Let's Talk Business Cards

I'm with you on the pop-up!

My post had nothing to do with you and your business. My post was for others who I could see copying that attitude of "I want to be hard to reach" and coming up fruitless. Good that you can back that up, many on this forum won't be able to so let's not put the cart before the horse.

That's it.

I find for most small businesses, their logos use additional space, but
don't create additional sales.

And, it's easier to track an offer with a specific price, rather than
something like 10% off.

The problem is, many business owner won't enforce the tracking.

I show them a simple tracking method. Take the card from the
customer, when they come in to take advantage of the savings.
(they have to show the card to get the discount) Punch a hole in
your ad space with a hand held hole punch. Put the punched card
in a specific place or container, so we can keep track of how many
you're receiving.

Next, give the customer 2 or 3 new cards that they can share with
a family member, neighbor or friend.

I tell business owners "never let someone leave your business without
a reason to return."

Some get it, some don't. For the ones that do, you can work more profitable
programs with them down the road.

It's a way of "qualifying" the motivated and mold-able, from the unmotivated
and stuck. The latter group tends to go out of business.


Added: When I do a program like this, I print up a total of 10,000 cards: 5,000
for the pizza guy to pass out and 5,000 to be distributed by the advertisers and
others. It doesn't cost much more to print 10,000 cards.

If there are 10 advertisers in the program, I might set aside 2,500 cards for
them to pass out over the course of 30 days or so.

I would take the rest of the cards and go meet business owners/managers of other
local businesses. I'm going to ask for their permission, to set a few of these cards
on their counter.

Here's what I want to accomplish.

1. Introduce myself and what I'm doing.
2. Talk to them under non-salesy conditions.
3. Have them say "yes" to participating in my program, where I'm leaving
my cards for their customers. Not perceived as a sale, but it is a small one.
4. Get their card. Turn them into a future prospect.

I distribute the pizza guy's cards, with the ads on the back, all over town. I put
them in waiting rooms, banks/credit union lobbies and real estate offices. Any place
that has foot traffic and does not conflict with the pizza guy or the advertisers.

There are ways to scale this up but that should be enough to get you going.
I had a card that produced $5,000, in profits every time I put one together.
It was highly niched but very duplicable.

Added later: I've retyped this thing a couple of times. The grandkids visited today and
there is no focusing on anything else, when they're around but I love them dearly.
Let me know if something doesn't make sense and I'll address it. Thanks!