Expert: Carolyn Howard-Johnson
I devote much of my time giving people tips on how to do things frugally. Business cards are, indeed, frugal. Let me share a few of my own frugal ideas for using business cards directly from my book The Frugal Book Promoter.
I love business cards. The plain old, business-size cards fit into easily into wallets. Techy types scan and add plain old business cards to any Outlook file in a flash. Plain old business cards fit into either frugal or designer card carriers. And plain old business cards can be made into mini-ads.
I don’t love them just because they’re inexpensive. I like them because they tend to be kept. My husband keeps a stack of business cards for resources in an elastic band; he stows them in the drawer where he keeps all his pens and pencils and he never loses them. For him to keep them, though, they must fit into his stack, contribute to the nice, dense little brick he is making of them. If they are too big or fat, they don’t make it into his own, unique little file system.
I collect the business cards I’m given into Outlook when I get home from writers’ conferences and other events. But if they’re odd-size, they may never get home with me. They’ll get lost in the bottom of my purse and stay there for a year. Because I’m a writer, I often get bookmarks in lieu of business cards. They’re nice. They’re useful. But they aren’t sure-fire marketers like cards. They tend to get lost in the innards of books which in turn get shelved. The next time they get seen, they have become either vintage or heirloom.
But most of all, I love to use them as mini advertisments. I know. Graphic artists will groan, but if folks don’t get too tied up with what is acceptable in terms of design, they can include endorsements (or blurbs) or quotes from the book as well as an image of a book cover. They can include promotional offers and teasers to get people to check the book out on Amazon or the author’s Web site.
They are mighty because:
- They mail flat.
- They’re keepable. Many people collect them.
- They’re inexpensive, though I’ve never seen them truly free as VistaPrint. com often claims.
- They’re inexpensive enough you can use several, each targeting the audience you want to reach.
I have one for my HowToDoItFrugally books for retailers, one for the HowToDoItFrugally books for writers, one for my poetry and one for my fiction. I use them for other things, too, but more about that later.
I believe in using business cards in unconventional ways. As an example, I’ve even used them as invitations for:
