Grow Your Business With Dropcards

Do you offer lessons or tutorials of some type? It doesn't even have to be traditional face-to-face lessons. Maybe it's something you do online, but you'd like to tell your offline friends about it. Here are a few ways to drum up new business by handing out dropcards.

Many online marketers run free newsletters or give away free reports on their websites. It could be a one-off .pdf report on how to grow juicy heirloom tomatoes or maybe a 7-day mini marketing course. Next time you throw a backyard BBQ or run into an old friend and they ask you what you've been up to, give them a dropcard advertising your free report or newsletter.

Do you give music lessons, karate lessons, run a daycare or pre-school? Next time you're attending your son or daughter's soccer match or softball game, pass out dropcards to the other parents offering a free lesson or free 1/2 day.

Do you run a pet store? Give away dropcards offering a free sample of dog food, a free chew toy or a free goldfish.

If you're a long-arm quilter, order the $20 dropcard advertising $20 off the cost of quilting. Get some acrylic pamphlet holders. Make an attractive flyer offering your long-arm services, detailing any requirements you have to quilt a quilt top. Staple a dropcard to each flyer. Then ask fabric stores if they will display your flyers. Fabric stores get asked all the time if they know of any long-arm quilters. Your flyers will also be more likely to get picked up when they see that $20 bill.

Professionals like bookkeepers, doctors or attorneys can use dropcards to offer free consultations.

Hand them out profusely at trade shows and conventions.

Make a punch card out of a dropcard. Say for something like 10 purchased car washes, get the 11th one free. My hair dresser does this. For every $20 I spend at the salon, I get a punch on the card. 10 punches gets me 10% off the next service.

For the type of business that you are running, are there books about it at the library? Perhaps some type of craft or hobby, marriage or relationship counseling help, ways to make money from home, gardening, or sports? The list is practically endless. Go to the library, find the correct section and place your dropcard within the book like you had checked the book out yourself and used the dropcard for a bookmark. Make sure the cards are not sticking out of the book or the librarian will remove them all. So now when someone is researching tropical vacations, your travel agency dropcard will be right at hand. Make sure your dropcard is offering some type of discount or free gift when they book a trip.

You can also stick the cards in trade-related magazines at the book store, library, or grocery store. The reader won't even know the difference between your dropcard and the usual advertisements already stuffed between the pages.

I would suggest NOT putting your dropcards on car windshields in store parking lots. Ask yourself, are they your target market? More than likely not, so why waste your cards. How many of them will end up tossed onto the ground? You also risk getting complaints from store owners, mall management, and even the cops for littering. If you must go the windshield route, make sure the patrons of the store relate to, use or need your type product or service.

Here's another windshield idea, if you like that kind of thing. Even online affiliate marketers can use dropcards in the offline realm. Here's a good example. If you're a NetFlix affiliate, Netfilx has a free 2-week trial offer. Set up a landing page stuffed with your affiliate link. Advertise the free Netflix trial "available only from this link". Include your landing page URL. Make sure it's something they can't circumvent and get to without going through your link. Then go to the movie theater parking lot and dropcard the windshields.

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