Quick and simple, business card marketing is an almost free publicity technique that oftentimes net effortless profits.
Day Fifteen: Business Card Marketing
If this is your first time visiting the thirty-day Make Money without Spending a Dime Challenge - Welcome! If you want to start from the beginning, you'll find the first posting here, and a list of all of the challenges to date here. Questions, comments or ideas to add? Join the discussion (its free and takes mere seconds to register).
I'll be brief today - mostly because most entrepreneurs already know about this free publicity idea. The only reason they haven't done it is because they needed a gentle reminder.
I want you to grab 100 of your business cards today and walk around town. Hit all of the laundromats, supermarkets, delis, dry cleaners, coffee shops and anywhere else people congregate to look at a community bulletin board.
Place 3-5 of your business cards on each of these boards, for a total of 100. If you want to add an incentive to respond, write a personal message on the back of each one, offering the person who brings the card into your establishment something special that costs you little to nothing (i.e. an extra 5% off, no tax on their next purchase, or a free needs analysis).
If you are someone who lives in a smaller town where there aren't enough bulletin boards to go around, try something a bit more unusual. Talk to people that you come across in your day-to-day life. Be it the coffee shop, the gas station, or clothing store - it doesn't matter. What does matter is that you talk to someone long enough to ask them for their card - so that you can provide them with yours.
For those who don't yet have business cards, get 250 free business cards from VistaPrint (they print their logo on the back of their freebies) or rather inexpensive cards from iPrint. Better yet, create a tearsheet about your business on your computer and print off 25 sheets (as close to free as you are going to get if you've already got the paper and ink).
The next idea in the make money challenge is to Get Free Mailing Lists. Are you up for it?
