When everyone thinks of marketing, they think of social media, blogging, and advertisements. Advertisements aren’t as effective as they used to be, so don’t use those. That narrows down the playing field to social media and blogging, right?
Wrong. There are plenty of other ways to market your business or product. When thinking out of the box, an entrepreneur will end up creating merchandise for their business or product. However, no matter how much people think outside of the box, most people won’t notice the one thing that is essential to marketing.
Business cards are an essential way to market yourself. You strike a conversation with someone, they respond. The conversation continues until it ends. Then, you give the person your business card. They look at all of the things you put on that business card.
Everyone has a business card at a business expo. However, few people actually see business cards as a way of marketing. Most people see business cards as an, “Oh, let’s keep in touch. These are some things about me,” while thinking that not everyone may visit your website, follow you on your social networks, and so on.
When you hand someone your business card, I want you to remember that the person you hand your business card to could become your next top client. If you meet a person, you’re more likely to buy their products. If you met Jeff Bezos at a store and talked with him for 30 minutes, and he gave you his business card, that would make you want to buy from Amazon even more.
There are some people and products that I have never heard of before a business expo. However, the people who give out business cards are also going to be the people who tell you about other products and offer a lot of products. I didn’t know who Mike Michalowicz was before I went to my first business expo. I ended up leaving that business expo with The Pumpkin Plan. He also had a business card.
We only have 2 seconds to grab a person’s attention. Teenagers are really good at getting other people’s attention at a business expo because there are so few of them. My brother and I are always the only teenagers at any of the expos. I run out of business cards, and on the day I went to one of the business expos, I got multiple sales for my books.
However, no matter how much attention anyone gets, all of that attention goes in vain if the person forgets about you. In a business expo, everyone has business cards, everyone is talking, everyone is trying to start another conversation, and everyone exchanges business cards. There’s a lot of activity. If you’re really good, you might get 15 seconds of attention before the other person talks about their business or talks with another person.
When I was new to business expos, I would say that I’m an author, teenager entrepreneur, and blogger. In addition to that, I would mention some of my social networks which also takes up a lot of time. With a good business card, I was able to fix that problem. In my next blog post, I will show you how to make a good business card.
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