Your Virtual Business Card
In a previous post, I explained the virtues of the lowly business card. Every business needs an ample supply of cards to give to customers, potential customers, friends, acquaintances and anyone else you run into. You simply cannot hand out too many business cards.
You also need a virtual business card, too. “What!?!”, you say. Yes, you also need a business card for the virtual world. I’m not talking about your website, this is in addition to it.
People are spending more time online than ever before and its not likely to change. Search habits are getting more refined. With social networks on the rise, your name is likely to be Googled more than you think.
Here’s a screen shot of my virtual business card, click it to go to the url (a new page will open).
Notice how clean, simple and direct the message is: who I am, what I do and how to contact me. This single page website appears in the top 10 rankings of Google when my name is searched for.
The title bar says it all: “David Tinney’s virtual business card”. This page gets a lot of the traffic that’s looking for David Tinney.
Domains are relatively inexpensive now. You should own your name and take advantage of a virtual business card.
Undervalued Marketing Tool, pt 2
Not long ago I sat next to this guy on an airplane to New York. We had started our conversation before the plane took off and it quickly turned to business.
Have you noticed that guys, even strangers, like to talk about what interests them? I’m going to write about that soon. Back to the story, though.
He told me he was a rep for a major manufacturing firm. I quietly listened to him answer the questions I was asking. In answer to my question about the stock market, he said,
“There are many undervalued stocks out there. I’m picking some of them up right now and in the next 10 years, I’ll make a killing.”
I’ve really thought about the term “undervalued’ he used and how it applies to the business card. Because I believe it is the most undervalued marketing tool available to us.
Think about this for a moment. How much time did you give to the design and message of your business card? If you’re like most, you didn’t.
It’s even possible you had a graphics artist or the print shop design your card. Here’s something I’ve learned over the years: most graphic people, as good as they are, know little about marketing.
Here is the silver bullet information that’ll make your business card killer. It needs only these three things:
who you are…
what you do…
how to contact you…
And just as important, it should be designed in such a way when a person looks at your card, they can read and understand your 3 point message in 7 seconds or less.
Here’s why your business card is undervalued. From my personal and informal surveys, the majority of people hold on to business cards that are given to them. A SBA survey I read years ago also backs up my findings.
Once your cards are given out, the majority of them stay in circulation for a long time. Maybe they do lie in a desk drawer, but the day comes when the holder pulls it out and looks at it.
I think the secret is to have as many cards you can out there, just waiting for the right time to be remembered or used to refer someone else to you.
How much value do you put on that?
