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Make Your Business Cards Work Harder For You

Business cards are an old and time-honored way to share your information professionally with others. Are your business cards working hard enough for you? Here are some tips to make sure!

Business cards are an old and time-honored way to share your information professionally with others. Are your business cards working hard enough for you? Here are some tips to make sure!

The first thing a business card must do is give people a tangible way to get in touch with you. In other words, it must include your name, company name, phone, email and address. (Here’s a tip, see if you can get the person to go ahead and put your contact information in their smartphone, and you do the same with their information!)

But how do you make your business card work harder for you? There isn’t much room on that little piece of cardboard to explain who you are and remind the person how you can be of service to them.

If your business and/or the services you provide are wide-ranging and seem to take longer to explain than they should, you need to sit back and refocus on what it is that you do. As the old saying goes, if you can’t write what you do on the back of your business card, then you don’t know what you do.

A lot of times it’s best to start with the problem(s) you are trying to solve and why your customers stay with you. If you are a boarding facility, for example, figure out why you are unique and why your customers love being at your facility. (They can choose full or self-board. They have access to indoor and outdoor arenas. You have the state’s top dressage trainer at your facility. You cater to children and beginner lessons. You are located next to a state or national park with trails.) 

If you have a long and successful history of offering a variety of services successfully for people who own horses, your exercises is to write out all the different types of things you provide to your boarders.

Services for people without horses:

  • Beginner and intermediate youth English lessons
  • Adult-only hunter/jumper lessons
  • Leasing and co-leasing of lesson horses for private use
  • On-farm schooling shows with lesson horses
  • Leasing of lesson horses for local shows you attend
  • Coaching at those shows
  • Stable management and horse care classes (braiding, nutrition, hoof care, etc., perhaps in conjunction with your veterinarian and farrier)
  • Monthly lesson horse trail ride

Services for horse owners:

  • Full board
  • Self-care board
  • Self-care pasture board
  • Lessons for youth and adults, beginner to advanced
  • Transportation to selected horse shows
  • Training and coaching at selected horse shows
  • On-farm schooling shows
  • Access to trails on your farm or on adjacent properties
  • Stable management and horse care classes (braiding, nutrition, hoof care, etc., perhaps in conjunction with your veterinarian and farrier)

All of that information is good and will work well to help you improve a website or create a brochure, but ALL THAT isn’t going to fit on a business card.

This is when you want to figure out the main problems you are trying to solve. Basically, you are trying to allow people with or without horses a safe, friendly facility that offers lots of amenities and activities.

So maybe the tagline on your business card, or the short list of what you do under your name, might read: “Windswept Farm, where you and a horse can enjoy being together.”

That simple sentence can mean different things to different people, but the message is the same: We are friendly, you don’t have to have a horse, and we’re fun!

Or, you might do a simple list that points out what your clients said were your top amenities: Windswept Farm: beginner and adult lessons, full and self-board, indoor and outdoor arenas, trails available.

Part of making your business cards work harder for you is making sure people know what you can do to solve their problems. It’s as simple as that.

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