A great business card won’t close a six-figure sale, but a bad one will take away any chance you have. First impressions matter, and while a business card contains only a handful of words, it nevertheless speaks volumes about your company. Here are tips for designing a lead generation-worthy business card.

1. Flimsy paper suggests cheapness and weakness — two qualities people do not look for in a supplier. Always go with a paper stock that has some heft.
2. A glossy finish looks great, but a matte finish makes it easy for people to write notes on your business card.



3. Along the same lines, dark print on a white (or light) background makes your card easier to write on — and easier to read. Are you letting fancy design get in the way of user-friendliness?
4. An odd-sized card grabs attention, but not always in a positive way. If a prospect has trouble fitting your card into a wallet or business card book, your first impression will be one of annoyance.
5. Especially if your prospects are 40 years old and up, fonts should be medium to large. If a prospect has to hunt for reading glasses to get your email address, that email inquiry may never be sent.
6. White space conveys organization, sophistication and reliability. A cluttered business card design conveys disorganization, crudeness and sloppiness.
7. Make sure all the pertinent information is on your card: Name, title, address, phone number(s), email address, website URL, business hours, area served and nature of your business (if not obvious from your company name).
8. Avoid adding information that is not pertinent. Your business card is not a substitute for a sales brochure.
9. If you feel it necessary to add a sales message, keep it short and sweet. Examples:

o Over 10,000 customers served

o Established 1968

o More than 250,000 items in stock

o BBB Accredited Business

10. Avoid the temptation to overdesign. As we pointed out in a recent post, being unique is a bad way to sell. An ultra-creative business card runs the risk of confusing prospects or putting them off.

Over to You

What’s your design formula for a lead generation-friendly business card design?

Living in Chicago and dealing with Chicago traffic, I’ve had plenty of time to study billboards. Plenty. This is the conclusion I’ve come to: Most billboards stink, even ones created by global companies with the marketing resources to do it right.

Billboard design issues that crop up over and over include:

• Unreadable fonts — Unreadable at a dead stop, let alone flying down the expressway at 70 mph.

• Horrible color contrast — Making the message even harder to absorb.

• Microscopic branding — Nice imagery, but what’s the name of the company?

• Inscrutable message — Nice imagery, but what am I looking at?

• Too much information — Just because most drivers speed does not mean they are speed-readers.

If you want your billboard to accomplish something — expand brand awareness, generate an inquiry, bring in new foot traffic, etc. — following best practices for billboard design will set you on the road to success.

Helpful Resources for Billboard Design

To help with your billboard design project, I put together this list of resources that seems especially helpful.

• How To Write a Billboard (or, Copywriting at 70 MPH). This detailed article is 10 years old, but 90 percent of the billboards still ignore 90 percent of the author’s advice.

• 9 Tips When Designing a Billboard. Here is a good, high-level recap of billboard design best practices. There aren’t that many things to remember, but it’s important to remember all of them.

• Good vs. Bad Outdoor Design. This article has instructive photos that illustrate the billboard design tips it covers. The images make the points quite well.

• Billboard Design Tips. This article concentrates on color and contrast — key issues!

• Fonts and Billboard Design. Here’s a simple, practical guide to selecting billboard fonts, with a few excellent specific recommendations.

• The Effect of Font Size on Readability. How big should your billboard font be if you want it legible at 360 feet? 480 feet? Not sure? Read this article, and you will be!

• 9 Billboard Design FAILS. I included this one because it has very instructive photos, but also because it’s pretty darn funny.

Hopefully these resources will put your billboard design in high gear.

"Can I scan your badge?"

Ugh! As I receive a barrage of these requests while wandering through trade show aisles, I want to say no. But I realize that booth reps are scanning the numbers just to make someone happy. Sadly, though, that happy person is usually not the booth visitor. It's usually someone higher up the sales food chain. So the booth reps keep scanning.

Don't get me wrong. Lead generation barcode scanning technology, some of which now utilizes smartphones, has been a true godsend for marketers at trade shows. No messing with paper lead forms, collecting business cards or missing opportunities.

However, trade show lead generation tech doesn't make more or better leads; it just facilitates lead collection. Unfortunately, I fear marketers today rely too heavily on these technologies, desperately hoping for a measurable ROI or, at least, a hefty number of badge scans to salve their fears of wasting marketing money on shows. Plus, rental of lead collecting services from shows aren't free. Don't want to waste that investment, either!

Scan First and Count the Bodies Later

As the opening example illustrates, the default behavior of booth reps these days seems to be to scan as many show visitor badges as possible, regardless of whether they are qualified prospects or not. Sure, by doing so, they won't miss anyone. Yet the task of sorting and counting the real leads from the blizzard of badge scans can be daunting. Say each lead takes 15 to 30 minutes of a salesperson's time for follow-up. Now multiply that by hundreds. Quite a post-show project that could have little payoff!

Marketers would be better off advising their booth personnel to holster their badge scanners until a visitor has been qualified. This requires script development and training of booth personnel. Never assume booth reps know how to do this or know what you're trying to achieve! Plus, each show's unique circumstances and audience can change the qualification process dramatically. Thus, the procedures should be reviewed for every show, every time.

The ideal scenario is to scan a visitor's badge only after a trained booth rep has qualified him or her as a genuine prospect, and noted the immediacy of need for the product or service being sold.

Scans and Swag

Being in the promotional products business for 17 years, I recommend using swag in conjunction with trade show marketing. However, just like badge scanners, it needs to be used judiciously. While speaking of scanners and swag, don't use them in concert to create a false sense of lead generation. Here's what happens ...

Say an attractive swag giveaway has been chosen to give to "qualified" prospects at a show. The marketer instructs his booth personnel to give the goodie only to someone who has agreed to be scanned. But, again, have genuine leads been generated? Actually, what you've created is a database of swag-seekers who may or may not be qualified prospects.

The Real Role of Lead Generation Technology

Use lead generation tech in a facilitating role, not a qualifying one. Select a lead generation technology provider that can offer you the type of information collection (or at least a viable workaround) that helps you reach your sales goals both at and after a trade show.

About the Author

Dr. Heidi Thorne, MBA/DBA, is a business author, blogger and book editor. Her 25-plus-year sales, marketing, advertising and PR career includes 15 years as a trade newspaper editor and a decade in the trade show and convention hotel industries. Learn more about Heidi at http://www.HeidiThorne.com.