The world is becoming more and more digitized, but 10 million business cards are still printed each year. However, 88% of those are tossed away within a week. Does this mean that it’s time to go paperless? The answer is a resounding no.

Statistics reveal a company’s sales increase 2.5% for every 2,000 business cards handed out, even if a majority of them are thrown away. This is because business cards display the face of the company and are considered a mark of professionalism. People are expected to carry their physical business cards in all networking events to represent their company.

Business cards must be professional, appealing, unique, and memorable. A single glance should clearly reveal to someone what your business is all about.

1. Business Card Designing Strategy: Make sure you plan your card structure well. Card quality, brand colors, and logo all play a key role in how people perceive your card. And the most important part is the information it carries.

Your website and your contact email/phone number are your calls to action (CTA), so make sure they are in large font, clearly visible and on the front side of your card. Your name, as well as your company’s name and logo, should also be there, but don’t clutter things up. Make sure your design is simple, clean and balanced.

On the back side, you may add a map of your office location, or be innovative and add a few product images or anything that will add value, such as your company’s mission or tagline. For designing these cards, you can simply use a few good apps available in the market.

2. Business Card Designing Apps: Business Card Maker & Creator is a simple-to-use app that can help you create printable or digital business cards quickly. Some other good apps include Business Card Maker, Kai cards, and Desygner.

These DIY business card apps allow you to personalize your cards to your liking, upload logo, use your brand colors wisely, and choose contemporary fonts. And if any of this information were to ever change, you can edit the cards quickly and easily. Once you have your own customized business cards in place, get them printed and ready for your next business meet or event, where you will also be required to manage all the business cards you will collect from other attendees. Business card reader apps can be helpful here.

3. Business Card Reader Apps: ScanBizCards (iOS, Android) is a powerful and versatile business card reader app that can digitize business cards in no time. It allows you to save your business card contacts with a personal note, send intro emails to your contacts, capture leads easily from emails signatures using email signature capture and export contacts to your CRM. ScanBizCards is a comprehensive networking tool.

A good business card scanner app will ensure that all your significant contacts are kept safe and accessible. Most card reader apps allow you to scan multiple cards at once, and then automatically sync contact information on the card to your address book or contact manager. They will save you from the chaos of hoarding loads of business cards only to be lost or kept somewhere and forgotten.

Now that you are ready with your tools and your customized business card stack to tackle the business card mayhem head-on, it’s time to understand card exchange etiquettes.

4. Business Card Exchange Etiquettes: When networking, the first rule when introduced to a new person is to go for a firm handshake, strike up a conversation, ask open-ended questions and if the person appears interested in your product, politely present your card and ask for theirs.

Keep your cards handy. Digging through all your pockets looks unprofessional, and be sure to carry enough cards. You should also refrain from using your card scanner app for every card; use it for those you really intend to remain in touch with. Moreover, use the app when parting ways, not during the conversation.

Once the event is over, you should then follow-up with your prospects within 48 hours to take things further while the event memories are still fresh and alive. And if you are a ScanBizCards user, you can instantly connect with your new contacts via a quick intro email and a picture to keep in touch and take things forward.

The above tips can help you manage your business cards effortlessly and make events a breeze. With these tips, you can leverage the real strength of business cards as a marketing tool and maximize your business card ROI.

Quality leads are the lifeblood of any B2B business. However, lead generation is not an easy task. Traditional methods like direct mail, billboard advertising and newspaper and radio ads are no longer considered top tricks of the trade.

Emails have survived the test of time, but there are increased filters to block spam emails and a torrent of infected emails are circulating around the globe at all times. It is becoming difficult to rely on this method to reach the desired audience.

So, what may be the other feasible alternatives?

Let’s check out some of the latest trends to grow your leads multiple times in 2018.

