Should I Be Even Printing the Business Cards for the Client?

indianajon |

Hi Dave,

Just wondering how much your local printer is charging you? Are they full color? Are you getting advertisers to take multiple locations?

Since the concept is brand new I sense a little apprehension from some until I get a few units actually up and running. Did you guys(or gals) sense this also in the beginning?

Jon

Feb 22, 7:06 PM —

deanc |

That seems like a very fair price to me Dana..$44 for 1000!

Have you ever thought of joint venturing?

Actually, i’m going to start another catagory now about setting up joint ventures and how to get leverage.

Dean C

Feb 23, 12:22 PM —

Hi Heresmycard,

Yep, sounds like that price may be alittle on the steep side.

Make sure you check the ‘how can I team up with my printer’ section, so next time you go visit your printer you can do a JV so you make money from your printer instead!

Dean

Feb 26, 9:40 AM —

I am thinking of talking to a printing company if I can be a sales rep for business cards. This should earn me commission. To save advertisers for additional design charges, I am planning to buy a business card software, which costs less than $50, so that they can choose from the designs/templates. I can just save this in a CD/USB storage and give to the printing company.

Any comment on this?

By the way cabdon, any further details as to were you are looking to obtain design software for under $50?

Designing business cards can be painful, but if this software is user friendly, then it’s sounds like a good option.

Mark at www.fullcolorresources.com has offered to help anyone design their cards for free and only pay if the client goes ahead. If you email him to find out more, just mention that you found him through the business card display forum and you’ll get a 25% discount. Good deal.

Dean

WHAT DO YOU PUT ON YOUR OWN BUSINESS CARD?

Keep in mind when designing your own business card, that it must have an attention grabbing headline. Just think about when you read the newspaper…you look for headlines that catch your eye…then you read the article. Business cards are no different!

Alot of people tend to put their company name in the headline, and that is very hard to get people excited about in my opinion.

So here are a couple of benefit driven examples you could use as a guide….

“NEW Machine Hands Our Your Business Cards Without You Being There!”

“Here’s How To Get Into People’s Wallets … Literally!”

“Want a Flood of Customers Coming Through Your Door…fast?”

“One ‘Clever” Idea That Everyone Needs to Know!”

If you saw any of these headlines, wouldn’t you agree that you would most likely read on? Maybe not everyone would, but most business owners certainly would!

Catching people’s attention is what marketing is all about.

Show us how creative you are…suggest a headline in the comments box below that you think is eye-catching?

Dean

Hi James…nice website…looks great!

You’ve hit the nail on the head with your headline suggestions too! The headline(s) you’ve suggested would certainly ‘provoke’ a thought within anyone who reads it, and that’s the aim. I like it.

Yes, I always use ‘first letter’ capitals in my headlines. Sometimes i’ll capitalize ‘a’ but generally not. Sometimes it looks right, but mostly not.

Overnight prints seem to have reasonable pricing and fast delivery, but as you suggested, it’s wiser to hook up with a company that will give you either a kick-back, or has a re-seller program…no doubt about it. The only exception to this is if you’ve done a deal with your local business card printer of course. Then again, you may only use the local printer for printing that comes through his customers off the back end of a joint venture deal…otherwise they tend to be more expensive then the bigger companies.

Thanks for the comment James, very valuable.

Any other attention grabbing headline suggestions anyone?

Dean

Like my pappy always said…”If it sounds stupid and works…It ain’t stupid!”

Yeah…I’m a redneck! …but I clean up well…or is that good?

dmiles

Yeah…sure that was me…After 5 days…it’s hit the ball and drag Dave…
That really brings up something that I have learned along the way in my 60 years…
‘Ya gotta have time for “playtime”. I know the pressure to get out and make sales but if you don’t have “YOU” time…you get stale and your presentation begins to come across as script and canned….

AT LEAST THAT’S WHAT I TELL MY WIFE….FORE!

dmiles

Here are some more ‘headline writing’ suggestions for you from my experience in the business card advertising business - and also from one other very successful business I have built in the past.

Kicking off the advertisement.
Headlines starting with ‘How’ or ‘How To’ are often very successful. If you’re having a problem writing a headline start with ‘How’ and you may automatically get onto the right track.

Get their attention – okay?
The word ‘warning’ stops readers in their tracks. It gets attention because people are used to seeing it in situations which demand instant attention, like road signs and medical bottles. Wanted is also a good first word in a headline.

Headlines – long or short?
Long headlines that say something worthwhile out-pull short headlines that say less. The debate over whether long or short headlines work best is almost irrelevant – the true issue is not length, but clarity. If a short headline isn’t clear, it definitely needs to be lengthened. If a long headline can remain clear with fewer words, shorten it.

Delay payment headlines:
Delayed payment headlines can be extremely effective. One US magazine ran with the headline, ‘Order Christmas gifts now – pay after January 20’. This headline even outpulled a headline that offered a discount. And of course Harvey Norman does it all the time.

Facts V Emotions.
Factual commercials are generally better than emotional ones. Although the aim of the whole ad is to appeal to the emotions, do it by appealing to the facts. Use facts to appeal to greed, pride and other emotions that buying triggers.

Doubling the size doesn’t double response.
Doubling the size of an ad does not double its response, it only increases response by around 50%. This suggests that the smaller the ad, the more it is cost effective.

The basis for your ad.
A simple way to find the basis for an advertisement is to ask yourself, ‘What advantages has my product got over its competitors?’ Then state your advantages either directly or indirectly, and make it a major part of your selling message.

Take out which bits you need from the above suggestions and use them…I couldn’t think of anything better then getting an email from you some day saying that I played a part in your success.

Any other headline suggestions?

