It’s the question of the century-if you’re going to be launching an online business, how much offline advertising do you really need to do? Should you take the time to launch a full-scale marketing campaign, or should you just trust the Internet to get you where you need to go? Is taking money out of your (already stretched too thin) marketing budget to create business cards a wise move, or should you continue pumping it into your PPC campaign and leave well enough alone?
It’s not hard to dismiss the importance of business cards, especially when you’re not going to be wining and dining clients (and, by default, not necessarily going to be passing your business card out to every Tom, Dick and Harry that happens to come your way). An online business is firmly rooted out in cyberspace, and many online business owners who are just starting out don’t feel the overwhelming need to tie their web-based business to an offline marketing effort that’s going to eat up their money-especially when 90% of those business cards are going to be left to sit, unused, for who knows how long.
Now, if you’ll note, I said that only new online business owners don’t put thought into business cards. Why? Because as any savvy business owner can tell you, any business is good business. When you hand a business card for your online business to someone you’re talking to, what do you think is the first thing they’re going to do? They’re going to go home and look you up online. If they like what they see, they’re going to refer you to their friends, their family, their buddies online and anyone else they think might benefit from your services.
Why sacrifice that kind of networking ability when it’s sitting at your fingertips?
Let’s face it, we live in an online society. Husbands and wives “chat” with each other across the room instead of actually turning around to speak. With the online and offline worlds blended that smoothly, picking up business cards for your online business is really just good sense.