In 2024, we’re living digital; apps, smartphones, AI. Even work meetings are on Zoom, instead of a conference room. Face-to-face interaction is on a downtrend.
When it comes to marketing and brand identity, companies tend to focus on newer methods. Like social media, search ad placements, and AI-driven advertising.
However, traditional, old-school marketing efforts are still relevant today. Business cards in particular can help create a cohesive brand identity for your business.
The Importance of Brand Guidelines
Before getting into the nitty gritty, we’re going to give you the most important house rule first: implement strict brand guidelines for your business. Brand guidelines are a specific set of rules that dictate how your brand is communicated, whether that’s through social media, advertisements, or, in this case, your business card.
Ensure that you have these in place properly; you don’t want your business card to look like a different company when compared to your website or emails. This will not only make you look unprofessional, but will distort your brand identity.
Now, it’s important to understand that cohesive branding is about more than just how your brand looks and feels. It’s also about the impression it leaves with potential leads and existing customers. It’s a consistency in your aesthetic presentation, how you engage with others, and what you stand for as a brand.
Business Card = Physical Brand Presence
Many businesses exist purely in a digital sphere, especially in the last few years, with companies closing land-based locations, trimming their physical establishments, and going virtual for what used to be in-person services.
Lower overheads make sense, but you also need to consider the cost to your company brand. With a business card, you can maintain a tangible presence of your branding in the hands of the customer. The key word here is ‘can’, as a lot will depend on the design and execution of the final product.
The power of print is highly underestimated in today’s market. It creates trust in your brand, partly because something that is tangible just feels more ‘real’.
You don’t need to go beyond a standard business card, either. Many business owners will spend hours and hours trying to think of a card that will blow leads away, using unique materials, a ‘different’ style of card, but that’s not always necessary.
If your brand is known as clean and professional, keep it that way. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Just keep it crisp, use high-quality materials, don’t skimp on the paper, and hire a designer or service that specializes in business cards.
Leverage Tech + Old School with QRs
Just because we are advocating for the use of traditional marketing methods, does not mean we’re simultaneously telling you to go for the luddite approach.
Digital works. But so does old school. So why not combine them?
You can add a QR code to anything, whether it’s a menu, brochure, or your company’s business card. The QR code can lead your potential customer to your website, a purpose-built landing page (which you can always change/rotate as necessary), your mailing list, an app, whatever you think is best for lead conversion.
If you’re used to print marketing and haven’t yet gone the digital route, don’t worry. QR codes are pretty easy to implement nowadays and there are SaaS services out there that can help for a very affordable price point.
Driving Engagement Through Your Business Cards
Our final point: print helps drive engagement to your brand. Research shows that in terms of recall, print has no match. When you send a contact a message through LinkedIn or a catch-up email, they can be effective, but also quickly forgotten.
Think about it, we’re getting far less physical mail than marketing email. It’s far easier to let email clients do the sorting for us, often accidentally marking non-spam emails as spam.
Research shows that in terms of engagement rates, print is 18x more effective than digital alternatives. And expect this figure to increase in the future, as an increasing number of businesses ditch the old methods for the new.
You can take advantage of that.
With business cards, you can really leave an imprint on your leads, something that will last longer than simply exchanging contact details or adding each through digital channels.