Paper Business Cards are Dying. Does Your Company Need a Digital Replacement?

Roll the calendar back 10 years, and the arrival of a fresh new “brick” of business cards was a standard rite of passage for any new job or promotion. But when COVID reduced in-person interactions, fear of recession triggered cost cutting, and companies wanted to appear more environmentally friendly, a large portion of companies stopped handing out business cards. It’s probably not a tragedy. Business cards played a necessary role as a way to transfer contact information, but they are pretty “old school” and not well aligned to the point-and-click digital age.

But the question is, what are we replacing them with? Despite being old school, they did serve a function.  As I networked at a recent conference, what I found was a greater barrier to getting people’s contact information. The most common response being “I don't have business cards, but hit me up on LinkedIn.”  That’s great for the social media platform, but questionable as a follow up tactic. 

A still small, but growing percentage of companies however are deploying digital business cards to their employees and MRFR (Market Research Future Forum) projects that digital business cards will grow to be a huge industry in the coming years. 

At that same conference where the people I met often had no business cards, I was able to tap an NFC card to their phone or have them scan a QR code on my iPhone home screen to bring up a branded profile of myself and enable them to download my contact information directly to their address book. Many had not seen this technology before and they were favorably impressed!

Perhaps more importantly, they left with my information in their contacts app. Old fashioned business cards, studies show, were mostly discarded after being received (or thrown into a disorganized drawer where they were hard to find).  But in contrast, data downloaded into a customer or prospect’s smartphone address book will not only sync across all their devices but will generally be retained for years. Speaking for myself, I still have data in my contacts app that was originally entered into my Palm Pilot over 20 years ago! And of course it's much easier for prospects to use that data to contact me, as I'm only a tap away rather than having to retype an email address or phone number from a piece of cardstock.

So I would argue that the vacuum left by the death of paper business cards needs to be filled. It's why we created Qcard, the most robust and easy to use digital business card solution on the market. 

There are so many reasons why digital business cards are a great tool for business and why Qcard is such a great platform. Check out this article on 4 reasons why you need a digital business card now. Click here

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