Thirty Creative Ways to Use Business Cards

On the Back

1. Print a team's sports schedule on the back. Fans will keep them handy and keep your name in front of them

2. Print a special discount offer or coupon on the back. People will keep it because they intend to use the coupon.

3. If you do seminars, print key principals on the back. Your attendees will refer to them later and think of you.

4. Hand write on the back your "unlisted" 800 number. This adds value to your card, making people keep it longer because they don't want to lose the special number.

Ad Specialties

5. Make the business card the ad specialty: Print your company information on letter openers, CD openers, magnets, pens, highlighters, keychains, mousepads, mugs, luggage tags, and other items that people will keep because they are useful.

6. Attach a business card to an ad specialty: For example, give business card holders as a thank you gift and place your business card in as the first one. Or, have your card designed as a Rolodex card

7. If you routinely give out seasonal gifts or specialties, attach your business card. Examples: candy canes at Christmas, heart shaped containers filled with candy for Valentine's Day, or even a sandwich bag of candy with a card stapled to it.

Unique Places to Put Them

8. Tuck them into the product before delivery: If you are a florist, cut a hole in it and tie a ribbon around the flowers and through the business card. If you sell gift baskets, Tuck one inside the basket before delivering it to your customer. The same goes for Mary Kay or Avon Cosmetics - place your card in the bag. You've seen how some restaurants staple a menu to their bags for takeout; if you use bags, staple your card to the outside of the bag.

9. Send a business card in every piece of correspondence - letters, invoices, even your electric bill. Sooner or later, those cards will be used.

10. If you are crafty, incorporate them into your designs: embellish them with rubber stamps, or blend them with other art projects. You can also mount them to greeting cards you create and send to customers and prospects.

11.When mailing out information: Take a number 10 envelope, facing you and upside down. Fold the envelope in thirds. When you turn it around, there is a little pocket to tuck your card in. Include it in the mailing. Using a colored envelope makes the presentation even more dramatic.

12. Scan your card in and use it as a graphic for when you exchange links with other websites. The other site can use your graphic as the link.

13. Place them in library books as if you used them as bookmarks. Visit bookstores place them in books related to your business.

Keeping Them Handy:

14. Use them as bookmarks so you'll always have some readily available if you meet someone at school, in the library, on the bus, or at the park where you like to read.

15. Have your spouse, family, and friends carry some of your cards with them in case they meet someone who might be interested in your product or service.

16. Wear them! Use them as nametags at meetings and conferences instead of the "Hello, my name is ..." type of tags.

17. Keep a stack of cards everywhere you might need them - in your car, your jacket pocket, your briefcase, your purse or wallet, in your planner, at home, anywhere you can think of. Then you'll always have some on hand when you meet a prospect.

When to Use Them:

18. Give them out during your personal meetings when you meet someone new: at your church, your children's soccer games, at lunch with your friends when someone brings a guest. To be more polite, you could have a personal "calling card" printed up with your information to use in these situations.

19. If you do seminars, have your participants exchange cards with each other. Have them write a compliment about the person on the back before they hand them out. Everyone will have a wealth of contacts; they will remember each other and it will also give participants a boost of confidence.

20. Ask neighborhood businesses if you may display your cards near their registers.

21. Tack them to bulletin boards at supermarkets, restaurants, retail stores and the library - anyplace that has a bulletin board.

22. Give out two cards at a time - one for your prospect or client, and one for her/him to give away.

23. Place some on the table when you leave a restaurant.

24. Agree to mail the cards of other businesspeople in the mailings you do, if they will do the same for you. Your networking circle will grow as your cards are passed around.

How Not to Use Business Cards:

25. Don't give them to a member of the opposite sex in the hopes that s/he will call you. I have a friend who was told this wouldn't work. He did an experiment for six months to prove it, and his friend was right! Sadly, not one woman called him. Although he does have a girlfriend now!

26. Some people don't give out business cards when they meet a prospective client. Instead, they send a follow- up note later with their card enclosed.

Other Types of Business Cards to Have

27. Business card CD-ROM. If you haven't seen these yet, they are a mini-sized CD that plays in any CD player and has your contact information on it, as well as an introduction to your business.

28. Email Signature. Put your contact information into a signature file for email, along with a link to your website (be sure to include the "http" in order to make it "clickable.")

29. Vcard. These are electronic business cards that recipients can click on and automatically add to their address books. Do a web search for "vcard" to find software that supports this technology. Then use it in all your emails!

30. One consulting company, which works with designers of products for people with disabilities, prints their cards in Braille. It reminds their clients how they can help them comply with disability laws. It also gets people asking for information.

Linda Elizabeth Alexander is a business writer and marketing consultant based in Longmont, Colorado, USA. Improve your writing skills at work! Subscribe to her FREE ezine. Write to the Point at lalexander@write2thepointcom.com or visit http://www.write2thepointcom.com/articles.html.

According to a new survey carried out by Alliance & where ID_NUM=9270; Leicester, one in five small business owners view tax as their greatest concern. The Chancellor has announced in his last budget that companies with profits below œ10,000 will not have to pay any corporation tax with effect from 1 April 2002. The question to be asked is: does that announcement make incorporation a more attractive option compared to being a sole trader?

