Company business cards are a staple of marketing and advertising for any business – and quite often the least regarded component of a branding strategy. While many business owners will devote a great deal of time selecting and presenting marketing pieces such as a logo, brochure and company website, for whatever reason the lowly business card gets the least amount of attention in the mix.

Perhaps this is understandable to some degree, given that business cards are fairly inexpensive these days, and can be easily changed as needed when marketing adjustments are necessary. But this doesn’t mean that it makes sense to spend time and dollars creating a sub-par company business card; especially when this particular marketing component is often that which most potential customers will hang onto.

Why Your Company Business Card Counts

Think about it; you may receive various print advertisements by mail or email, or see a logo on signage as you pass by while out in the city… but how much of that marketing material do you actually retain? Yet more often than not, you or someone you know likely has a small pile of company business cards tucked away somewhere in your home or office, ready to have on hand should you have need for a particular product or service.

This being the case, shouldn’t YOUR company business card be the one that stands out; commands the most attention? Will yours be the advertisement that gets placed at the top of the pile because it looks the most attractive? If the point of designing and paying for a business card design is to advertise your business, you might as well create one that actually serves its purpose.

With this in mind, here are 9 tips and strategies to help you get the most bang for your buck from your company business card:

1. Make your design stand out; use bright colors, include your photo on the card, use high gloss stock, or any special touch that will make it not just the same-old / same-old card in the pile.
2. While you want your design to stand out, that doesn’t mean over-cluttering it. Your company business card can have plenty of pizzazz without having to load it up with too many bits of information crammed into one small space. Simple and clean can have as much impact as even the most dynamic of designs.
3. Don’t skimp on the quality of paper used for your business cards. If your card looks cheap and homemade, consumers will equate this to a less professional, lower quality product or service.
4. It may go without saying, but your card should be readable – don’t use overly stylized fonts, or include so much information that you need a tiny, unreadable font to fit it all into the space. Tiny text is not easy to read, and consumers won’t appreciate having to squint just to give you their business.
5. Your card should be easily scanable – don’t place text over images, avoid embellishments such as shading or underlining, allow for plenty of white space between elements… anything that will enable the consumer to absorb pertinent information at a moment’s glance.
6. Be sure to include several ways to reach you – don’t make potential customers ‘work for it’; but rather, allow plenty of options so they can contact you in the way that is most comfortable for them. This means including phone, email, website, social media, address, etc.
7. Leave the back of your card blank if possible, and without lamination. This will provide a surface on which the consumer can take notes if needed, such as in the case of a meeting or conference, when those notes might help them remember your meeting at a later date.
8. Custom finishing options such as embossing, foil stamping or raised lettering can give your business that added touch of class needed to stand out from the crowd, and likely costs far less than you might have imagined. If you’ve gone so far as to create a custom company business card, why not spend a few more bucks to give it the ‘WOW’ factor?
9. Last but not least… and possibly the most important item on the list: carry a supply of your business cards with you at all times! This may seem like a no-brainer, but you might be surprised at how many connection opportunities are missed simply because a business owner didn’t have cards on hand to pass along at the right moment. None of the above tricks and tips will help your business card stand out if your potential customers never see it.