You’ve got your swank new logo, a whip-smart tagline, a killer website design, letterheads, business cards and even a pull-up banner. Everything you need for international brand domination, right? Think again … without some serious brand discipline, your plan to take over the world will quickly succumb to inconsistency and confusion.

Business cards are a valuable marketing tool for any industry or profession. Whether you are an entrepreneur and use business cards for networking and advertising or if you represent a large firm and distribute the cards to vendors and high level contacts, the cards serve their purpose of creating a lasting impression.

Discussed below are 10 tips to help you design memorable business cards.

How consistent is your corporate identity?
What kind of message does your targeted potential customer get if he sees that your business card looks completely different to your flyers, your letterhead and your website?  A very confusing one, that’s what kind!
Strive for consistency in all aspects of your branding
Consistency has to be a major priority in creating and maintaining your corporate identity.  Or why go to the effort at all?  The Commonwealth Bank’s colours are undeniably yellow and black.  What if they released some printed collateral that was purple or green?  …

I speak to groups of business owners weekly about what you need for strong brand building. The first thing I emphasise is brands are earned…not bought.

It’s easy to buy a business name, but you need to create a brand.

These are seriously important concepts in themselves, but we’ll leave them for another day.

So, in no particular order here are the ten things every business owner must do to ensure strong brand building: