When setting yourself up in business it isn’t long before you face the task of presenting your business your potential customers. You have to present your business in a way that will inspire others to want to buy goods or services from you rather than from your competitors.
Recently I received an email from someone doing an email marketing campaign. The first thing I noticed was that it was from a gmail address. This got me thinking about when I’ve met people promoting their new businesses at networking events, and the practices I’ve encountered that I’ve found very off-putting. For quite some time I’ve had a mental list of a few of these practices and it’s time that I wrote them down rather than keeping them in my head!
Here is the list:
- Using free business cards that have an advert on the back. Typically these are ordered online and there’s nothing wrong with obtaining your business cards this way. However, these companies will sell you “proper” business cards – without adverts on them – for only a few pounds. Keeping your costs low is one thing but being a cheapskate in such obvious fashion will just put many people off
- Use of a PO Box address. Note that I have no objection to receiving a business card without a postal address on it. I fully accept that many businesses are based at peoples’ homes and that they want some safeguards. Further, a business card doesn’t need a postal address on it (unless you’re running a shop or something similar, in which case you won’t mind putting your actual address on your promotional literature). A business card needs to have a phone number and an email address on it. When you’ve established a dialogue with a contact, you can give them your address at the relevant time. In passing, for most businesses I think a landline telephone number (and not just a mobile number) is still necessary – although I reckon the time will come when just a mobile will be acceptable
- A poorly designed web site. These days everyone knows someone who “does websites”. A short while ago it seemed like even the neighbours cat was doing them! The problem is that getting the kid down the road to design you a web site might be cheap but will almost certainly be a false economy. Note that good hosting providers will offer tools to support you in putting together a professional looking web site – so if you really are on a small budget you’re probably just as well off doing it yourself
- Publically using free email. That is, using gmail, yahoo or similar addresses, or the email address your ISP provides, as your public contact address (e.g. on your business card and other promotional literature). Instead, register a domain representative of your business and use that. Note that I use the word “public” because there’s nothing wrong with using free email behind the scenes – just buy the domain and have it forward to your real (behind the scenes) address
- Publically using free web space. This is basically the same as using free email. Again, the same comments apply regarding the use of web space. Again, whatever you use behind the scenes, register a suitable domain and set it up to forward to your real web space
That’s it – that’s my list of things I think you should avoid when presenting a business. As always, please comment if you can think of any I’ve missed, and in particular please comment if you think I’m wrong about any of these. I think there’s more to be said on this topic – in particular, in most cases above, I’ve not explained why the practices are bad. Instead I’ve decided that there is material there worthy of its own article!
See also: Free Business Cards on Business Opportunities and Ideas.
