Business cards are essential tools for projecting the identity of your business and leaving your contact information with potential clients and business partners for future contracts, among other uses.
Getting it right with printing your business card is as important as the result you want it to produce. Failure to put specific critical points in focus can create a disaster as a result. To help you avoid such a disaster, HelloPrint offers essential tips to make your business card printing stand out.
However, before delving into the main focus of this post, let’s examine some of the negative impacts of a bad business card.
Poorly printed business cards can have serious implications for your business that you certainly do not want to be involved with. Let’s take a look at some of them below.
Your business card does a huge job of making a good impression about your business on people who see it. So, printing and distributing business cards that are of poor quality can damage your business’s reputation as unprofessional. This can leave a long-term stigma on your brand.
Branding effect
Business cards help to reaffirm your brand’s identity and make you stand out among your competitors. Hence, poor quality business card printing can lower your brand’s impact by failing to set you apart and making it difficult for customers to identify with your brand’s message.
Loss of contract offers
When you fail to pay attention to essential aspects of your business card, such as incorrect or omitted details, you can prevent potential partners or customers from contacting you. This can further lead to loss of business opportunities.
Credibility problem
A well-printed business card can make your brand appear trusted and reliable; bad business card printing can mean the opposite.
Waste of Resources
Bad business card printing is a waste of money and other resources. You certainly do not want that to happen to your organization. Wasting resources on an unproductive venture automatically denies you the funds required to attend to other business issues. This is because you may need to remedy the situation, thereby spending more money.
Limited marketing and networking
A poor-quality business card can significantly impact your ability to reach a large audience with your products or services. This can further lead to limited sales and partnerships. Poorly printed business cards can go a long way to affect an organization perpetually until a better replacement is done.
Common Business Card Design/Printing Mistakes
If you are not aware, you would hardly be able to tell why your business card, regardless of how widely distributed it is, does not seem to produce any results. In many cases, this is a result of most of the mistakes made when printing business cards.
Now, pay close attention to the common mistakes discussed below and ensure to avoid them as you print your business card.
Spelling errors and omissions
Not taking the time to go through the front and back sides of your business card designs to check for spelling errors or omitted essential information can become an irreversible mistake once printed.
Of course, the error can be corrected after printing, but that only leads to another printing, which incurs extra costs.
Bad color combination
Color is an essential part of your business card. A business card that pops has a good color choice that fits well with the design elements like text and images. Choosing colors wrongly can impact both the print quality and the impression on the people you give your cards to.
Lack of good whitespace
When you try to squeeze too much information into your business card, you end up eating up the whitespace and congesting information. This simply makes the card difficult to read with less attraction.
Brand inconsistency
Choosing a color and font style that is not the same as your brand’s font and color can create inconsistency and spoil the message. Therefore, customers and prospects may not be able to relate with your brand for the long-term.
Low-resolution images
Using images with really low resolutions for your card printing will definitely impact the printing quality.
Effective Tips for Outstanding Business Card Printing
You should always be careful to understand how business card printing works and what to look out for to ensure that your business cards stand out. The following are some vital tips to put into consideration.
Font sizes and whitespace
To ensure the printing comes out great, you should carefully check and correct spelling errors and omissions on your card before sending it for printing.
You should also pay attention to the use of whitespace to avoid overcrowding the card with too much information. This will enable you to produce a card that looks organized and simple. Always remember that it’s a business card, not a flier or banner, and can only contain as much information as necessary.
Color
Pay close attention to the color choice and color settings for your business card to make the printing neat and also give your card a pop appearance. For consistency, make sure to use your brand color and use the right contrast for the background, images, and texts to blend well visually and also to make the essential details clear and easy to read.
Paper quality
Do not use low-quality paper when printing your business card. A business card says a lot about your organization and brand. Therefore, ensure to use the highest quality of paper you can access.
Make sure good quality paper, like metallic or textured finishing, is used for durability and a professional look.
High quality images
Because business cards are always small, it’s important to use high-resolution images to retain their beauty and sparkle after printing.
Standard card size
Make sure to use the right card size that matches your brand or industry. It’s essential that you don’t use the wrong sizes to avoid reprinting or presenting a card that looks unprofessional.
Final Words
Finally, whether you’re printing a flyer, banner, or business card, quality should be your watch word. Note: “You may not have a second chance to make a better first impression.”
Therefore, strive to establish an excellent first impression in the minds of your prospects through top-notch quality business cards. However, you don’t have to break the bank to print a good quality business card. Just ensure to work with the professionals in the industry.
