Using free business cards for offline advertising

I was recently reading through an article that was discussing various methods of advertising your online business. One of the things that the article said majority of people who are successful with their online business do differently to those who not successful is that they advertise offline as well as online.

This got me to thinking about how I could advertise my business in a cost effective manner offline.

Of course the first thing I did was go to my search engine and started researching various options for offline advertising. That was when I came across VistaPrint. VistaPrint are an online printing company that allows you to design and order your business cards, flyer's and various other promotional materials all from the comfort of your own home.

The thing that attracted my attention first up though was that they were offering to produce 100 business cards for me for free! All I had to do was pay for postage and handling and they would ship me a package with my cards. So I figured I'd give it a burl.

The process was simple. I picked a design from their catalogue (if you want the free ones you have to use their designs), added my text and selected the layout. Added them to my cart and hey presto, about a week later my cards arrived in the mail.

Now to test the offline advertising concept. The cards I had ordered had a unique URL on them so I was able to easily track the number of hits my site got from the cards. I the placed the cards on community notice boards, I asked some of the local business' if I could leave a small hand full with them and kept a few to hand to people I talked to during the normal course of my week. Three orders of cards (that's 300 cards) later and I have had a hit ratio of about 39%. Considering I was going to consider it a success if I got 10% return on the cards I have to admit I was pretty impressed.

The hit rate from my cards actually beats most of the online options I have used to advertise my websites in the past, and because they haven't gone there by clicking on some obscure link, or to get credit's from a safelist (not that I'm knocking safelists, very successful form of advertising) you know that they have come to your site because they're interested.

So, if you would like to take advantage of some free cards or any of the other free items on offer from VistaPrint click on any of the hyperlinks in this article to be taken straight to their site. The item they are offering to supply for free are:

• Free Business Cards
• Free Rubber Stamps
• Free Sticky Notes
• Logo Design
• Caricature Design

VistaPrint claim to be used by over 11 million people worldwide and offer a wide range of other promotional materials for your business as well as the general business cards etc. You can design your own T-Shirts, brochures, flyer's - you name they probably have or can get it. Have a look today at VistaPrint.