By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to add greater value to your business cards.

“Think of your business card as the handshake you leave behind,” writes Lynella Grant in “The Business Card Book.”

Here are a few ways to strengthen your grip on the handshake you leave behind, to turn your business card into a more potent marketing tool based on business cards I’ve collected over the years.

My favorite is the financial advisor who invested more than 87 cents more than the printing costs in each of his business cards to a very exclusive potential clients: rich people. On the back side of his card he pasted three different postage stamps:

1. A 10 cent stamp, and the year 1975.
2. A 32-cent stamp, and the year 1995.
3. A 45-cent stamp and the year 2012.

One look at the cost of postage stamps-the cost of mailing a single letter- over the last four decades and you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure out the impact of inflation on your earning power – and hence the reason why you need a good financial advisor. Subtle yet strategic.

You can also use your business card as a discount coupon. It’s from an auto repair company. They call their business card a FRIENDS REFERRAL CARD.

Convert your Business Card Into a Discount Coupon

On the back side of the card it says “We need more customers like you. Please give this card to someone you know and we will give each of you $20 off your next bill.” Then there is a line for the name of the personal referred and the name of the current customer. Now that tiny business card is like having an extra $20 in your wallet.

Strengthen your grip on the handshake you leave behind by including valuable information for the customer on the back side of the card such as: the insurance company that provides 4-steps to making a claim, or the Church that provides the cross streets of a map, or the men’s clothing store salesman who prints his weekly work schedule “for your convenience.”

I always am particularly delighted when I get a business card that is so strategically designed you get a “feeling” about the company long before you are able to read its contents. For example:

• A woodworking company prints their business card on a sample piece of paper-thin red cedar.

• A cabinetmaker who uses a level on the top of the card and a level at the bottom of the card to frame his company name

• A secretarial services company encircles each letter in their company name to look like individual keys on a typewriter.

• A music therapist’s company name is printed over a five-line musical staff.

• A sports medicine physical therapist has a football-trading card look to his business card. His info is printed on he back. On the front is a photo of him running on a football field.

• Baby-delivery doctors stylized the first letter in their company name to make it look like an umbilical cord.

• A lawn sprinkling company has a green triangles space at the bottom of the card with tree growing on the 45th degree slope…

• A window design company with window-like cutouts on its card

Here are 15 other eye catching business cards that might stimulate your thinking. Beware of letting your design and art undermine the functionality of the card. Less is more.

Remember that financial advisor who has the postage stamps pasted on the backside of his card? The front side of that card is very simply stated with plenty of white space so that the client can write a note to himself or herself on any followup or an appointment date etc. One of my pet peeves is business cards that you can’t write on either because there is no available white space or because of the varnish finish of the paper stock.

What’s your favorite business card? I look forward to reading your responses. Please use the Comments Section below.

Today’s ImproveMINT
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Related articles

• Business cards should be unusual and different says creative expert (career-advice.monster.co.uk)
• How to Make Professional Business Cards (answers.com)
• ‘Uncluttered’ look is the key for business cards (career-advice.monster.co.uk)