Before asking the inevitable questions about the design of your business card, you should ask what its function in your overall marketing plan should be. Above all you want to make sure it communicates the most important things about you and your company.

**Include Your Most Important Sales Message**

We all know a business card should contain basic contact information: your name, company name, address and phone number. But probably even more important is conveying your Most Important Sales Message. If you don't have an "MISM", you should create one. It is a brief, succinct statement of what your company is about. It is the answer to the question: "What does your company do?"

Sometimes this kind of answer is called an "elevator speech". You're on an elevator and somebody asks you "What does your company do?" You have six or seven seconds to give a memorable reply. Good elevator speeches go beyond hackneyed answers like "We do web marketing" or "We make bowling balls." They are confidence-inspiring marketing statements: "We create websites that sell tons of products for people." or "We make the world's most beautifully balanced bowling balls."

Your MISM (Most Important Sales Message) may very well be a "product" (as in the bowling ball example above), but it should always be accompanied by a "pitch" of some kind or another. Often this will essentially be a "slogan".

For your elevator speech you need a seven second slogan. For your business card you will need the same slogan boiled down to an string of words that not only sounds good, but looks good on the card: "Websites that Sell Like Crazy", "The World's Most Beautifully Balanced Bowling Balls", "The Discount Real Estate Guy", "The Source for Cottages and Summer Homes", "Beautiful Color Vinyl Banners."

**Consistency has its place**

It is always good to make your business card consistent with your corporate image and the rest of your marketing materials. Usually this boils down to basic things like your choice of colors, typeface, and layout style. And of course you will want to include your company logo.

Usually your marketing consultant or graphic designer will want to plaster your logo on all your marketing materials, sometimes using the logo as a substitute for real marketing design. "A lot of work went into creating that logo, and we must convey a consistent corporate image" is the usual mantra. What ever you do, don't ask "Why is consistency so important?" That question opens the way for tedious theorizing about "the long term importance of developing a corporate image."

You would be better to agree. "Yes, by all means, we want to present a consistent corporate image." And then add, "But I want this business card to do some selling for me, so I would like to give the sales message a bit more prominence than usual."

In other words, use the usual corporate colors, typeface and layout style on your business card. Include the logo too, because it IS important. But every business card should give prominence to the sales message. Show a picture of your product. Or if you think you are the product (as most real estate agents seem to think), then include your own picture on your business card. But don't forget to enhance the photo with that slogan we talked about in the previous section.

And now that you have a business card worth handing out, get out there and start doing it.