The answer is that from a tax point of view, it is advantageous to trade through a limited company as long as the income is drawn from the company by the owners as dividends from their shares and the amount of dividends drawn is restricted below the 40% band rate (i.e. œ31,063 for tax year 2002/03). That way, the owners have no further personal tax (“income tax") to pay. Moreover, dividends are not subject to national insurance contributions. This is excellent news of course. But, if dividend income falls within the higher rate bracket of income tax (i.e. above œ34,515), they will be taxed at 22.5% on the excess, which of course will increase the tax burden. The company profits are subject to corporation tax rates. Those are lower than income tax rates.

The most catastrophic scenario is when the director takes his reward from the company as salary. Then his/her salary is taxed at income tax rates (like a sole trader's income). That is because, unlike sole traders, the tax system treats companies as separate from their owners because a company is a separate legal entity. The problem is that the income taxes are higher than corporation tax rates. On top of that, they will be subject to employee and employer national insurance contributions, which of course increase the tax burden and render his position worse than even an unincorporated business (“sole trader"), because NIC Class 1 on payroll are higher than NIC Class 2 paid by self employed.

In contrast, a self employed person (“sole trader") is taxed at income tax rates on the profits from his business, which are added to his other sources of income. As it has already been mentioned, income tax rates are overall higher than corporation tax rates. On top of income tax, national insurance contributions class 4 are payable on the business profits within a specified band (7% on profits between œ4,615and œ30,420). National insurance contributions Class 2 are also paid by self-employed people, although those are lower than those payable by company directors on their salaries.

To illustrate the above, let's take a simple example. We have a limited company and a sole trader. They both make œ60,000 profits each in the tax year 2002/03. We assume that the company director takes a salary equal to the amount of his personal allowances (untaxed income) of œ4,615 and the balance as dividends. The company will pay corporation tax at 19% equal to œ10,523 and nothing else. The sole trader will pay income tax œ16,542, National insurance Class 2 œ104 and National insurance Class 4 œ1,806. Total œ18,452. The bottom line is that the person that has incorporated his business into a limited company will make a tax saving of œ7,929 compared to a sole trader! Isn't that fantastic?

Somebody might be wondering: why is this entire happening? The official explanation is that, this government, to help the economy grow, encourages people to leave as much profits within their businesses to be reinvested, instead of being taken out and spent.

The “unofficial line" is that, as a matter of fact, for years the Inland Revenue has tried to reclassify the self-employed. The 1% in NIC hike on staff salaries above the NIC threshold from next April adds to both the employees' and employers' tax burden and may more than offset the saving from the corporation tax zero rate on the first œ10,000 of profits.

Aren't there any other matters to consider in deciding whether to incorporate or not?

Higher administration costs to comply with company law, payroll and bookkeeping is one factor. Another issue is pension planning. Extracting profits out of the company as dividends rather than salary means that there will be no “net relevant earnings" and therefore pension contributions can't be made. But the advent of stakeholder pension plans has meant that contributions up to œ3,600 per year can be made without the need for any earnings. If a person does not wish to transfer funds in existing plans into stakeholder because of high charges, there is a way out: the best net relevant earnings (i.e. salary) in five consecutive years can be used for making contributions for the next five years, even if there were no salaries in the remainder four years. It is comforting to know that entitlement to basic state pension is not affected by taking a salary from the company at the level of a person's personal allowances i.e. œ4,615.

Furthermore, an individual may decide not to bother with pension plans and instead invest in ISA. Often, these can be more efficient than pensions but that's beside the scope of this article. If that option is taken, no salary is necessary.

Another factor is business motoring. It might be tax advantageous for an unincorporated business that owns many cars not to incorporate because if these cars have some private use there will be benefits in kind taxed on the users. These are generally higher than the straight apportionment between private and business for all car running costs in the case of sole traders.

The conclusion is that there can be considerable tax savings waiting the sole trader who decides to go down the road to incorporation. But, one needs to proceed with caution and careful planning. And don't forget the biggest advantage of incorporation, which is Protection from Personal Liability. Incorporating is one of the best ways to protect a business owner from personal liability. Shareholders of a company are generally not liable for the obligations of the company. Creditors of a company may seek payment from its assets, but not the assets of the shareholders. This means that business owners may engage in business without risking their homes or other personal property.

Thank you for taking the time to read this Article. I hope you've found it useful. If you have, please drop me an email and let me know what you think.

You can email me at...

constantinesavva@accamail.com

Alternatively, you can visit our website at http://www.tax-accounting-london.info and read a series of other full length articles that present the complete picture on a variety of interesting topics.

If you would like to know how to save tax and make sure that more of your hard earned cash stays with you to expand your business and increase your profits, we have a Free Special Report addressed to small businesses either starting up or already in business. This Exclusive Free Special Report is available automatically when you subscribe to our regular series of Free Newsletters on finance advice and tax planning by visiting our subscription area on our website www.tax-accounting- london.info. It is complied from real life situations dealing with small business tax affairs for over 10 years and it is loaded with down-to-earth advice and practical, understandable examples.

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Jennifer Johnson is the owner of Logo Design Zone. She can create a 100% unique, totally memorable logo for your business - for UNDER $200! Does your current logo make the grade? Take Logo Design Zone's free logo quiz and find out!