Business cards are obviously only a part of your legal marketing mix, but don’t underestimate their importance in terms of what they tell about you and your firm. Of course, they are intended to identify you and the firm, and to provide contact information. Beyond that some folks make serious mistakes in terms of both impact and wasting money on business cards.
Barbara Price at BWPrice’s Marketing U has a great post on ten (actually she gives us eleven) ways you can waste money on business cards.
I was sure that I could find one or two that I could take issue with but I couldn’t. Here they are (I put her reasons and/or my additional thoughts in parens):
*Use black or other dark color on front and back (increases costs and prevents making notes),
*Put mission statement on back of card (waste of space, usually meaningless, AND increased costs),
*Use folded cards (doesn’t communicate anything except that you waste money on your business cards),
*Use card as brochure (too much info, too crowded,�.well, just silly and I can’t imagine any firm would be dumb enough to do this),
*Confusing design (frustrates those just wanting basic information),
*Print cards at home or office (unprofessional and sends a bad message),
*Use hard to read fonts (again makes recipient work to get information),
*Use glossy paper stock (more costly and hard to make a note with a felt pen),
*Use cheap paper stock (sends wrong message),
*Use heavy stock paper (costly and not flexible), and
*Put picture on card (again costly, and unprofessional – unless real estate agent, etc.)
Business cards are important, but shouldn’t be overdone, unnecessarily costly or unprofessional.