Business Cards and Promotional Flyers

When you’re starting a new gardening or landscape design business, letting the world know you exist and the services or products you offer is essential. Two ways of spreading the word and promoting your business include using business cards and promotional flyers. Here’s the lowdown on both.

Business Cards

Even in today’s technological world, the business card definitely still has its place. Having a business card to give potential clients and suppliers is a very useful addition to your business, and ensures you always have something at the ready to give people. If you’re planning on attending any networking events, then it’s a definite must-have to have a good supply of business cards to hand.

As with your branded stationery, it’s something you can produce yourself, or there are lots of inexpensive business card production offers from online and high street companies. Business cards come in standard sizes and space is limited. Don’t try and cram too much onto it, otherwise it will only look untidy and unprofessional. Some of the key elements that you should consider putting on the card include:

• Your gardening business logo.
• Your business name.
• Your business address.
• Your business phone number and mobile, if appropriate.
• Your business email address.
• Your business website.
• Brief details of the key services you offer, or products or plants you stock, especially if you specialise in particularly hard-to-find plants or specialist products.

If you’re working with a stationery company, they can offer helpful tips and advice on designing the best card for you and can help work the words around the logo. If you’re not entirely sure what to go for, what colours to choose or which fonts to use, then have some drafts copies of several cards produced.

This will give you time to look at them all in detail, perhaps asking a few friends or business advisors for their advise or thoughts on how your image is portrayed on each, before you make your final decision.

Once you have your business cards, don’t forget to give them out! Give them to business contacts you meet at networking events, current and potential suppliers and perhaps slip them in a parcel with any gardening product orders.

If any of your key contact details change, don’t forget to have a new batch of business cards made, as there’s nothing worse than giving one out with incorrect or outdated information on it.

Promotional Flyers

Like business cards, promotional flyers are really useful to produce to. In the first instance, they’re handy for distributing in the early stages, when you’ve just set up, to try and attract customers. You can either distribute them yourself, use a mailing service or arrange to have some given out with newspapers in your local area.

As your gardening business progresses, there may be other occasions when you could benefit from using promotional flyers. For example, you may be having a sale, special discounts or offers in a gardening shop, be offering a special deal to customers hiring your gardening or landscape design services or want to highlight any services or products you’ve got available.

Promotional flyers can be designed and produced by you, if you’ve got the time, or you could use the services of a local design and printing service to do them for you. Depending on the size and what you aim to put on them, the cost for a batch shouldn’t be too excessive.

When it comes to what information should be printed on the flyers, it’s similar to your business card. You need to make sure all the essentials are included so people can get in contact with you or your business (your business name, contact details, website etc) but also full information about the product or service you’re promoting. Keep it clear, simple and easy-to-read, as people often don’t sit down and read promotional flyers in depth. If you’re unsure how best to word the flyer, you could always use the services of a freelance writer or copywriter.

Make sure the flyers are printed in plenty of time, so you’ve got time to distribute them before any special events or discounts expire and, if possible, try and gauge where any new customers got the flyer from, so you know for future use which distribution method worked the best.