King Pin Business Cards

Any design is subjective. The beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. Business branding, identity and design is no different. The design of your company brand is how people will relate to your and the company. It has to say everything about you, and you have to control exactly what it says.

Website and business card design are two of the most important elements of any corporate brand. They are normally the first two pieces of literature or material that anyone sees about you. It should shout reliability, quality and trust me, without shouting into people’s faces. Unless you are lucky enough to be the CEO of a huge multinational or an established company, these are all things you need to consider when creating your own brand. It is much easier to get a professional in to do it for you, but not everyone has that kind of money laying around.

Let us concentrate on the humble business card for a moment. Its size and stature belies its usefulness and importance in the business world. They are the corporate equivalent of the hastily scribbled phone number from that hottie you met last night. The possibility of making a new connection and seeing what you can both do for each other.

An innocuous piece of card it may be, but a very influential marketing tool if used correctly. If the business card design is good enough, original enough and interesting enough, people are going to remember it, and think of you every time they see it. To be on the mind of a decision maker is the holy grail of anyone in business. That little piece of card could be the doorway to much more business and should be given the thought that it deserves.

The design should complement, not copy your overall brand, either taking an element of it or modifying it slightly to fit a card. You have to get as much information as you can while still retaining a design and not overcrowding it. If you have a logo or a design element that makes you stand out from the crowd then use it on your card.

If you want to experiment with different materials instead of card then there are many options. There are companies that make them from steel, plastic and even wool. Depending on your line of business, it may be worthwhile exploring this avenue of expression. Be aware that it will incur a cost of some kind as it will take extra effort for the printer to produce them.

Ensure that whatever you use will remain useful and useable. There is no point spending a lot of time and money on a shape or texture that renders the card impractical. If it doesn’t fit in a card holder or inside a wallet, chances are it will be thrown away when you aren’t looking.

Creativity is great as long as you don’t compromise the purpose of the card achieving it.

When creating a brand from scratch it is tempting to go for free stuff every time. There are compromises to be made when shopping the free way however, the biggest being quality and originality. If you are shopping for free templates for a website or stationery then you can guarantee other people are too. Everything from nametags to business cards are available for free online, with varying degrees of success. It is tempting to just accept the norm, or to be conservative, especially when first starting out. We are often risk averse until we know our field a lot more, or have been in business a while. After all, just starting up on your own is risk enough, right? The problem with that mindset is that more often than not without risk there is no reward. Unless you have a unique selling proposition you are going to need to do all you can to stand out from the crowd and get noticed.

One of the most prized accomplishments in business is originality. It can make or break a company, product or service. A newcomer to any market isn’t going to get anywhere if they just offer the same thing for the same price as everyone else. When shopping, people tend to go with what they know. Established brands spend millions of dollars creating an emotional connection between their brand and their audience. They want buyers to think of their products as the only one to buy, the most reliable, best value or whatever. Unless you have an advertising budget of at least seven figures you aren’t going to be able to compete with this. This is where originality comes into its own.

If you can devise a product, service or offering that’s original, or done in an original way then you don’t need millions of dollars to sell it. Once you can spread the word about it, it will sell itself if done correctly. The same with your business brand. Come up with something original and it instantly becomes memorable. Go with the standard and it becomes forgettable. When competing in any field, with any competitor you have to have or offer something they don’t in order to win, succeed or often to even be noticed.

Think twice before doing something supposedly mundane like ordering business cards online. What does the design say about you? Is it going to grab the attention of your target audience? If it sits among others on a table does it say “look at me”? If it doesn’t, it needs to. It is a marketing and promotional tool, just like your website, flyers, leaflets and whatever else you use to advertise yourself. Being run of the mill isn’t acceptable nowadays, especially if you want to be a success. Business cards like anything else need a great deal of thought and most of all originality in order to make them worthwhile.

First impressions are everything in business. It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is, if you want to get ahead it’s essential to create a good impression. The philosophy should permeate all areas of company marketing and identity.

