Earlier this week I attended a conference in which I wanted to gauge reaction to a new product offering. And this was an informal one on one type of conference.
No PowerPoint. Which is hard to do standing around the coffee urn.
Maybe data sheets? I don't think so. My unscientific observation is if someone does take one, they end up in the hotel room trash can that evening (if they make it that far).
What to do? You can design and print business cards for not much money these days. (btw stay away from vistaprint because they nick you every time you upload an image). And get them in 48 hours. So I printed up a card which had printing on both sides. I found a service that allowed me to upload Adobe Illustrator files which was great because everything is in vector for extremely crisp printing.
On one side was a 5 word description of what the product actually did.
This is one of my pet peeves. Too often people love their adjectives: Seamless, leaders and other useless adjectives. Only use nouns.
Then I added something pertinent to the conference, contact information and a logo. Side two had five bullet points of 1-5 words listing the key features.
That was it. Even if you are not going to do print them, this is a great exercise for getting your point across. If you cannot state this simply, you are not trying hard enough. And you will lose the attention of your potential customers.
And finally, I knew people would not throw out the cards because it fit right in with all the business cards they collected.
The great thing about biz card handouts is that you can tailor them for every meeting. You can even print a very small quantity yourself (if you've got a good graphics program and quality color printer.)
For example, I do a different set of "marketing tips" for a woman business owner group (not much high-tech) than I do for a high-tech entrepreneur meeting.
People like them, keep them...and remember the woman who didn't give them the same old boring card.
Posted by: Mary Schmidt | 03 April 2008 at 09:01 AM
The great thing about biz card handouts is that you can tailor them for every meeting. You can even print a very small quantity yourself (if you've got a good graphics program and quality color printer.)
For example, I do a different set of "marketing tips" for a woman business owner group (not much high-tech) than I do for a high-tech entrepreneur meeting.
People like them, keep them...and remember the woman who didn't give them the same old boring card.
Posted by: Mary Schmidt | 03 April 2008 at 09:01 AM