In the business breakfast networking world a fair number of business cards get chucked around. Getting yours noticed is a battle in itself so it’s best to avoid accompanying it with some of these gems:
“Here’s my card. Don’t look at my website it’s awful.”
“My website address is on there but it doesn’t work, so don’t bother looking.”
“Take a look at my website. It doesn’t work properly but you’ll get the idea”
“Don’t bother checking out my website as the info is really out of date”
Remember that your website is a showroom open to potential customers 24 hours a day. What is effectively your online sales brochure should be turning these interested visitors into paying customers.
A card with no web address on it isn’t such a bad thing after all.
If your website is on the least bit shaky ground contextually or cosmetically, scrub it from your business card. Think about some of the other places you can send breakfast meeting prospects to instead when you follow up your encounter via email. Here’s a couple of non-industry-specific nuggets to kick off with:
Linkedin profile: What do you mean you don’t have one? It’s a great resource for showing how well connected you are and how well regarded you are through the recommendations system. Here’s mine.
Google Places listing: Search Google Maps for your business. Find your listing then verify and add to it. Encourage happy customers to leave reviews. Here’s ours.
Got thousands of business cards left?
Sure, there’s plenty of creative uses for old business cards out there. But what if you care about the environment and don’t quite have the time or energy to make cool business card cubes?
Why not just stick a forward on your domain name to your recently verified Google Places listing?
No embarrassment in that!