A business could have the best product or service in the world, but if the company themselves looks bad, the product will look bad. The same could be said to the representatives. A creative may like sitting in the office in flip flops and an AC-DC t-shirt but he wouldn’t, or shouldn’t go to a meeting dressed like it.

Getting ahead is about perception. If you can project a capable, professional company facade it doesn’t matter to crazy things are behind closed doors. As long as the face of the company is calm and composed and the end product is just what they want it’s all good.

Any web savvy businessman will have seen some truly atrocious websites promoting good products. They may have been tempted to purchase, but probably not. This face of the company is just as important as the people that represent it. The website is the shop door of the company 24/7, and nine times out of ten will be the first impression of the company potential customers will get. If you don’t get this right, and make the best impression possible, the company is destined for failure.

Any marketing materials and branding also needs to create those good first impressions. There are hundreds if not thousands of business card examples that never should have seen the light of day. Bland templates, colorless cards with uninspiring text that says and sells nothing. Business cards are almost as important as a website. They are a marketing tool just like any other and should be viewed as such. Branding doesn’t have to cost the earth. Some companies can afford hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on a design or advertising agency to brand and promote them. The vast majority of companies cannot. That doesn’t mean that the designs have to be basic and boring. There are plenty of budding designers and artist out there who will work for little or no money in return for favors or opportunity. A decent bit of free advertising is like gold to the fledgling designer, these arrangements can work out mutually beneficial in the long run.

Adequate though has to be put into the impression of the product itself too. Good quality packaging, speedy dispatch and delivery. If it’s a service, then the quality of that service, speed of response and resolution of issues. It is said that a customer only gets to know how good a service is when it goes wrong. While this isn’t true for all types of service, it is definitely true for some. The speedy and efficient resolution of issues is a cornerstone of any service provider. Reputations are made and broken on it.

Customer opinions and first impressions are vital to any business. Ignore them are your peril.

The first mention of magnetism was between 625 and 545 BC, where Aristotle attributed a discussion about it to the Greek thinker Thales. It was around a similar date that an Indian surgeon called Sushruta allegedly used in it medicine. He is regarded as the father of medicine and was the first to recognise that Angina or heart attack was related to body size and obesity.

The next earliest mention of it was in China in the 400’s BC in a book called “Book of the Devil Valley Master”. Things have moved on a lot since then. We have navigated with magnetism, repelled objects, run trains cured disease with it. The latest use for this wonderful discovery? Business card magnets.

Many people like to have contact information handy for businesses or service companies without having to sort through piles of paperwork or going on the internet. Magnets are a fun yet practical solution for being visible in these situations as business card magnets can be stay on refrigerators and filing cabinets for years. It is a sure fire way to remain accessible to your clients while also providing other uses, such as holding up pictures or recipes.

Any business can take advantage of the marketing miracle that business card magnets can provide. All you have to do is hand them out whenever you are pout and about, doing business or otherwise. A novelty type card is a great way to break the ice or avoid the awkwardness of foisting your business card on someone, especially if you are actually doing business.

Your audience will be able to stick you on refrigerators, filing cabinets, vending machines, lockers or any other metal surface. This exposure makes a magnet card a very powerful advertising tool. If your clients have your stick on business card magnets, you already have an advantage over your competitors as your business cards are always in front of your customers eyes. For example, if you sell organic vegetables, providing your customers with a magnetic business card is ideal. Your details are right there when they are thinking about food, which is an ideal emotional connection to make. Alternatively, if you sell tools or auto parts, a business card magnet could be placed on the case for each item, or on the clients toolboxes. Chances they will be there for years to come.

Using a little imagination and proper placement can make these ideas work for you. They don’t have to be exactly like these examples, but making a connection between your product or service and the type of magnet or design used can directly influence how much extra business it gets you. If you can add a practical element to the card too like having a magnet strong enough to hold shopping lists on someone’s refrigerator or “stop stealing the paperclips” sign in an office the likelihood of it staying in place for a while increases exponentially. It just goes to show what a little imagination and creativity can achieve, even with such a normal item as a business card.