Business cards are part and parcel of every business. In fact, a business owner can’t live without them pieces because you have to provide your customers and prospective clients with your contact information. It would be very unprofessional, not to mention very tiring, if you’re going to write your details down on a piece of paper every time someone asks for your number.
Let’s face it. Handing out your information, be it in your regular black-on-white or full color business cards, is made easier and convenient by these small pieces of paper.
However, most business cards if ever they do their work don’t even optimize half of what they can accomplish. In fact, most of them just go into a desk drawer, a card file, or worse, directly into the garbage bin. When they do, it is guaranteed that your money, time and effort would just accumulate dust and be forgotten. As a marketing person would point out, a collateral that does not provide retention in your target clients¢ minds is an ineffective tool, hence, is just a waste of your resources.
But it would be so much easier for your business to be recognized and retained in the minds of your target audience if you could provide them your contact details in more distinct handout merchandise.
So why not turn your regular and more than likely, boring business cards into something that would help make your contact information visible and valuable? Get them printed on a surface other than your regular paper. This way, you’ll be able to provide your target audience with a unique handout that they would see everyday. Something that would remind them of your existence and the product or service you offer.
Instead of your standard color business cards, put your contact information on promotional items such as fridge magnets, notepads, telephone pads, coasters, mouse pads, calendars, and even on mugs. You could even try printing your details on tote bags and stickers.
You can think of more ideas. You only have your imagination to hamper your creativity. Whatever you do, remember to develop an item that would be in plain sight of your target audience. Make sure that they use your giveaway regularly to increase retention of your business.
The bottom line is to create a promotional item that your prospective clients would find useful that they would see your contact information as well as your message everyday. Your promotional item would double as your business card, in addition to a successful representation of your business brand.
Why to get online? In our days online presence is a must-have for every company. In the last 15 years there was an online explosion of business companies getting online offering various services or just simple information. Internet has no bounds. Whether you sell flowers or provide engineering services, you can and must be online.
First of all, your potential customers can easily get informed about your company profile, the services you provide or the products you sell. Then customers may order online products you sell, you send them the products and you can get paid online too.
What to do first - Get a Website. There are many free web server across the web were you can create a mini free website for your company, but for a company who respects itself and want to have success online, you must get your own website, your own domain on the internet.
To have a website you must buy a domain name and a hosting package. The domain name is really cheap, around $10/year. You have to choose a good domain name for your business; this is very hard today because many domain names are already taken, but you can combine your business name with dashes and find an available domain. The domain name must be simple and short, so people can remember it easier. Never use more than two dashes in your domain name.
Once registered, you must combine your domain with a hosting package. If your business is not so big and you don't intend to virtualize your business you may choose a standard package: it includes 150 GB Space, up to 1,500 GB bandwidth, 25 MySQL Databases, Unlimited Email Forwards and almost all standard facilities like php scripting, MySQL databases, Google Webmaster Tools and Joomla. The price is around $6.29/mo. You can register your domain name and buy the hosting package from GoDaddy.com, which is very popular. You also have anytime support with GoDaddy. Of course, there are many more other domain registrars and hosting providers on the web, just find them and compare the prices if you want, but there will not be a big difference.
Now that you get the technical support you can build your own website. Find a good web design company to build your website. Take care that the way your site will look will influence the most your potential customers. Imagine you are looking for something on the internet and find a website where the page elements are not not well arranged, the content is confuse and you don't know where to find what you are looking for. You will live that site immediately, don't you. A well build, attractive, functional, fast loading website will bring your business more credibility and why not more customers.
With your website you can do almost anything: inform visitors about your services and products you sell, let customers order directly from your website and pay you the same time. Just ask the company who will build your website what you need and they will serve you. Ask them to let you have full and ease control of your website, and monitor your online traffic and sales.
What to do next - Promote your Business Website From the beginning you must understand that the process of promoting your business online must never end. You need targeted traffic, and this will come from search engines or from advertising. First submit your site to the major search engines and then try to optimize your site to rank well in the search results. You may hire someone to do search engine optimization for you. If your site will rank well in search engines, it will very good, because if someone is searching for something you sell and find your website, imagine that. You will have many customers.
Search engine optimization is really very hard and require qualified personal, and much patience. If you want your business to grow up fast you may consider advertise it. The best way is to use Pay Per Click Advertising. The best ways to start are Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter. They all offer affordable PPC Campaigns based on keywords, which is very good because you will get targeted traffic to your website. The best thing about PPC is that you pay only when a visitor click on your ad, and get to your site. The way you write the ad text will influence your visitors actions.
After that you can submit your website to the major web directories to get listed. This is a good way to get some traffic to your site, thinking that directories are organized on categories and you will get targeted traffic too.
Another way to promote your business is to write articles related to your business and have them published on the many article directories, in RSS and anywhere on the web. This will be a fruitful way to promote your business. Let's say you sell a type of medicine. Write an article about how that medicine can help people and distribute it. When people read the article and find your website link at the bottom of the article, they will visit your site and be a potential customer.
There are more ways to promote your business, you just have to spread the word. Consider for other ways to promote your business yourself and don't forget to add your domain name on your business card or mail signature.
Both Colleen Davis & Andy Ci are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Colleen Davis has sinced written about articles on various topics from Business Cards, Brochures and Sales and Negotiation. For more information, you can visit this page on . Colleen Davis's top article generates over 201000 views. to your Favourites.
Andy Ci has sinced written about articles on various topics from Business Cards, Pets. If you are interested in adding your company to a business directory, go and add it to the . Add to. Andy Ci's top article generates over 2400 views. to your Favourites.