Michael Wurzer brings us this:
I just had my business cards changed a few weeks ago to highlight the FBS Blog on the back/front. This is a tame rip-off of Hugh MacLeod’s blog cards.
Publicizing the weblog is sweet, but what Michael is showing us is the businessman’s business card — just the facts ma’am. If there is a marketing appeal, it’s in the subtle factors: “Our good taste and organizational ability provide you with tacit assurance that we won’t screw up your work on deadline.” That’s a job every business card has to do before it can do any other.
The question for the house: Can a business card do any other job? We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make our cards sell for us, passively. Are we just spinning our wheels? Is Michael’s card carrying all the load a little collateral piece can bear?
Say it in pictures, if you would: Show us your business card.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing
Richard Riccelli says:
Michael:
Good idea…but not good enough to drive traffic. Here’s how to make it great.
Create one, or a series, of absolutely naked business cards in addition to your regular business card. Have these adjuncts display only a web address and nothing else. No name, no contact info, no email address. Stark white. One line in 12 or 14 point black type centered on one side. Mysterious. Intriguing.
Of course the key is the message contained in your URL. It needs to be a wet benefit for the reader. A reason for visiting your blog and like now (the URL being a re-direct).
I’m not exactly sure what your blog is about, but perhaps something like “MLS-secrets-even-brokers-dont-know.com”. Or because I prefer impolite, tabloidy, easy-to-remember three-word phrases “dirty-MLS-tricks.com” or “MLS-deathwatch.com”. (I checked. All are currently available in both hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions.)
I pontificate from experience, having taken my own advice first. I did a whole series of these (launch-a-winner.com, beat-your-control.com**) and used them at my industry’s annual trade event. (I’m in the business of helping magazine publishers start new magazines and increase subscription sales.) That was 1999-2000. I still get response from those cards.
___
** be sure to buy BOTH the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of your phrases that pay. While I find the hyphenated ones are easiest to read, if you don’t go the whole mile,*** look at what happens — beatyourcontrol.com — a tough competitor pushes you up against a locker and takes your lunch money. Don’t let it happen to you.
***OK I was cheap. But hey!—it was back when Network Solutions was charging something like $70 a URL…
August 25, 2007 — 10:00 am
Eric says:
I’ll admit, if I got a card with just that blog address on the back, I’d likely check it out. Whether it was of use or I stayed there is another matter.. but it would do enough to pique my interest.
Nice and simple..
August 25, 2007 — 10:18 am
Eric Blackwell says:
@ Richard;
I have to admit, that if handed one of your business cards, I’d bite and visit the blog. Sometimes less is more.
That having been said, It better be some STICKY stuff at the landing page to keep me there…A blog that it title as you describe is making a tall promise and it needs to deliver and quickly in today’s short attention span world.
Eric Blackwell
RE/MAX Properties East
August 25, 2007 — 12:01 pm
John L. Wake says:
I’m mulling over whether to include a photo in my next batch of biz cards. I want to be professional but…
I do know that I prefer when I receive a biz card that it have a photo on it, otherwise, I’ll look at the card later and wonder who the hell that person is. The photo, unless it’s the ever popular high school yearbook photo, brings about a, “Oh yeah, that guy” response.
August 25, 2007 — 3:49 pm
Richard Riccelli says:
Eric B. — I agree. It needs to be at least as good as BHB. Otherwise, what’s the point? After all, the worst thing a bad blog (or a bad anything) can have is good advertising.
August 25, 2007 — 4:01 pm
Michael Wurzer says:
Thanks for the feedback, I think this series of posts is very helpful on a practical subject for many. Richard, you’ve got some great ideas for me to ponder. I think Greg had my personality targeted pretty well, in that I prefer not to sell too much but I also agree that if you’ve got good stuff it needs to be promoted well.
August 26, 2007 — 11:24 am
Teri Lussier says:
Mr. Riccelli-
I’m intrigued by the idea of the naked bisiness card, but am wondering if it works in other applications: Let’s say I had a hyper-local blog for a large community of brick ranch homes and the blog was named TheBrickRanch. What if…A stark white URL only postcard sent to a geo farm of brick ranch homes? Another app- naked ad in a weekly local paper?
August 29, 2007 — 5:55 pm
Richard Riccelli says:
Mrs. Lussier:
Weak.
The URL should have an immediate, wet benefit. And the target audience should have a frequent and recent and highly-demonstrated interest in that benefit … a commonality and focus that extends well beyond the fact they happen to live in single-floor masonry homes near your own.
In marketing, it is always useful to imagine yourself as your prospect. A cynical, skeptical, busy, distracted, anxious, demanding, tired, underpaid [—I’m sure you get the idea—] prospect who doesn’t give a damn about what you may happen to be doing or selling or why.
Make sure your naked URL on your stark white card is instantly compelling to her. Then you may—may—be on to something.
Good luck, Richard
p.s. while Mies “god-is-in-the-details” van der Rohe coined the mantra “less is more” to a swooning Bauhaus intelligentsia, I always found Robert Venturi’s “Learning-from-Las-Vegas” contra view more appealing. “Less is a bore,” he observed.
People like information. Lots of information. In fact they are ravenous for it. And can easily—easily!—handle it in amazing complexity (think baseball box scores) and depth (think stock tables) when the communications are clear and useful and compelling. Not simple. But clear. And useful. And compelling. And usually** not naked. Instead dressed to the nines and powers of nine. Edward R. Tufte has written beautifully on this topic. Indeed his most recent book is entitled “Beautiful Evidence.”
I enthusiastically recommend all of his books to anyone who blogs. Each is brilliant in its own way.
In fact, I’m currently reading (aptly enough for this site) “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and much of the subtext of that book is how we smarty-pants get seduced all too easily by facile arguments (like the Gaussian bell curve and standard deviation) that simply don’t apply to the things we trying to understand or solve or advance. But we love the narrative so, we swoon and blindly follow the story.
So I may have seduced you with “naked white business cards” … just as others may seduce you by saying “keep your blog posts short.” But beware your intrigue and fascination. You are apt to be blind sided when the black swan appears.
—
** my idea may is an exception that proves the rule. And of course I am a highly-accomplished professional. Don’t try these things at home without adult supervision.
August 29, 2007 — 8:27 pm
Teri Lussier says:
wow Mr. R- So much here to digest. I understand less is not more, but the late hour compels me to simplify, simplify, simplify, so in response- TheBrickRanch thanks you. 😉
August 29, 2007 — 9:11 pm