Track Your Business Cards

Successfull business people will always tell you to take a stack of business cards with you where ever you go. After all, you never know when you'll have an opportunity to talk about your business. Cafe Press is no exception to this rule. One of the first business expenses you should consider incurring (after you decide to go to premium) is the tried and true business card. Then, when you are out and about, pass them out like there's no tomorrow. Post them in grocery stores on the bulletin boards, in the bakery, drop them in the deli fishbowl, hand them out to people who comment on your CP tee, in short, give them out or post them whenever you can.

One of the drawbacks of traditional print advertising (which we should consider the biz card to be a part of, is that it's tough to track the success. Or so you might think. Afterall you can track links easily enough in Statcounter or another tracking device, so ads you place on the web are pretty easy to track the success of. It's much harder with print advertising, but it is possible.

So should we create a business card tracking system? Okay! Lets!

Step 1: You are going to need a business card naturally enough. Consider when you make your business cards, that these business cards are a little different in purpose than your normal business cards. How so? Well, normally business cards advertise the person handing them out in a manner of speaking. We want to advertise your shop. Make it a little mini ad. Don't get too over the top, you don't want it to be garbled, but you can have a nice little plug on your card if you like or a photo of a design or two from your shop. Printing For Less is a good place to look for business cards, they are pretty inexpensive for high quality printing, at the time of this entry it was $49.95 for 500 cards. But this option is for the graphically capable. You'll need to understand how to set up your files and send them through the internet, if you don't have at least a passing knowledge of how to do this you should go with an all services provided option. Also check out Kinko's, Sir Speedy, Office Depot, Staples or "copies plus" businesses, they may be able to do smaller runs of cards and will probably be able to hold your hand through the process if necessary.

Matte or Glossy Finish?
If you haven't already ordered your business cards this is something you'll need to consider. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

Matte Finish: Usually a matte finished business card is very traditional in its style and presentation. You will get your name, telephone number, address and url on the card. It will probably be one sided and will follow a very standard format. These are poor qualities if what we want to make is a sort of "mini flyer". The advantage is that you can easily write on them with a pencil or ball point pen, they also tend to be cheaper and are offered by more companies since it's easy to do. These also tend to be easily done and you don't need to be a graphics whiz to have your order placed.

Glossy Finish: Glossy cards tend to be whatever you want them to be. You essentially get a certain amount of space to work in to create whatever you like. You can use color and pictures and your text doesn't have to be formatted in a specific way, they are very open to whatever ideas you have in your head. By far and away they are more attractive for someone wanting to use them as a mini advertisement. You will need to be graphically proficient to set them up in most cases since you'll be uploading your own graphic file (a .tif, jpg, eps or pdf) to just be printed on the card. The drawback is that they are hard to write on (you'll need a sharpie marker or blank labels that you can stick on the back of the card that can be written on).

Whichever you go with, it's better to get a one sided business card, it allows you to write on the back. That is essential for our little plan.

Step 2: Set up a section of your shop with a design or two (or however many) and hide it. Offer a discount of a dollar or two which you advertise on your business card to attract your customers (either handwritten or printed by the company that prints your cards). Copy down the URL. You can duplicate designs if you like or create brand new ones it doesn't really matter. Be careful if you duplicate a section though, Google is finicky and I have heard that Google treats exactly identical sections as search engine spam. Do a little research on this (because I don't know if this is true or not) before duplicating an entire section rather than just a design or two.

Step 3: Take your business cards and write the hidden URL on the back of the card. Do it for 100 cards (or however many you would like to use in your test). Then take the cards and hand them out. You can do different sections for different events, for example if you have a site geared towards classic cars then put one URL on one batch of cards that you hand out at the Pasadena Auto Show and another on the cards that you post in auto parts stores in your area.

Step 4: Regularly check your shops statcounter and see if the hidden URLs have been accessed. If they have then you know someone who you gave a business card to or who saw your business card posted somewhere is being pulled in by your card. Not a bad little trick aye?

Follow this basic idea with any kind of print advertising and you'll be able to track how effective your cards (or other printed matter) are in attracting customers.