Take a good long hard look at your business card. Your business card is your identity, your unique and distinctive mark on the home inspection profession of your area, how does it stack up?

I mean against the competition, or for that matter, your own sense of creative excellence. Does it stand out in any particular way? You might ask, how important could the look or feel of a card be?

Ok, for a short but informative exercise lay out on the table before you all of the home inspector business cards in your possession. Now take away all but the best or most professional three and add yours. Would you pick your own card to the exclusion of the others based on the look of the card?

Were not price shopping here, but merely gauging our propensity to buy from a particular home inspection firm based on the portrayed identity of the business card. In this light, your image or identity is everything to new business. If there's any truth to the saying that little things add up, its here with your number one marketing piece, your business card.

Let me paint a story of a poor fellow home inspector who has all the right credentials (past building inspector) but can't seem to break off a piece of the action. Yeah, he's new to the home inspection game but has done his homework and is offering the same services at the same pricing using the same marketing channels as his competition. We know all this from the poor guys forum posts pleading for help. Well, he got lots of help on ways to market to which he'd reply -- I'm already doing it with no luck, what else you got?

It's not what I got for him but what he doesn't got for himself, an image or distinguishable identity that someone would trust instantly to the exclusion of others. This is one of the major reasons some home inspectors choose to go the franchise route, an instant professional identity ready to Rock & Roll. I'd bet a pile on the fact that he has a rather poor looking business card and marketing materials to boot.

Your image or identity when breaking into the home inspection market has to be better than what's already there, your competitors. A Realtor or prospect has to identify you as a possible better fit than the current home inspector that they're using now. No one in there right mind would choose to use a new home inspector that was not "imagined" to be better than the current provider or other choices available.

A lot more marketing goes into the design of an effective business card than most people think. The message you send potential clients and established customers should be echoed within the confines of a professional business card design. Your business card should act as an extension of the values and goals of your company.

Now for the hard part, put on your thinking cap and try to come up with what you stand for, what your company promises. Is it present in an instant, in your business card? Believe it or not, color has a lot to do with the instant identity response. If you can't determine what colors would evoke the correct emotional response to your intended message, it just might be time to shell out a few bucks for a professional graphic artist to produce a corporate identity package for your home inspection company.

Money well spent once, is never wasted.