subject: Digital Versus Old-School Business Cards [print this page] Digital Versus Old-School Business Cards Digital Versus Old-School Business Cards
In essence, marketing materials represent your business. It serves as your face in your target market telling the world who you are and what you offer. This is why it is important that your materials tell your storythat which you want your target customers to know and not what they should not know. It's wise to start with the basic marketing materials such as the business cards.
When attending business events and functions, it is expected that you will exchange cards with your fellow attendees. At most, business card templates should have the following:
Your name
The name of your business
Street and mailing address
Telephone number
Email address
Website, if you have any
The original business cards are first printed in black and white. But these days, businesses are looking for unique ways to present their contact details. A new trend gaining popularity today is the digital business cards. This type of card still retains the main purpose of the business card but takes to a different level. Businesses who want to keep up with modernization use the power of networking sites such as LinkedIn. They also use the applications such as Google Googles, Bump, and SnapDat to exchange digital business cards. These are more popular among the younger mobile professionals who want the feel of a high profile contact card.
Today, the iPhone is the most popular way of sharing and exchanging digital business cards. So, if you are using a simpler mobile phone that doesn't have same capacity as the iPhone you cannot trade digital cards. It becomes more difficult to exchange digital cards when you are not using the same device or application as the other person.
But is digital business card the best way to reach out to your customers today? For sure, this can be a bit difficult to use to customers who still prefer the paper based business cardsthose who have gotten used to collecting the 3.5 2 inch card. Similarly, customers who are not familiar and a fan of the internet will be hard to reach with this approach. These people may meet the digital cards with sour faces. It's likely that it will hurt your marketing efforts, but the advocates of digital cards say it will only affect the number of people you get in touch with but not the quality of clients or customers you attract.
It may seem that digital business cards are the new way to reach customers today, but still the traditional cards are hard to let go. There would still be businesses and customers who prefer to exchange contact details through the old-fashioned way. Some people argue that because many do not really do anything with business cards, it's only practical that digital cards replace the paper based cards. Others say that old-timers have to simply move on and embrace the digital innovation. There are also some who claim that going digital will help save the earth on less trees cut to make paper.
However, no matter how innovative we are today old habits are simply hard to break. So, depending on your target audience, digital business cards can for your business. But until people have no longer use for the old-school business cards, they are still the way to go for most businesses and professionals.
