Business cards

[peterjhale]

Here's another tip.

Ensure you always have business cards on you with your telephone number, email address and a one liner heading saying what benefits you are offering your potential customers.

Give them out at every opportunity you have. They will be passed on if required. People will remember you giving them to you - so if someone asks them "do you know a gardener" they will remember the business card !.

Any other tips from anyone ?

Peter

[Hallie]

The business I am building markets services to other companies. For myself, one of my strategies is to join the Chamber of Commerce in my area. This is a USA thing...I don't know what the equivalent would be elsewhere. They give you opportunity to send info to other Chamber members, socials to mix with others in your area, and opportunities to speak at Chamber functions. They also offer a lot of advertising discounts.

I also have placed links in strategic places that people would go to locate the type of business that I am building. I put the links up two weeks ago, and have already had a couple of contacts from those.

I'm still looking for more marketing ideas (low cost to free). If anyone else has ideas, please throw them out here.

Hallie

[Steve]

We have produced quality business cards using products from PC world. Cheapest is £4.99 for 150 cards. Providing you have a good printer they look excellent.

Naturally when the £££'s start rolling in we may use a different source, but for a start up business they are superb value.

Take a look at http://www.pcworld.co.uk

[theplanner]

Good idea Steve - these days you should be able to undertake most of your marketing from your home PC.

ThePlanner

[peterjhale]

yes, you don't need a large budget to undertake good marketing.

Your home PC and good paper should do it

Try office world for paper (or PC World) and then get designing.

Anything to get your name out there

[mbailey]

Paul Daniels (yes, the Magician) often does after-dinner speeches, and has done some on business marketing/promotion. Someone told me this line which I thought was quite good.

Paul asks (at the end of the conference) "How many of you have got business cards on you?"
Virtually everyone raises their hands.

Paul: "Why????" (meaning why have they not given them out).

He made his name by literally forcing cards on everyone to get his name out there. He hasn't done too bad, has he...

[JennyFine]

I agree that it's important to use your business cards wherever possible. Even if you give one of those to a person who you don't expect to remember you as what-ever-business owner, but just as a neighbour, a fellow traveller etc. Who knows, may be one day they'll need what you can give them and they will have more reason to turn to you and trust you rather than anyone else, because you already have something in common.

Actually this also concerns using your logo. It's a good thing if you have pens, folders with your logo on them (or anything that you can give out and that people can use often). Also use your logo in correspondence (especially designed letterheads, envelopes) not necessarily business correspondence, in thank you notes etc. You can also put a sticker with your logo or url on your car window. In short, once you've got a logo, make the most of it so it got as much exposure as possible. Get into people's heads. It works.

[Dennis S. Vogel]

Hi Peter,

To expand on your suggestion- Hopefully people will have meaningful conversations while networking. This means listening, not just waiting for the other person to stop talking so we can talk.

If others say something you can help them with, include a short note about the subject of your conversation on your card. This way the card will be more meaningful for the recipient. This means the card might be kept & you might get called.

If you write somebody else's name & contact information, as a referral, on your card, the recipient may say Peter Hale said I should contact you about ... Then your name & the other person's name are linked. This may lead to you being referred to others (reciprocation).

Of course, you should be sure to only do this if you can afford to have your name linked with somebody’s reputation.

This caution is one reason people don’t give referrals.

There are more details about “Word of Mouth” & referrals in this report –
[url]http://web1.lakefield.net/~thrivingbusiness/Faster-Results.html[url]

For some reason, this URL is being truncated, if necessary, you can add this - - Faster-Results.html – to the URL in my sig file below.

Dennis S. Vogel
thrivingbusiness@email.com
Marketing strategies and tactics are long-term issues,
but you shouldn't have to wait long for sales.
[url]http://web1.lakefield.net/~thrivingbusiness/[url]
[url]http://www.voy.com/31049/[url]

[james]

urls do get truncated if they are too long but the link still works (as yours does )

[Inzvestor]

Didn't know that about Paul Daniels.

Personally, I would rather pay to get these printed, simply because the product is far superior than those made at home, and in greater quantities, work out cheaper overall.