Business owners and young professionals often ask, ‘Why do I need a business card?’. We know it’s the 21st Century, and many traditional marketing tools have faded away with the rise of technology, but business cards haven’t, and finding printable business cards is easier than ever.
Yes, websites, social media pages, and other digital forms are undeniably useful for business promotion. Still, you can’t whip those out at a key seminar where you just met a hotshot business prospect. Business cards help promote your business when the need comes up unexpectedly.
Why You Need A Business Card
If you’re just starting a business, there’s a lot to worry about, especially if you plan to run a small business where you’ll have to run operations solo for some time before you can afford to hire some extra hands.
Many people think that business cards are redundant because of digital ways of establishing brand identity and connecting with potential customers. The truth is that they are not. Here are a few reasons why having a business card will help you promote your business better.
1. Professionalism
If you are a young professional looking to get ahead in your career, owning a business card gives you an air of importance and makes you seem more established than you are. Prospects will be more likely to entertain your ideas if they see that you have some sort of structure set up, and a business card is proof of that. Business cards do a spectacular job of complementing digital business tools. They are an effective way of networking, especially if your business caters to a professional market.
Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Imagine that you’re at a business dinner and you meet two promising guys who claim to work in Digital Marketing. They both have interesting ideas to expand your business’ reach and presence online, so you ask them to give you their contact numbers so you can speak with them later. One pulls out a pen and reaches for a paper towel on one table, while the other simply whips out a well-designed business card. Who are you most likely to call back? Yeah, we thought so too.
2. Lead Generation
Some industries still use the age-old personal meeting for lead generation. If you work in real estate, for example, you would inevitably have to meet clients in person. To make a good impression, you would need a business card.
Giving your prospect a business card before sealing a meeting with a professional handshake will provide them with something tangible that they can refer to when they need your services.
3. Printing Creativity
Digital media may pose limitations for what you can do with visual elements because you have to worry about scalability and visibility on different digital mediums. With business cards, you can use texture and quality to your advantage and create visual elements that create the kind of impression you want your business to make. For example, do you want your business card to look luxurious? You can use crisp 300gsm paper and embossed typefaces to create a genuinely elite business card. Wanna come off as creative and fun? Use vibrant colors and even play with 3D effects if you want- the only limit is your imagination.
Since we’re talking about ‘printing’ business cards, you may be wondering where to find printable business cards. Free online templates come in handy and save you the hassle of hiring an expensive graphic designer to create materials that suit your business goals.
Online templates are frowned upon by many professionals because, according to them, they are generic and unoriginal. That’s no way to look at it, because templates are not made to be used as they are. At Template Monkey, we design business marketing templates like printable business cards that are meant to be customized. They are already designed with all the elements needed to create unique personalities for specific businesses. All you have to do is tweak some of these elements to create an original design for your brand.
All our business card templates are designed for standard-size business cards: 3.5″ x 2″, so they are easy to adapt to print, and you don’t have to worry if your design is too large or too small for a regular business card.
Printable Professional Business Card Templates
At Template Monkey, we have a vast collection of professional business card templates for specific businesses spanning vast industries.
Whether you’re looking for a modern, simple, creative, or minimalist business card to promote your brand, we’ve got you covered. All these templates are customizable offline and are available in PDF, PSD, and Word formats. They are bespoke business cards and are ready to use as soon as you add your logo and contact details. Still, if you want them to reflect your brand’s personality and creativity, you could move a few more elements around.
How To Design Professional Business Card Templates
If you’re planning to restructure the templates to create a business card that is more original and true to your brand style, here’s a loose guide to help you through the process. If you follow these tips, you’ll end up with a business card design that matches anything a pro designer could make.
1. Say yes to white space
A well-designed business card is easy on the eyes, ensuring that you maintain a balanced negative space while customizing the business card templates. Avoid cramming the area with too many elements, lest you end up with an unattractive, cluttered business card that won’t serve you. You should be the busy one, not your business card.
2. Stick to your brand colors
To ensure that the business cards align with your brand identity, change the color schemes on the templates to match your brand colors. This creates a cohesive identity for your brand across all promotional materials. The last thing you want to do is create confusion about your brand.
3. Add a logo
Adding a logo to your business card is necessary to give your brand credibility and professionalism. A logo seals your brand’s identity, which is then promoted by the business card. Don’t fret; if your brand does not have a logo yet, you can easily design one from our free logo templates library. It will only take a few minutes; we’ve done most of the work for you.
All you have to do is search for a template that suits your needs and fits your brand’s identity. When you find a logo template that comes close, customize it to fit your brand’s unique personality by tweaking colors, text and placement of elements.
Read More: Best Business Card Template Styles for Young Professionals
How To Edit Business Card Templates In Word
To edit our printable business cards, you would need a Microsoft Word application and a few minutes of utter concentration. No, it’s not difficult, but you’d get things done faster if you’re not trying to rock a baby to sleep while at it.
What’s more, if you take a wrong step, you can undo the last action or refer to our download folder, which contains useful info like font names and sizes.
Our templates are designed to be easily editable at the click of a button. Text boxes, color schemes and fonts can be changed to suit your brand identity.
Editing your Business Card
Text
When you open the template file, click on the text boxes to edit the text. Backspace any line that needs to be replaced and add text in the same font, or another that you prefer. If you change the font, do not forget to extend the change to all other text boxes. Do not use the Ctrl+A option as that will select everything on the page and backspacing that may result in loss of data. Instead, highlight the text section and make necessary adjustments.
Be sure to include ALL of the following details in your business card:
- A professional logo.
- Company name and services in large font.
- A catchy tagline.
- Your name.
- Your designation.
- Address, email, and contact details.
Graphics
One of the key things you’ll want to do with our templates is to pick your own color scheme, so we’ve made that easy by grouping all the drawing items (lines, background colors, etc.) so you can change their colors all at once.
Click on the “Show / Hide ¶” button to see the anchor points for each element, or use the Selection tool to pick specific items.
Print a Test Page
Sometimes, what you see on your screen can differ from the result you get when you print the same on paper for many reasons. To avoid wasting time and resources, print a test page so you can be sure that dimensions are correct, and the design looks good on paper.
Printable Business Card Designs For Every Business
On Template Monkey, you will find printable business cards with various themes. We understand how diverse the market is and try to satisfy these varying needs. Whether your business identity is minimalist, quirky, elegant, contemporary or traditional, you’ll be sure to find something that suits your needs in our library.
So start exploring, and get to work on some awesome designs for your brand!