Business Cards

Proper design for Business Card marketing.

Business Card Marketing.

Only you yourself will know if you need to use your business card for contact purposes only, or if you can make use of it as a marketing tool for your business.

If you know you can use it to market yourself and your business, here are a few guidelines on design and marketing with business cards.

As a marketing essential, you business card needs to have all the necessary details on it to show people not only who you are and how to contact you, but also the information you are trying to market or sell to them.

Designing your perfect business card.

Before we go into the what and how your design must look like, lets have a look at the mistakes you never should make when designing your card.

• Mistake number one:
  Your card doesn't stand out in in the crowd.
  Your card must impress and grab your potential customer's attention. Giving someone a card which looks good, feels good and clearly shows what your business does, will have that person remembering you for a long time.
• Mistake number two:
  Cards of which the quality is lacking.
  Don't print cards for yourself on perforated cards on an inkjet or laser printer. A low quality card will chase potential customers away, rather than attracting them. Don't be a Scrooge when it comes to your business card. Spend some money wisely and have top quality cards designed and printed for you.
• Mistake number three:
  You are confusing people with the information on your card.
  Can your potential customer immediately see what your business does when looking at your card? If they can't, you may not get as many calls or referrals as you may wish to have.
• Mistake number four:
  You are not selling something unique.
  A potential customer must see something on your card which sets you apart from any other business. For instance, if you have a vehicle service centre, you could have a slogan on your card reading "All repairs fully guaranteed". Not many service centres think of putting this on their cards.
• Mistake number five:
  Your card is not the correct size.
  In South Africa the size of a business card is 90 X 50 millimetres, or at the most credit card size, which is 85 X 55 millimetres. Do not use any larger size. It will not fit into a wallet or a card holder and will eventually fit only in the trash can.
• Mistake number six:
  The text on your card is too small.
  A business card is relatively small and it is easy, when you have it enlarged on your computer screen, to insert text which is too small to see properly. Especially for older people using glasses. Don't make any font size smaller than seven point.
• Mistake number seven:
  Information overload.
  If you try and put too much information on your card, it will look too busy and therefore unreadable. Put only the necessary information on your card for a person to see who you are, what type of business you have and your contact details.
• Mistake number eight:
  Wrong use of colour and contrast.
  Use colour on your card to make it stand out and grab attention. If your card is litho printed, or even digitally printed, never ask for silver or gold on white. It comes out a dull grey or darkish yellow, unreadable on the white. Contrast your colours. Use light text on a dark background and dark text on a light background.
• Mistake number nine:
  Your cards are collecting dust on a shelf.
  If you want to use your card as a marketing tool, you need to hand out your cards. Always have some cards with you, no matter where you go. There might just be somebody standing next to you in the queue who needs to make use of your services.

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If you make sure the above mistakes are taken into consideration when you plan and design your cards, you're halfway there.

If you take the design and printing of your business card seriously and do the proper planning beforehand, you'll have a card that really stands out in the crowd and is not easily thrown away, but kept for it's beauty and usefulness.

We've made a list of all the mistakes you must avoid when  designing your cards. To sum up the process, let's go through the steps for planning the design of your card.

1. Essential information:
   Make sure the necessary information is on your card. Your company name, your name and position, your contact details; telephone number, fax number, cell phone number and email address are all important. A physical address and a website address may also be necessary, but a postal address does not carry much weight on a business card any more. Don't forget your unique service that makes your business exceptional.
2. Accurate information.
   Make sure you proof read everything on your before you go to print. Do not hand out a business card with corrections made by writing on the card. You will surely loose business.
3. A class of it's own.
   By making use of good colour contrasts, good design outlay and printed on high quality card stock, your card will be picked up more often than not and also be kept and remembered.
4. Last but not least.
   Remember that your business card is marketing YOU and you want to look your best when marketing your services.

So, treat yourself and have some superior quality business cards made for you.

We have designed some beautiful cards.

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