10 Tips to Get More Customers with Business Cards

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Hanifmr.com - Everyone knows business cards with clipart and standard designs. Many founders and self-employed people do not invest a lot of time or money in their business cards.

“It just has to be your name, address and telephone number” is what you often hear.

But a business card can be much more and is still a useful tool for customer acquisition today. A creative and suitable business card often makes a decisive difference to the competition.

In the following I will go into when business cards are still important and give 10 tips for design.

Are Business Cards Still Important?

10 Tips to Get More Customers with Business Cards

Many self-employed and entrepreneurs underestimate the effect of a business card and think that in today's digital age there is no longer any use for it. But even today, personal contact counts in many industries, and a good business card can still bring a lot.

Business cards are still widespread in trade and services, and at trade fairs, it is the best way to stay in contact.

But many underestimate that and the business cards often look boring and interchangeable. A business card is a mirror of your own company and can have great positive psychological effects. Accordingly, you should invest a lot of work in the design and printing of your business cards or hire a professional to do it.

A lot of things in business happen on an emotional level. To make that connection and break the ice, a good business card can do an important job. A very good business card burns itself into the memory of the business partner (such as this business card from a divorce lawyer) and ensures that the doors are open.

A bad business card will not help and in the worst case even create negative expectations about the quality of your services.

That is why it is important to pay just as much attention to the business card. like your own company vehicle or a print ad.

10 Tips for Your Optimal Business Card

Below I list 10 tips for a great business card. These tips and best practices will help you get there.

Cheap Business Cards Have the Same Effect on Business Partners
You shouldn't skimp on the first impression. Even printed or cheap ready-made business cards evoke this “cheap” association with new business partners and that doesn't exactly make a good first impression.
The Business Card Reflects Your Own Company
Colors, fonts, design elements, and so on should be used in such a way that the topic and corporate design of your own company are recognizable. A wacky and funky business card doesn't fit an accountant any more than a dull, standard business card does a designer.
Use a Common Format
As a rule, you should use a common credit card format (85 x 54 mm). This ensures that your business partners can easily file/put down the business card. But …
Stand Out from the Crowd
If the business card is not to be lost in the crowd of other business cards, you have to create something special through the creative use of form, material, color, function, etc.
Easily Legible Despite All Creativity
If the business card stands out from 1,000 others, that's good, but if the text on it is then illegible, then the effort was in vain. So don't use too small text and legible font.
Only the Most Important Information
The business card must not be overloaded. You should only include the most important information, i.e. name, company, telephone number, email address, Internet address, and a sentence about the services or products.
Using the Back
The back of a business card is often left blank, which is a wasted opportunity. Interesting things like the logo, a slogan, a current offer, a coupon, or, for example, a mysterious URL could be incorporated there. In the case of time-limited offers, these should of course not be applied during printing, but manually there later.
Proofreading, Proofreading, Proofreading
Nothing is worse than when a super creative and great business card has a typo in its name or a spinner in the phone number. Here you have to be very tidy and let someone else look over it again.
If the Dates Change, Create New Business Cards
If your contact details change, you should resist the temptation to still hand out the old business cards (“The phone number and Internet address are still correct!”), Because there are still a lot of them. Business cards are cheap, so make new ones.
Do You Always Have Business Cards with You?
It should have happened several times that someone has invested a lot of time in their business cards, only to then have none with them at the crucial moment. Put some in the car, in your work bag, and put some in your suit. It can always happen that you need them.

Examples of Creative Business Cards

To come to your creative result, it doesn't hurt to be inspired by beautiful examples. There are many outstanding specimens on the following pages:

There are many collections of creative business cards on Pinterest. Like this gallery, for example.
There is an interesting article on klonblog.com with sources of inspiration for stylish business cards.
You can also find some very interesting examples on visme.co

I still have a nice, but also a very unusual example from one of my former customers. He is an artist and creates really beautiful art objects from clay.

As a business card, he designed a 4 × 4 cm large and approximately 4 mm thick square clay disc with his logo, telephone number, and web address.

This is really out of the ordinary, has the most important information on it and everyone can immediately guess what it is about. But that only works because he is an artist and it fits his art thematically.

More Tips for Successful Business Cards

You can find a few more tips for the successful use of business cards in the following articles:

The way to a good business card
11 business card infographics - tips, info, and examples
Business card party for customer acquisition

How about you with business cards?

Do you use this in your self-employment?

If so, how did you approach the design?

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