A 4"x 6" postcard doubles duty as a large, hard-to-lose business card. UV coating on one side protects the red side, leaving the white side for a brief message and addressing.
What clever and innovative ways can you use postcards for communicating both ordinary and not-so-ordinary information? Standard marketing/advertising messages seem to be the most popular, however, big business cards are drawing increased interest.
The key to creating retention value in any marketing effort is, of course, obvious: add something your prospects or customers want to keep. No, something they really want to keep. However, before you can do this, you’ll need to understand what is important to them. There’s where we often fail.
Prospect and customer interest generally falls in two areas: 1) something relating directly to you, or 2) something which interests them without any obvious relationship to you. Calendars, charity, and sports schedules fall in the latter category. How many desk, wallet, or wall calendars have we kept when compared with those we tossed?
To varying degrees, your product or service information often ends up the same place as the calendars. People like bite-size information. Our society has adapted to what used to be called “information overload” by ignoring all but the headlines, so to speak. With that in mind, maybe it’s time to change your own company’s headlines, in effect, giving smaller parts of your story at a time. Something easily retained.
Strengthen one point about you, your product, or service.
In the case study below, we emphasize one factor above all: accessibility.
Say you’re a service person whose business depends on customers reaching you quickly by phone, 4×6 postcards make handy handouts as well as for mailing. And they provide the information that is more likely to be retained than the typical marketing message.
A friend of mine, Denny, services a variety of print-related and office equipment. One day on a service call, he noticed that this customer had written his name and phone number on a large piece of cardboard and stuck it to the bulletin board near some of the equipment he serviced. It was big enough for the manager and employees to see from a distance.
See a need and fill it.
So we’re printing a 4×6 version of my friend’s business card (see image above). Well, okay, we switched from vertical to horizontal layout for the postcard but still used the same vector art and design elements. We pumped up his phone number to 70pt URW Accidalia Buch T HeavyCondensed and justified his name under it in a slightly smaller size. The bright red side of the card emphasizes his name (effectively his brand) and phone number. This focuses on the information most relevant to his client’s immediate needs, namely locating his phone number in order to call for service. The company and contact information is still there but at business-card size.
Passed around the locations he services, these cards won’t be lost as easily as would a similar number of business cards. Neither will they be buried in a wallet. Even if tossed in a drawer, shiny red cards should be easier to find. And don’t forget how effectively they work as conversation starters for those who receive the occasional “just touching bases” card in the mail.
In the case above, we merely provided a better means to achieve a similar result to the one the customer had already achieved. The key here is to watch for clues from those in your market. Then act on that.
If fifty bucks spent on 250 cards makes it easier for only a few of his best clients to reach him, and starts a few new conversations, he will have captured and held a greater mindshare for some time to come. In today’s economy, the value of that is priceless.
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Note: It’s the final week of our 4×6 postcard special. (click to see Print Specials)
How about you. Have an innovative use for postcards? Your comments AND ratings are appreciated. In cased you hadn’t noticed, you can click on the stars to rate our articles. Good or bad ratings all help us do better. Thanks.
Addendum:
In the case study above, labels, right on the equipment, might have seemed the obvious choice for contact information. However, due to probable damage from solutions or oily conditions or cosmetic reasons, this is not always desirable. The key in the case study above was that it was the customer who created the means most convenient for them to keep a service number handy; a large name and number on a nearby bulletin board.
Filed under: business, marketing, printed media Tagged: | big business cards, customer service, economy
