Business Promotion Mistakes
I’ve always had a fascination with business promotion and marketing. I even used to read the phone book yellow pages for fun. I like reading the display ads and classified ads in magazines and I love billboards and posters.
But, over the last few months as I began to seriously launch my own ventures, I have been looking at small business advertisements, newsletters, promotional materials and business cards in a new way.
What I have noticed, from a customer’s perspective, is a significant gap in understanding of what to communicate and how to communicate. I have also noticed a sad lack of professionalism.
For example, I once asked a woman what she did in her small business since we were both waiting in line to pay for office supplies. She began to talk, and talk and talk. She was still following me and talking when I climbed into my car. I am still not sure what she does and she never gave me her business card.
I’ve also been handed business cards that have been folded in half and looked like the owner had carried them in his pocket for months. I’ve received business cards that are so fancy, or the font so small that I can’t even read the email address or phone number to contact the person.
In the last two days I have received, via email, at least two in-store promotions/announcements for new businesses that did not include their physical address. How can I shop at your store if I don’t know where it’s located?
These are all business promotion mistakes I don’t want to make.
So here are a few gentle reminders of what to do to avoid making these same mistakes…
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Your Elevator Speech
- ALWAYS carry your business cards with you and hand them as soon as someone asks you what you do.
- Make sure your business cards are clean and neat, not smudged or dog-eared.
- Are your business cards readable?
- Keep them simple.
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The elevator speech. You may or may not have heard of this before.
If you were riding in an elevator with someone, a banker or potential investor or customer, you would have just the amount of time between floors to pitch your idea or explain what your business is and what you do.
The point is to keep it simple and brief, but also tell your story in a way that invites further questions and conversation. You want them to invite you off the elevator to tell them more. You don’t want to chase them down the hallway because you weren’t finished talking.
Business Cards
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–A fancy font may look nice to you, but if a prospective customer can’t make out the letters or numbers to contact you, then you’ve lost them.
–The same thing goes for the a font size. Don’t try to squeeze your elevator speech onto your card and compromise the size of your font. Again, if your potential customer can’t read it, you’ve lost them.
–And, one more thing, white lettering with a black or colored background can be very difficult to read for a lot of people.
- Include the name of your business, and tagline if applicable, your name, address, email, phone number and website. In today’s online, socially connected world you should also consider including your Twitter ID, and/or Facebook page address.
Identify with your business
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If you work a day j-o-b and you are building your business on the side, begin to identify with your side business. When people ask what you do, don’t say “I work as a ‘blah blah‘ with ‘blah blah‘, but run a side business doing…” Instead say, “I own a ‘fill in the blank‘ business doing ”fill in the blank‘ and I ….”
Where in the world are you?
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If you have a physical location for your business like a store or restaurant it is vitally important to include your address and phone number on everything-advertisements, print-ads, brochures, newsletters, e-zines, business cards, receipts, etc. If you want to attract new customers tell them where they can find you.
If your business is mail order or internet based it is still important to tell people where you are. We want to know that you are a real person and not some nameless, faceless, flash in the pan scam artist. You don’t have to share your home address, but at lease have a P.O. Box and a phone number so people can reach you.
These are not earth-shattering, brand new concepts and I am not the first person to say them, but I keep coming across incidents and people who just don’t get it. They make the same mistakes again and again..
I don’t want to be them.
And, since I know that a lot of you, like me, want to build successful businesses I felt I had an obligation to share these ideas with you. They are as much a gentle reminder to me as they are for you, the reader.
What do you think? Were these tips helpful? Leave a reply and join the conversation.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sandy Dempsey, Funky Chunks. Funky Chunks said: very smart advice! RT @SandyDfromNJ: Business promotion mistakes I don’t want to make ~ http://bit.ly/jXX7z [...]