Offline Marketing With a Better Business Card

If you are doing any sort of publicity, advertising or marketing in Japan, then you need a business card. In this country, a business card is a must. 


But is your business card boring and forgettable?

I think I have one of the best business cards around...

One of my favorite writers is a guy named Gary North. Gary writes for Lew Rockwell and he also sends out a weekly newsletter with tips on making and saving money. I highly recommend it. Gary gives out great information in his articles and newsletter for free! You can find it at the link above.

Divorce Lawyer's business card

Interestingly, Gary's newsletter this week was about a topic that I had written on yet never posted, yet I think about it every time I hand out my business card. Gary's weekly newsletter had great advice about business cards. I had never posted the article I wrote and it sat in my "edit bin" for months, because I thought what I had written was only half the equation. I was right. Gary had it pin-pointed precisely in this week's newsletter. 

He writes:

If you are in business, you have a business card.

I'll bet your card features you.  Mistake!

Why is this a mistake?  Because a stranger does not care about you.  He cares about himself.

Your card has your name in bold print in the upper left-hand corner.  Why?  "So that he will remember me."  But why should be bother to remember you?  "Because I can help him."

Conclusion: design your card to help him.

The #1 goal of your card should be this: to let him find the card readily when he wants a problem solved that you solve for a fee.

The upper left-hand bold-faced words should relate to the problem.  Example: Car repairs.  Example: Lawn mowing.

He will not recall your name.  He may recall the card because of the topic.  When he thinks, "Where did I file that card?" the card's topic may pop into his mind.  Your card's topic had better trigger this response. 

This is excellent advice. The only thing that I would add is that if you are going to make a card that is about you, then you had better stop to think of how you will leave your mark on the person you hand it to. In my former profession, nobody really thinks, "I need a disc jockey or a producer." So I had to make a card that people see once and they never forget me. I did.

The front and back of my "show business" business card* 

In Japan, there is a sports-card collecting boom going on. It's not just professional sports athletes, it's Star Wars, Pocket Monsters, Harry Potter, you name it, they are collecting it. I made my card to look like a sports card.

Now, when everyone else gets a standard white business card and then, two months later, they look at that card and wonder, "Who is this?" With my card, people keep it and show it to their friends and say, "Look at this cool card I got." Now, that is having people run around and promoting me when I'm not around. And that is smart.

Click here for a bunch of other good ideas for cards.  

Now some of you might be thinking that my silly card would be too expensive to design and make. Not true. I hired a professional designer and calculated the cost to where I got the per card cost down to the same price of a standard white card in lots of 100. (In Japan, 100 standard white business cards cost about ¥3,000 - ¥30 each). I printed up 3,000 cards and they were even cheaper than ¥30 each! 

So make a card that says what the customer wants in an easy-to-find place like Gary North advises. Or, if you can afford to go crazy due to your work, then GO crazy.

Stand out and be noticed. Do that online and offline.

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*My business card was designed by Tsuchiya san at G-Love... One of the best design companies in Tokyo. I highly recommend them!

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Keywords: publicity, advertising, marketing, Japan, business card, Gary North, Lew Rockwell, information, articles, newsletter, Tsuchiya, G-Love, design

Make a Press Release Every Week

Creating a buzz is always hard work, but you can increase your chances of doing so by operating like a weekly magazine publisher and making a weekly press release. It doesn't matter if you don't have "Big" news every week... The important thing is that you use your creativity to make something newsworthy every week so that it merits a press release.

Some good folks have asked, "What is the best way to keep in the public eye?" Of course there are many ways, but one of the best and most profitable ways to do so is to create continual press releases about you, your company and product or service; and do it every week religiously.

女性自身 Josei Jishin (Women's Confidence)

Josei Jishin is Japan's oldest and most popular women's magazine

Over 50 years of gossip and still going strong.

Think about those weekly magazines; it is incredibly difficult to come up every week with an interesting jacket and headline that sells magazines. But they work at it and come up with a catchy idea and and catchy image that sells magazines. You should think like they do. The magazines and daily newspapers have it hard. You have it easy. All you need to do is to come up with one good idea once a week that will have people reading about you and thinking about your service.

You will also want to target your press releases to the public and certain people in the media - and I am including all forms of media. Find specific media targets that may be able to help you. Send out e-mails to them - not BCC - specific e-mails addressed to them personally. Keep doing this and, after a few months, they will start to pay attention. Trust me, I know this for a fact after years of working as a radio and TV producer; editors and producers get tons of mail and junk; it takes a special effort to get them to sit up and take notice. Items addressed to "anyone" just don't cut it.

