I attended a seminar from a trade show guru 10 years ago, where he said, “In five years, no one will be handing out business cards any more”. Well, I recently read a new study that shows this seemingly old-fashioned method of exchanging contact information, is as popular as ever.
I heard a story just last week from a client of ours about a guy he met with who wanted to sell him his services. During the introduction, he said he didn’t have cards, his contact information could be found on Google. My client never called him back; he couldn’t be bothered looking for him online. He lost a sale because he didn’t have a ten-cent business card.
We design a lot of stationery packages for our clients. We have never had anyone say they didn’t need business cards. Gee, do you remember when you got your first card? I do, actually I still have it, as well as every business card anyone has ever given me since my first real job 37 years ago.
The day I received my business cards was a big moment in my young career: I had made it. There was my name, title and phone number. But oddly, no email, website address or even a fax number (wasn’t invented yet). Back then, every first point of contact with a potential client started with an exchange of business cards. And you know what, it is the same today.
The only thing that has changed is most people need both sides of the card to include all of their contact information. After you include your company logo, name, title, address, work number, cell number, fax number, email address, social media info and the website URL, it gets really busy. Give your card a little room to breathe and put some of the secondary information on the back. In a lot of cases, the back of your card is under-utilized marketing space. At least put the listing of your products or services on the back.
In the era of LinkedIn, vCards and Google searches, the idea of actual, physical cards seems almost quaint. But it is still necessary. Put some thought into making your card clean, professional and full of lots of information, on both sides.