Eye Popping Business Cards That Make You Memorable

This afternoon I've been looking through a stack of business cards. They are ones that I've collected over the last several months and some that were given to me by another guy. So many of them were so generic that it would never inspire me to call them.

There are several aspects of business cards that should be taken into consideration:

Quality of the Design

You can tell an amateur design. It has no sense of balance and use of white space. A telltale sign of an amateur design is when someone tries to stuff too much information on one side. In a manner, it seems like they are nervous that something will be missed if they don't give all their information. But you can put more of your information on your web site.

Quality of the Paper and Coating

Flimsy paper on a business card tells me that the person skimps. It is good to cut corners on things that aren't important, but business cards are important to first impressions. Using heavy stock or a unique paper on your business card communicates that you are committed to quality.

I like to a coating put on my business card because it adds bulk to my card and it makes the colors to pop on my cards.

Using Free Services

Using something like Vista Print is okay for someone where image isn't important and you are going to do mass distribution of the card, like putting it in a fishbowl at the register of a restaurant. These free services do this so one day you will spend more money later on a more highly designed card. I use Vista Print for my custom designed cards because they do a good job and they have good prices.

Do Something Unique

I get remarks on my business cards all the time because I do something very simple to distinguish myself. I got a corner cutter at the craft store and I round two corners on the cards, in the upper left corner and the lower right corner. It makes it look more expensive than it really was.

The higher end business card printers have a variety of die cuts you can use for your card. For example, you can have your business card cut into the shape of a house if you are a realtor.

Printing on Both Sides

I like to have print on both sides of my card. On the front I put all my contact information and my logo. On the back I put a list of my different services. You could put a picture of your product or a map to your retail store. The varieties are endless.

Putting Your Picture on Your Business Card

Realtors love to put their picture on their cards. I’m not sure why this is so prevalent but I don’t know of any other industry where the people use their picture so regularly on their cards. I guess it’s because they are essentially in business for themselves and they are building their brand – which is themselves.

Warnings About Business Cards

My one warning about business cards is to not spend excessive amounts of time designing your card. I advocate putting good effort into creating a memorable card, but trying to make it perfect can take away from spending time planning your business and building relationships.

I was working on a web site for a client last summer who was obsessed with his business card. He had it reprinted a couple times and spent a lot of money putting it on thick, opaque paper. It looked cool eventually but so much effort was put into it that he didn’t make enough time for creating great content for his web site or building a successful business plan.

Like I said, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Printing new business cards is inexpensive. If there are things about your card you don’t like, you can always fix the design and have it reprinted, and then toss the old cards.

Spend the time and money necessary to make an eye-popping impression on those you meet. It will pay off for years to come as your memorable business card is put in notebooks or hung on the wall.

Dave Carlson owns Green Chair Marketing Group, an Internet marketing firm in Denver, Colo., specializing in driving visitors to web sites by search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, and web site design/redesign. Call 720-922-3124 or visit his web site at http://www.GreenChair.net.

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