As part of the launch of the company this week I had to take a look within my marketing plan at the branding around the non digital promotional assets I have. For the launch this included a variety of items including business cards.
In an increasingly digitalized business world it is possible sometimes to overlook the ongoing value of the business card as a means of portraying a professional image of you and your company. Interestingly, while the purpose of a business card may well not have changed over the three decades of my business career, the type of content on it certainly has.
In the early 1980’s there wasn’t a lot of personal information to include on a card. If I had kept a card from my first job I would probably find my name, title, company address, switchboard and telex number on the card. There was no direct dial number to my desk, mobile phones and websites hadn’t been invented and even email wasn’t in the mainstream.
Now my card, in addition to the numerous contact details, also has information on it that points to additional sources of information about myself and the company. The card provides its recipient with a gateway to my website, twitter and linked-in worlds. How times have changed !
I decided to get my cards printed on both sides. One side shows my contact details and the reverse shows a brief statement and some of the core services we deliver.
Given that I had a good idea of the content and style of card that I wanted the next step was to get the cards printed to a high quality and to a deadline.
I looked at a few sites on the web but frankly was left unimpressed by the lack of engagement on those sites.
After some further searching on the web I found my local Prontaprint shop and sent through an email with the images for a quote. Later in the day I met up with Alan Davey at the store and he spent a considerable amount of worthwhile time showing me various types of cards and the approaches used to produce a first class card. I accept I paid a premium price compared to the online sites but the value to my business of a good quality business card is more than worth the extra few pence a card.
My recommendation of the week for great customer service therefore goes to Alan & KD at Surbiton Prontaprint.
BTW Alan’s own Prontaprint twitter account is a super example of local branding and customer engagement. On this point one of next week’s blog posts will include success details of the High Five Business ‘twitter test drive’ programme.
