marketing tips
1. Creating a customer feedback scheme
2. What does your business card say about you?
When would you rather find out you’ve lost a customer? In a year’s time when they’ve built a relationship with your competitor or as soon as you’ve upset them? There’s no use delaying the bad news. If you’ve annoyed them, best to find out sooner so you can put it right.
One of the best ways to get quick feedback is to run a feedback scheme. If it’s something you know you should be doing and haven’t got round to it yet, follow these 5 steps and have your scheme set up in no time.
1. What do you want to know?
Sounds simple, but what do you want customers to rate you on? We’d suggest picking between 5 and 10 aspects of your product or service that you think are important.
2. How should they answer?
It’s usual to give people a few tick box options to choose from like “great” or “poor”. Always have at least one question where they can write comments which they may not be able to fit into one of your questions.
3. Should I offer an incentive?
Possibly. You may encourage people to fill your cards in if you offer a prize or a discount. Think about whether once a month you give someone a free haircut or a free meal, picked out of the cards you’ve had returned.
4. How should it look?
Keep it clean and simple – an A6 postcard size is usually big enough. Your local printing.com team can help design a comment card to match your branding. Try printing.com’s recycled reply cards – these are easy to write on and you can have the added benefit of promoting that you’re using recycled material.
5. Where to put the cards?
If you run a cafe or restaurant, put cards on your tables. Run a hotel or guest house? Leave cards in your rooms. Manufacturer or distributor? Put cards in your boxes. Accountant or architect? Send cards with your invoices.
Reproduced from an article in Idea Magazine - get your FREE copy of the latest issue at:
www.printing.com/idea or call us on 01327 301669
The look, the feel and the message on a business card helps people determine how they view you and more importantly, if they will even remember you. When you leave a conversation and the other party has your business card, your identity is that piece of paper.
At a recent networking event, I did an experiment. We each stapled our business card to an A4 sheet of paper and passed it to the next table. Everyone at each table then wrote anonymous comments on what they thought of each business card. The A4 sheets were then returned to their owners.
People were shocked by some of the comments as they assumed nothing was wrong with their card. I’ve summarised the results of this exercise by grouping the comments into four categories:
What do they do?
This was by far the most common comment. So often people assume that everyone instinctively knows what they do, just by reading their business name or job title. “Business Trainer” doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. Don’t leave yourself open to misunderstandings. Make it explicit. List your services and what makes you different from everyone else. If space is an issue use the reverse of your
business card.
Is this a real business?
Granny tried. She did. She taught you to “never judge a book by its cover”. Well, guess what? Everybody does. Your business card is no different. If it looks cheap, flimsy or poorly printed, people will assume that your business is just starting up or just run on a temporary basis. Potential customers will be frightened off if they don’t think the business is sound. The inference being, if no money has been invested in the business then it can’t be a going concern.
I once heard of an electrical contractor who was chuffed with his business cards which he’d got online and had “Printed for free” on the back. You know the ones. He tendered for a shopping centre contract and got laughed out of their offices – “come back when you’ve got some proper business cards” he was told. Truth.
Don’t like the colour, typeface etc...
Poor design can make business cards unreadable and unappealing. Business cards that people remember are well designed and have had careful attention paid to the choice of colour, typeface, proximity and alignment.
Colours have meaning, e.g. red = danger, so choose them wisely and if you’re using more than one make sure they complement each other.
There’s a huge variety of typefaces out there – each with a different voice. Choose one that best represents who you are and make sure it’s easy to read.
A professional designer at your local printing.com store can advise on colour, typeface and explain the importance of proximity and alignment.
Is the business as boring as the card?
If your business card doesn’t stand out in a pile filled with other cards, then the chances are people won’t remember you by looking at your business card. Your card needs to be unique and sell you and your business. So, for example, add colour, photographs, shape the card or put a hole in it!
The design of your business card may not be the top priority for your business. As it’s something that can so easily be fixed by printing.com, why not make sure you get a card that works for your business as hard as you do?
Reproduced from an article in Idea Magazine - get your FREE copy of the latest issue at:
www.printing.com/idea or call us on 01327 301669
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