5 Tips To Read Before Designing Your Business Cards

As a digital marketing business founder, I’ve been battling with the idea of whether I need to create business cards, and whether they will provide any value for my purely lead generation based business. Typically, I have made contacts through my or through referrals, so I wasn’t sure whether a card would help my online business.

Recently, however, I have attended conferences and several events where I found one particular exchange being made over and over again. This exchange was that of business cards. Having been on the receiving end of many business cards, it was easy to spot the great from the, not so great. From this exchange I realised that they are an important part of anyone’s marketing plan. In order to represent yourself or your brand in the best way, the design is crucial.

Despite pretty much everything else in this world going digital, business cards are still clearly very relevant, and probably always will be. When we attend conferences, events, or simply have conversations with other professionals, we tend to always either receive or hand out a card. You want to make sure yours is the card standing out from your new business prospects pile.

Here are five tips for you to follow before signing off and printing your cards.

1. Contact Information

Let’s state the absolute obvious. Make sure all of your relevant contact information is present. Think about your clients and whether a Twitter link or Skype details would be more useful to them than a physical address, for example.

2. Less is More

There’s no need to try and squeeze every little piece of information onto your equally little card. Go for clean and minimal design so that each element is clear and easy to read. The number of cards I see that are stuffed full of so much information is astounding; subsequently kicking in my astigmatism, and turning everything into one big blur.

3. Tagline

Does your business have a tagline? If not, it probably should. Make sure your card clearly displays what you’re business is all about, if it’s not already obvious from your name or logo.

4. Flip them

There are two sides to this story, quite literally. Don’t waste that precious space on the back. Design businesses can use this space to showcase their work. International or bi-lingual businesses can translate their details on the back. You get the picture. Don’t, however, just use this space for the sake of it. Many people have a theory that the back is a useful space to write notes. I confess that I have used this space to write myself notes, but it’s usually ‘buy cat litter’, ‘call mum’, probably not what the space was designed for.

5. Size me up

There’s a current debate on whether businesses can stand out with an oddly shaped or sized card. I’m not so sure myself, and like to think of everything practically. If you can’t stick it in a wallet or a pocket, it’s probably going to be frustrating and end in the bin, or the bottom of your shopping basket after buying cat litter. My advice therefore would be to stick to the standard.

Remember that your business card is a representation of your brand that people take away with them, so don’t underestimate the impact of your design.