Dean

Regarding the designing of cards. I have an exceptional e-based graphic designer that will design cards, logos, etc… He specializes in business cards and is very reasonable. ($25.00 with two tweaks included) All he really requires is a logo, some info on the company and the particulars, and he will design a custom full color card that is ready to go to print. (full bleed) The name of his company is powergraphics and his website is www.powergraphics.biz or you can email him directly at nick@powergraphics.biz Tell him that Pat from Digital Image Experts referred you. He will forward all the necessary paperwork to you. By paperwork, I mean very simple design formats that help you and his designers do custom designs. His company did the work for a fairly large business card company that I am involved with, and I actually maintained my relationship with his company because they alway turned around the artwork in 24 hours or less and are super-creative. I have also asked him to prepare a template for me that I can let you access that will fit into our banner displays at the top of the card displays. This will have three or four custom designs for my company, with an area that is either blank or editable for specific use. This way I can get professional and custom signs for me and my clients almost instantly. I hope you can use his services. Have a great day Pat

Mini-Billboards…Dean you are soooo right!

I sold a high end Satellite/Home theatre retailer today that installs home entertainment systems, light systems and provides basically a no hassle, turn-key experience for the rich and not so famous. He has a beautiful showroom and several theatre rooms. You know the type. (I always spelled theatre as theater…I guess you spell it with a “tre” at the end if you charge more than you should) Anyway…

His current business card is beautiful and he was sooo very proud of it . He simply is just one of those prima donna a-holes! I usually just fold the tent and find someone else and move on. He also was hard to read…that is…I didn’t know where his head was. Sooooo…being the diplomat that I am…I complemented him on his business card and told him I was sure it served it’s purpose when he handed it out in his store or wherever and then proceeded to tell him it simply wouldn’t do anything in my display. I told him I doubted if anybody would take one of his cards from the display unless they wanted to clean their teeth. Of course he wanted to know why!…and he was getting pissed…I love it when they get like that…the Marine in me comes out!

Well…here’s why fellow Business Card Distributors….I believe we should be promoting our displays as Dean said…”mini-billboards”. I started giving him ideas and drawing what I thought would get attention and guess what…He agreed and bought into 4 golf courses. He wrote a check for $1,400. What I created would not be a good business card…but it was a great mini display ad. That’s really what this is…DISPLAY ADS!

I learned a lesson today…I came so close to blowing him off! When you offer ideas for an ad and they like it…you are now a designer..not a sales person. I have a file with over 500 display ads and business cards that I have copied from the Internet and have available on a disc I play on a 9″ portable DVD player. I can come up with all kinds of ideas and many times I will do a little slide presentation to get them thinking about what their mini display will look like…

Enough rambling…sorry…but I think I sell ads more from my ability to create an ad as I do from sales ability!

dmiles

A great vendor for 4-color cards on 14 point stock is 4over.com. The price is $24.99 for matte or uv finish plus shipping for 1000 cards. The quality is excellent. Both UV and matte finish dispense well. Do not use their 16 point stock as they are too thick. If a client wants to be able to write on the back of the card then only use matte finish. They have an excellent template that you can download in eps format. You can import this into say Adobe Illustrator or corelDraw. If someone is designing the cards for you then give them the template to use. They accept submission via internet in several different formats.

Re: 4over.com. The template helps you to make sure your card is produced correctly by 4over.com. This is important since each vendor may have different specifications for the submission of work. For example, Vistaprint.com template is different. 4over is the best template I have experienced so far.

Re:Charging for the design of business card. My plan is to sell by geographic zone ( 3 card racks to a zone)for 12 months for $899 USD. My displays have 16 spots. This allows for 15 advertisers per zone. Each location in the zone I will design, and print 1000 cards and allow the placement in one of the other displays in the same zone to provide compensation. Selling in groupings of 3 spreads the design cost, card production cost, card storage. It increases the likelyhood that the advertiser will get results. If they get results, I get renewals. I plan to offer exclusivity by zone only. If the advertiser buys another zone I will sell that zone for a minimum of $60 less since my design cost was covered on the first zone. If a location operator wants to buy a zone I will offer them reduced pricing since I have already designed their card just like an advertiser. If I have the printer design the card, they deliver the Adobe Illustrator file to me in pdf format. If advertiser wants to buy cards I sell them at $129/1000 plus sales tax to existing clients. Sometimes I also sell them magnets at $249/500 or $359/1000 plus shipping & sales tax. I use another vendor for magnets. Depending upon the take rate potential of the client you could also offer to sell some of the 1000 cards you purchase for the display in lesser quantities and at lesser price. This helps to cover cost of design and cards sometimes. If however, the average take rate is 25 to 30 cards per month per location x 3 then the entire amount of cards may already be spoken for. Obviously, this would not work for a client with high take rate. If someone just wants cards and they are not a customer then I charge them $149 plus sales tax because my cost is $60 for design and about $35 for cards including shipping cost from CA. $30/hr for graphic design at 2 hr seems to be market for design of business card. My goal is to only sell in groupings of 3 for many of the reasons stated above. In my opinion, you have to sell in numbers to profit in this business. Also, servicing 15 clients per zone vs a max of 45 clients per zone is obviously much more practical.

Does anyone have experience trying to sell in groupings of 3 as a fixed method of doing business?

Re: Business card storage. This is subject I have not seen mentioned. Business cards need to be stored properly to avoid warping. I recommend the following vendor www.pro-mold.com. Make certain you provide your sales tax id to obtain wholesale price. The product is really used for baseball cards. However, it works great for business cards.
The case is the SB100 and it holds 120 business cards flat. It seals snug so you don’t need any tape or rubber band. You can buy a case of 80 for $52 dollars plus shipping.

Does anyone else have another technique for storing their cards?