If you’re like most real estate investment professionals, you may not have given much thought to the content or design of your business card. The inexpensive, disposable nature of the business card can make it seem inconsequential and unimportant. However, there is a significant difference between the average business card and an effective business card.
Designing a business card is far more complicated than simply listing your name and contact information on a 3.5″ x 2″ card. Fortunately, despite the thousands of ways you can format your business card, the hundreds of options in paper and the dozens of other ways you can make your business card stand out, there are some fundamentals that you can apply to make your decisions easy and your cards effective.
Follow these 4 rules to make sure your business card supports your brand and adds value to your business.
1. Keep it Simple
Don’t be tempted to reduce font size and include every last bit of information you have. This is definitely a case of less is more. Though you don’t want to miss the essentials, like your name, title, business name, phone, email & website, you want avoid subjecting your recipients to information overload, which only succeeds in losing the recipient’s attention. You want to include enough to be memorable and pique their interest without making heads spin.
2. Keep it Legible
Your business card is not the place to get creative with funky and unusual fonts. Not only do you need your card to be readable by people, but also by the digital readers your recipients may be using to file your information. Fonts that are too small, frilly or distorted will make your card difficult to read. Add visual interest to your card by allowing your logo to be a strong design element, rather than messing with text art that will miss the mark.
3. Avoid Full Coverage
As affordable and eye-catching as full color printing may appear to be, it’s not an advisable practice. Not only can these designs be a challenge for digital readers, they offer no space for you or your recipients to make notes. Allow for ample white space on your business card. It’s eye pleasing and invites interaction.
4. Consider a Call to Action
Keeping your business card simple and streamlined, doesn’t mean neglecting to use some space for a special offer or other call to action. You will want to craft a short message that directs the recipient to your website, perhaps to download a special report, or provides a tip that will be relevant and useful to the reader.
