save you money by getting happy clients to work for you…
How does your business card work?
The most important part to getting your card to work is to share it! Give your happy clients 2 or 3 cards and ask them to share those with people they know might require your service. If you clean carpets… if you design houses… if you fix cars… if you sell cars… encourage your happy clients to provide you with more happy clients!
Viral marketing, without the internet!
Browse related entries: business cards, marketing
Posted in Articles on June 3rd, 2010
What should you put on your business card?
We know that we need the fundamental details like name, phone, email, address, web and possibly a short list (perhaps 4 points) of services/offerings. That shouldn’t take up too much space, and if you have a double sided card, you could relocate some of the information to the reverse.
Make it easy for your clients or prospective clients to find the relevant information first – your name and contact. For the rest they can flip the card over.
What about the design? Although all of this is a personal choice, and depends on your sort of business, if we take a corporate or professional approach, here is one way to approach it:
- How many fonts do you use?
- How many colours?
- How many elements?
- How much contrast between colours?
- How much rest or ‘white’ space do you need?
- Do you need photos?
Let’s use Telstra as an example (seeing as everyone knows their brand) – this is how they use those 6 points:
- One for all text and perhaps a second that is defined in the logo itself
- Two
- Logo and one item of branding
- As much as possible
- As much as possible
- No!
If in doubt, use the ‘less is more’ tactic – and you will never have a design that is too busy.
Browse related entries: business cards, marketing
Posted in Articles on May 18th, 2010
As the saying goes, “If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. And one of the most important things to keep an eye on with your website is how well you rank in search engines (especially Google) for your targeted keywords.
We offer our clients regular reports on this, and so if you’re already receiving these reports, here’s what to make of them:
- Make sure that the keywords we are reporting on are relevant. Think to yourself, “If I was a potential customer, would I type this in to the search box in Google?”
- Assuming we’re reporting on relevant keywords, check the numbers under each search engine. 10 or less means you’re on the first page of results. 11 to 20 means page 2, 21-30 is page 3 and so on. Really, you’re looking for a first page, or top 10 result. Page 2 may be okay in some circumstances, but page 1 is where you need to be.
- Moving up and down a few places is completely normal. Google regularly tweak their algorithm, your website may have changed, competitors websites may have changed. Don’t stress about minor movements in either direction between reports.
- If you don’t have a top 10 result for a relevant keyword – take action! It may mean revising some pages in your site, or seeking out some more inbound links. Contact us if you’re not sure what to do next.
Remember – this report doesn’t say how many people are actually visiting your website. It’s about maximising your site’s potential to get those people who are search for the things you offer.
Browse related entries: google, marketing, search
Posted in Articles on February 24th, 2010