1. Use Content Marketing: Create relevant, engaging, personalized and helpful content that addresses the pain points of your target personas. This can be in the form of ebooks, videos, blogs or articles. Placing a timely Call to Action amidst this content will offer solutions to the anticipated problems of the target audience. According to the LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community, the top three content marketing tactics are blogging (65%), social media (64%) and case studies (64%). Statistics reveal that B2B marketers who use blogs receive 67% more leads than those who do not, while 62.6% of eMarketer survey respondents consider case studies to be an effective tool for generating leads. Social media, the third marketing tactic, is increasingly gaining more and more attention as an effective lead gen tool.

2. Gain Traction with Social Media Channels: 79% marketers said that they saw increased traffic with as little as six hours a week invested in social media marketing. For regular posts, shares, likes, tweets and other social engagement techniques, use tools and apps like Sprout Social and Buffer to automate the process, and divert freed-up resources towards creating a human touch through personalized connection requests and messages. Among other channels, LinkedIn contributed 80%of leads generated through social media for B2B marketers. Moreover, 71% of B2B technology marketers mentioned Twitter as the top social media platform for a product launch, while 54% mentioned Facebook and YouTube. YouTube has become a popular video marketing tool.

3. Start Video Marketing: Videos are a great way to reach your audience. 64% of consumers make a purchase after watching a branded social video content and companies using video enjoy 41% more web traffic from search than non-users. And amazingly, video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more. Video Marketing via Youtube, LinkedIn or any other platform can be used to engage your audience. Influencer marketing is another great way to engage with people.

4. Implement Influencer Marketing: Influencer Marketing delivers 11x higher ROI than traditional forms of digital marketing, and 48% marketers in the US plan to ramp up the budget for influencer-focused campaigns. Interestingly, you can simply opt for micro-influencers instead of targeting major influencers and save a lot. Micro-influencers generally have smaller but more engaged audiences with Instagram and blogs as leading platforms. Hence, it is wise to leverage the power of micro-influencers to gain more at a lower cost. In addition to Influencer marketing, also consider other paid campaigns.

5. Employ A/B Testing for Paid Campaigns: Paid campaigns cost time and effort, and hence, it’s best to get some clarity on the success rate of your campaigns. A/B testing is a great way to quantify the value of your marketing campaigns and let you choose the one that really works and can provide real conversions. The approach should be to test the elements that stand to provide the biggest-gains first, and then, move on to the other elements. Keep testing to figure out the one that you need to stop at and scale. Also, invite a targeted audience to your webinars to offer them information about their anticipated problems.

6. Host Webinars to engage new leads: Host webinars to target and educate a specific audience on the benefits of your offerings. Choose a relevant topic, set a registration goal, choose an apt time and date, and consider running a paid media ad for keywords that align with your webinar content to drive more attendees. Redirect participants to an appropriate landing page once they are done. Astonishingly, 68% of B2B companies will use landing pages to nurture new sales leads for future conversion. And now set up drip campaigns for the target customers based on their actions on the landing page, and on other leading pages.

7. Go for Drip Campaigns: Drip campaigns offer the right information to people at the right time, and all this happens automatically based on triggers and user segments that you define. These timely automated emails receive 119% higher click rates than broadcast emails, and B2C marketers who connect with customers through automated emails see conversion rates as high as 50%. So, automation is trending and the demand for chatbots is increasing.

8. Engage your Targeted Customers with AI Chatbots: Chatbots or virtual assistants use artificial intelligence to interact with more people faster, saving both time, effort and human resources. Looks creepy? Well, think again! Amtrak’s case study revealed that booking through chatbots generated 30% more revenue and saved $1,000,000 in customer service expenses in a single year. Use Chatbots to free up your employees and scale up your organization’s efforts. And do not lose hope if your prospects do not buy your product- retarget them!

9. Make use of Remarketing: Retargeted customers are 70% more likely to make a purchase. They are the ones who have already displayed some interest in your product or service but did not buy. Surprisingly, only 2% of buyers make a purchase on the first visit and retargeting attempts to bring their attention back to your brand. Effective use of retargeting within a search campaign can increase conversion rates by up to 600% while cutting costs per conversion by up to 50%. So, begin retargeting your website visitors and if you haven’t invested in mobile apps as yet, do that now. Also, make sure your website is mobile friendly.