With bloggers or online items, you might be able to get a bit more luck if you take the time to find out who these people are and then write to them directly. A warning though, people don't like it if you ask for favors without knowing at least a little bit about that person (it used to drive me crazy when a record company promoter would give me Hit Parade of Hell albums (Top 40) or a Madonna CD and ask me to play it on my show when I was producing a show that only played Punk and Alternative music.)

I talked to media star George Williams the other day and he mentioned that he was going to start his own blog and design it much like Max Keiser's web page or Mike (Mish) Shedlock's. Like the examples I mentioned, George's web blog will have blogs, videos, U-Stream, Tweets, Pick, and other goodies.

George Williams (right) with up-and-coming rockers,

"Nothing's Carved in Stone"

George and I also discussed promoting it properly. We talked about having a press release party whereby he announces his new web blog and, then for laughs, maybe he announces that he's changed his name to georgewilliams.jp. The party will have drinks and snacks and unveil the web page. This is a good opportunity for George to build a buzz. First, he gets to announce the event; then, report on it as it is happening; then he gets a follow up report... There's three press releases right there. From then on, it's just a small step to making a useful and beneficial press release every week to promote himself and his business.

You can do the same.

So, don't forget to think like a weekly magazine publisher; send out a press release every week. Target several important people who could help you or write about you. Then, of course, you place your press releases on your web page too.

Make a press release every week. It's good enough for the big boys, it's good enough for you...That's just smart marketing.

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Keywords: Buzz, business, press release, smart marketing, catchy idea, weekly magazine, publisher, Max Keiser, Mike "Mish" Shedlock, blog, web page, promote,  U-Stream, Tweet, Pick, George Williams, Nothing's Carved in Stone, publicity, advertising, marketing, Japan

Read Books. Improve Yourself... You Are the Only Asset You Really Have.

If you want to make it in today's world, then you need to read books. Lot's of them. I especially recommend books on business and Internet marketing. Today I will recommend some of my favorites.


The reason you need to read books is that books help you to improve yourself and to learn.

Are you indispensable?

Many people say that now is the digital age and if you do not have command of IT and the Internet, then you are doomed to failure. I might agree. But I'd also like to point out that today, and as has been the case for a thousand years, the successful, educated, and wealthy read books. The future will be no different; the  people who do not read books are left behind. 


If you do not read books and watch even a little bit of TV, I suggest that you stop the TV immediately and start on books. Watching TV is a displacement of time that could be used for more important, fruitful endeavors. Even reading a novel is better for your brain as, with a novel, your imagination is at allowed to exercise itself.


I work in publicity, advertising and marketing in Japan and I know if I don't keep up on new things, I will fall behind very soon. 


I know one guy at a major Japanese TV station who complained to me that things weren't going so well. I recommended that he start reading books... He looked flabbergasted. Now, here's a guy who is about 40-some years old and in-charge of about 6 people. His business is going really bad. I told him to look for the answers in reading books... he replied, "Mike-san, I hate reading books. I haven't read a book since high school." 


I replied, "There's is no difference between people who can't read books and people who don't read books. Think about that." 


He acted as if it were impossible for him to read books because he has some sort of learning disorder.  

My six-year-old reads more books in a month than a section chief 

at a major Japanese TV station reads in ten years.

  
This is a guy who is a section chief at a company that is losing a quarter of a million US dollars a year. Are you surprised that they are losing money? I'm not. Doesn't he realize that he has a responsibility to his staff to keep up on information? Doesn't he realize that he is being negligent towards his families' future?


No. He doesn't. Why doesn't he? He watches too much TV and hasn't read a book in almost 20 years?


What an idiot. I hate calling him an idiot, but no other words apply.


Reading books helps you to imagine, to grow, and to develop your skills and knowledge. You'll need to do these things and constantly improve yourself to be able to compete in the next 10 - 20 years.

As famous American professional basketball coach Pat Riley once wrote, "If you are not getting better, you are getting worse."


One of my favorite books is Focal Point by Brian Tracy. In Focal Point, Mr. Tracy supports my argument by writing; "To earn more, you must learn more... You are your most valuable asset... You must continually feed your mind to develop more of your potential. You must continually upgrade your abilities to think and perform at higher levels. "


So improve yourself. Get into the habit today of reading at least one book a week... Preferably not novels or comic books... I mean books about business and self-improvement.


Improve yourself... You are the only real asset you have.


Here are my recent favorites:


Brian Tracy; Focal Point and Goals
David Meerman Scott; New Rules of Marketing & PR
Chris Anderson; Free the Future of a Radical Price
Seth Godin; Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, New Edition and Linchpin
Malcolm Gladwell; Outliers 
Marie Winn; Plug-in Drug




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Keywords: business, internet marketing, books, skills, knowledge, Brian Tracy, Focal Point, upgrade, ability, abilities, self-improvement, publicity, advertising, marketing, Japan, Mike Rogers, Mike in Tokyo, Marketing Japan