Getting Carded – Traditional vs Digital Business Cards

How beneficial are physical business cards in today’s digital environment? Which is better, a digital card or the traditional paper? These are questions being posed on many forums. But, like most everything in life, there are pros and cons to both from the marketing aspect.

Traditional Business Cards – The Upside

With traditional business cards, you provide the client or potential client with a tangible, tactile product that triggers a part of our brain to make a judgement of your business.
A nice professional card on good stock with a nice finish gives the impression of a top-notch, high quality business; a card printed on your ink jet printer on copy paper will give the opposite impression.
Using an eye-catching design, nice art, an interesting font, all combine to make a good first impression.
There is also – and this is not to be downplayed as to its importance – a personal aspect to physically sharing your business card with another person, to hand it to the recipient and exchange pleasantries.

Traditional Business Cards – The Downside

The downside of the paper card, however, is how much room they take up. Stacks of cards can quickly overwhelm. Think of the old rolodexes (if you don’t know what those are, look it up) and how that wheel or box of cards quickly became unwieldy.
Many cards will find their way to the trash within a matter of days or, at the best, weeks. They are not the best for the environment.
There will be a fairly regular expense to reprint them throughout the year.

Digital Cards – The Upside

Digital cards let you appear to be on the cutting edge.
They can be just as creative, allowing a designer to use graphical elements, fonts and design that appear pristine on the recipient’s device.
The design can easily be updated without the added expense of having to reprint.
They don’t take up much space, and they are more eco-friendly.

Digital Cards – The Downside

On the downside, in some cases you’re asking people to load another app on their device, making the digital card less accessible to a segment of business people. (There are services that let you design your card and they send you a credit card-sized transmitter that you use to transfer your info to someone’s phone, but they can be rather expensive up front and seem to be difficult to update.)
The digital card can lack that personal touch of sharing – the handshake, the pleasantries, the tactile feel of the paper cards. If an app has images blocked, all your hard design work is for naught.
To share the digital card, you need to have internet access.

I will say this in defense of the paper card – many times, when going to lunch or dinner or out for drinks, having a card to just place on the table when you leave gives one extra edge to your marketing. Many will be discarded, but you have gotten the name out and have given yourself one more opportunity to a) make an impression and b) getting a new client.

Whichever way you go, digital or print, a business card is as important as ever. Both are excellent for sharing your brand and increasing exposure. Just make sure you design them professionally for the greatest impact. Jazz’d Creative is a perfect design solution if you are in need of a truly professional and memorable business card.