10. Invest in the Power of Mobile: By March 2017, 80% of top Alexa websites were mobile adaptive. CMS Report states that average smartphone conversion rates are up 64% compared to the average desktop conversion rates. Moreover, more than 80% of mobile minutes in all markets are spent in apps, and social media apps are the topmost category by the time spent, so they’re a great place to invest for lead gen efforts. Productivity apps like Shapr, CircleBack, Bizzabo and many more used for business networking also contribute substantially towards the lead gen efforts.

These trends have forced B2B marketers to evaluate their lead generation endeavors to achieve the intended results. Old tools and techniques have been outpaced in the process of catching up with the evolving consumer choices. So, keep up with the emerging trends to boost B2B lead gen efforts in 2018.

If you are a salesperson using Salesforce, a user-friendly, cloud-based CRM solution, you will be able to appreciate ScanBizCards Enterprise app as an excellent supplementary tool for your software. The convenient design, excellent features, and easy CRM integration makes ScanBizCards a preferred choice for business users who network frequently and need to regularly export contacts from their mobile device to their CRM systems.

Here are some of the advantages that the app offers:

1. Travel Light: As most salespeople are always on the go, they don’t need to carry anything extra to scan or save new contact info if they simply have ScanBizCards app on their mobile devices. And, it works fast.

2. Save Time: The business card reader app offers easy and accurate business card scanning through best-in-class Optical Character Recognition technology, instantly turning a business card into a new lead or contact for your Salesforce software, in under 30 seconds. And as the contact fields are auto-populated, it saves time and reduces the chances of manual error.

3. Reduce the Probability of Error: For any new contact, most of the default fields supplied by Salesforce are automatically populated by the app using its OCR technology. Additionally, the app also offers the choice to edit these fields manually or to opt for business card transcription. If required, notes can also be added with contact info along with the option to attach card images to the exported object, further reducing the likelihood of feeding inaccurate information.

Further, the app also offers two-sided card scanning along with the ability to capture contact information from email-signatures. However, problems may arise when we completely forget about the contacts we have already saved. So, do the same contacts get saved multiple times?

4. Ensure Contact Deduplication: Whenever a user attempts to upload business cards in Salesforce as a Lead or Contact, the app has the ability to inquire if a duplicate exists. If this is the case, the user may choose to cancel the export or update the existing record. The app further offers the necessary control on how and by whom the contact should be saved in Salesforce.

5. Control Licenses & Features: The dedicated Admin panel of the app allows Salesforce administrator to control licenses through a corporate Salesforce account and manage individual ScanBizCards user features. The admin will have full control over what their end users will eventually be able to see and modify.

Moreover, the card reader app allows a Salesforce admin to control which campaigns and accounts the end users will be able to assign as Lead or Contact during an export, and also offers support for offline mode. The Admin Panel guide offers a complete overview for setting up user permissions. For your convenience, FAQs and other resources are also available for the app, and you can get a 14-day free trial of the app on AppExchange for up to five users.

Hence, ScanBizCards Enterprise acts as a perfect accessory for Salesforce users, who can effortlessly scan and organize multiple contacts or leads into their system. Once the contact data reaches Salesforce, the sales team can get the most out of every contact, lead, and opportunity coming into their business, helping them to connect meaningfully with their prospects.

So, if your organization uses Salesforce, and requires a card reader app that offers enhanced functionality, superior UX and design with secure, deeper multi-user integration, ScanBizCards Enterprise – Salesforce integration is an ideal solution. Wish you all the best for your lead gen efforts!!

At each event, we often come across a number of well-dressed attendants who are impressively spoken, exchange business cards promptly, are highly confident, but are still unable to leave a mark. What’s amiss? Typically, it’s their mannerisms and readiness for the event.

You cannot simply barge into a discussion at an event, start reciting your saga, and abruptly shove your business card into someone’s hand. That’s intrusive!

