by Honora Lee Wolfe

Most of us have a business card, but did anyone ever teach how to use them to generate business?!  Your cards can be a cheap but valuable marketing tool, but not if they never leave your office or your wallet. Here are a bunch of ways we can use them that might actually get a patient.

1. First, make sure you don’t leave home without your cards. Take them everywhere.
2. If you move, don’t scratch out the phone number and hand-write the update. Get new cards made; they are cheap enough.
3. Don’t put tons of info on the card. Mostly people want your name, phone, email, and one line about what you do or who you are. A photo is nice so they can remember where they met you, but not crucial. Make sure the type is simple and readable, not flowery or fancy.
4. Get in the habit of handing out cards to everyone. Ten cards a day would be optimal. Give them to anyone you can start a conversation with: receptionists in every office you go to, store clerks who help you, people you meet at parties, bank tellers, waiters and waitresses, the coffee person who serves you at Starbucks, even the police officer who just gave you a ticket, should all get cards.
5. If you are at a social or networking gathering, a class, a seminar, or in a situation where you have that extra half-minute, take a moment to personalize every card you give out. This could be as simple as “call me for a free consultation,” a quote for the day, or simply “give me a call if you ever have a health issue I might be able to help.”
6. Tell people to whom you give your cards that you are always happy to have new patients. Don’t assume that they know it already.
7. When people at a social gathering of any type give you a card, take a moment to jot down anything about the conversation that were important to remember. You never know when that person may enter your life again as a business colleague or patient.
8. When someone asks for your card, give them two or three and ask them to share with friends or co-workers.
9. Include a business card with any envelope you mail, no matter where it is going. You have no idea where that card might end up.
10. Tack a few cards to any and all community bulletin boards at laundries, libraries, schools, community centers, coffee shops, grocery stores, yoga studios, or fitness centers.
11. Walk the streets in a one-mile circumference of your clinic and see if you can do “card trades” with other local businesses, leaving your cards in their reception area or waiting room. Buy several plastic card-holders for this purpose. If you cannot do a card trade, at least leave a card or two with every store, business, or office you enter.
12. Leave a business card along with your tip or signed credit card receipt at restaurants.
13. Include a card with any press releases or letters you send out to media outlets, HR departments, MD/DO/DC/DVM offices.
14. If there are local veterinarians who do acupuncture in your area, these pet owners might be open to acupuncture, too. See if you can get local acu-vets to put your cards in their waiting areas.
15. See if you can get your card included in Welcome Wagon packages to newcomers in your community.
16. I have heard of people going to the library and inserting one of their cards in all the books on alternative medicine. Though perhaps frowned upon by the library staff, it’s a clever idea.

So there are a dozen card-related marketing ideas. Can you come up with more? Not for shy violets, it’s true. But inexpensive and, with persistence, effective. If you’re gonna print ‘em, don’t let ‘em gather dust!