October is over. How did you do? How many business cards did you pass out last month during my challenge? I want to know. You can comment here on this posting or on my facebook page. You can also send me and e-mail and I will share your experiences (anonymously if you wish).

My results are shared here. Remember, I am not passing cards to build haircut traffic like you likely were. I am striving to build traffic to my web site selling my ClipperGuy hair care brand, my books and my videos. Selling is selling, though. Promoting is promoting. Handing out cards is old school but it works. I passed the 500 card goal, and then some. I passed out 836 cards to new people I did not know last month. That works out to an average of 26.9 cards per day for October. That is a lot of cards. It was not easy. Some of my activities and events are not appropriate places for me to pass cards so I was limited to really only my social situations and a few work activities. In some cases I went looking for people and places to pass out cards.

Results are what matter. I am pretty pleased with the results I got during the month. I am hoping to see more traffic spill over into November and beyond, too. I can report that I saw three orders come in to my site directly from cards. I know this because I offered a unique coupon code on the card that is not available anywhere else. I answered 41 questions through my free “ask Zoot” feature on my site in October. This is a 20% increase over October last year. I also showed a 20% increase in general visits and site traffic last month. These are all real gains and measurable results.

The bottom line is that old school still works. I will continue to use hand-passed cards as a powerful way of connecting with people and potential new customers. I like the juxtaposition of using high-touch tactics to build business in a high tech marketplace. If you use some of the modern web tools and social media technologies and blend them with some high-touch in our VERY high-touch business I am sure you will report real measurable progress as well. I look forward to learning fo your successes.

Keep clippering.

Ivan