Having new business cards printed especially for a conference or trade show is a growing trend these days. We no longer need to design a card that will do for any and every situation and use them for years before designing new ones. With the very good value short print runs available from digital printers today, it is quite possible to tailor your business cards to a particular event, or even to have several different ones printed, to give out according to the particular interests of a new contact.
So how should you go about customising your business cards for your next trade show or networking event?
First of all remember that your cards represent your brand. Your design must be recognisable and cohesive. So you should keep some design continuity between your day to day cards and your individual event cards.
If you use double sided business Postcards Printing Nearby it is very easy to keep the front design the same and change what you print on the back of the cards according to the event. Single sided cards are more challenging to design in a way that varies the content while retaining the design integrity – in this case you might think about varying a single element, so that the customisation is subtle but effective.
So what would you want to change for a particular event?
Your URL
On your general business cards, your url probably is linked to your home page. For a specific event you can link to the most relevant page for that event. Say for example you are a general travel business and are attending a specialist show on luxury, tailor-made holidays, you could link directly to the high end section of your website.
Special offers
Businesses often design special offers for the duration of an event. You will already have brochures and posters advertising this, but it makes sense to present the offer on your business card too. Use your limited space to best effect by linking to a web page that gives more details of the offer either in a URL or as a QR code. Of course you would hope that your card would be kept long after the event, so make sure that it stays current by updating your special offer page regularly, so that the URL in question leads to the latest of your promotions even long after that particular event.
Taglines
Writing a tagline that is tailored to a specific clientele is much easier when you design your cards just for that event. A witty, light-hearted tagline would be appropriate at, for example, a bloggers conference, while for a traditional corporate event you would present yourself more formally.
There are many elements that you can change depending on the event in question, adding pictures, special product info etc but do make sure that your cards maintain your brand at all times with consistent design. Talk to your specialist business card printers about designing short runs of cards that fit in with your business branding.