The best business card isn’t the one with the coolest design, brightest color or most tactile material. It is the one that provides the answer for someone’s problem. If you card tells people you can help them, and that you are there when they need you, then it will be a success. All the imagination in the world can’t make a success out of any brand if it says nothing and means nothing. Business cards are keys. Put them in the right hands and they unlock doors. That is their whole purpose and has been since time immemorial. Gone are the days when men in pinstripe suits swap cards before shaking hands knowing they will get a call because they are the only person in the area who can do what they do.
We live in a diverse and specialist society. Increased security and food production means more of us can specialize in some skill or other to make money. Never before have we had so much free time, or freedom to explore alternative avenues of employment or making a living. Working in a bank, office, factory or a trade was all there was. There would only be a couple of bank managers in your town, or a couple of insurance men. A business card didn’t have to do much then as you had a captive audience.
As the horizons drew further away and communications improved, we could look beyond our own towns and cities to a national viewpoint. Now customers didn’t have to deal with people they didn’t want to as they could look further afield. Skip forward a few years and the horizon expands again, and we can suddenly reach a global audience and a world full of people and businesses who compete for each and every customer.
Now the humble business card has a lot more work to do. It rests among many others in the contact book of a company, or the wallet of a contact. No longer can it sit there and merely wait to be used. Now it has to vie for the very short attention span of decision makers along with countless others.
It has to say, hire me! I’m the one you want! Or any other message you want it to convey. It has to be bright enough, different enough and attractive enough for a contact to not merely look past it, but attract and hold their attention. Hold that attention enough for them to make the decision to use the card instead of flicking to the next one.
The best business card isn’t the cleverest or the neatest, it’s the one that can grab someone’s attention and hold it. The best business card is the one that contacts keep until they need it, not end up in the trash as soon as they get back to the office. It offers solutions to problems and an easy way of getting the information to get you that call or email to come on over and talk about a problem you may be able to help with.
Filed under: Business Cards
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