Understanding how to make the most of your business cards to leverage quality contacts will do wonders to enhance your ROI.

1. First and foremost, before going to any conference, install a business card manager (iOS, Android) on your smartphone to instantly turn your important business cards into contacts. You will come across as a professional, save time, and it will reflect your eagerness to truly connect with your contacts.

2. Second, don’t be a card spammer and hand your business card to anyone and everyone. Choose wisely! Meet new people, join friendly groups, ask open-ended questions, and don’t talk for too long. If anyone seems interested in your product, politely present your card and ask for theirs.

3. Third, keep your business cards handy, and mind the little details. Digging through your pockets for your card is awkward. Similarly, don’t be short on them. Since you’ll never really know how many you’ll need, you should always have a decent amount of cards on you.

Also, unless specifically requested, don’t offer multiple cards to your new contacts to be passed on to others that would need your product/service. This creates a negative impression.

Finally, don’t use your card scanner app for every card you receive. You don’t have to turn all your business cards into contacts. Use it for those you truly intend to remain in touch with.

However, only use your card scanner app when parting ways, and not before, and add notes when saving the contact to remember things later. It’s not wise to ignore attendants even for a brief moment, so don’t scan business cards while you are still in conversation.

4. Fourth, as soon as you turn a business card into a contact, connect with your prospect right away. If you are a ScanBizCards user, you know how quickly you can scan business cards on your iPhone or Android device. Then you can then immediately connect with your contacts with a quick email along with a picture and your contact info. Further, you can also submit the cards for manual business card transcription, or export business cards to CRM.

5. Fifth, take action. After saving the contact and exchanging initial introductory emails, it’s time to take some real action by following-up and to connecting personally. Check the notes you wrote down when saving your business cards to fulfill the promises you made during the event, and to take the relationship further.

Remain in touch with your prospects through social media. But first, conduct a bit of research, understand their likes and dislikes and the best channels to approach them, and then make an offer to meet up for a cup of coffee to take things further.

But what about the cards you received during the event that you considered insignificant. What do you do with them?

6. Finally, before you discard the insignificant cards, just scan for any that may be useful. Then run a quick Google/LinkedIn search for each of these cards, try to know a little bit about the person, and if you find the information useful, try to connect with them. Discard any useless cards.

Business cards are a marketing tool to help you acquire new customers, and you can follow the tips above to maximize your business card ROI. In addition, you may also get creative with your card design to stand apart from your customers. Happy networking!!

Getting swooped up in networking hype is all too easy, but the thrill of listening to elite speakers, attending extravagant parties and meeting the wealthier participants can be quite overwhelming. Nevertheless, amidst all this, it is the game plan that matters – you must know precisely your objective, have a robust plan to achieve it and should be able to stay focused, period.

Most people go to these events with an aim to sell, to connect, or to simply feed contact info into their phone’s contact management app. This certainly helps, but to build a sphere of influence and create valuable connections to tap into, we need to invest carefully and sensibly.

So, here are a few tips for you to get going.

1. Ensure ample phone storage: This may appear to be a trivial thing; however, a careless attitude may turn out to be a howler. When attending a significant networking event, if you realize your phone storage is full, or that your stored contacts are disheveled and stale, you may find yourselves struggling to add new contacts or to exchange any significant contact info with your new contacts.

Hence, before you attend any event, you must organize contacts on your Android or iPhone, and remove and merge duplicates to ensure you have ample phone space. Your phone’s internal address book management app may not be sufficient for the job.

A good idea can be to download the CircleBack app – a contact management app that helps you keep your contacts clean, accurate, and ready to go. Now that you have your networking tool ready, focus on learning more about the event and the people attending it.

 

2. Know more about the event attendees: It is imperative to find out and collect more information about the significant contacts attending the event. So, gather details and understand what your potential contacts may be looking for, and craft a persuasive elevator pitch accordingly.

Keep in mind that networking is a waste of time until you can add some real value to people. Thus, this speech should be succinct and should spark interest in what your organization does and how it solves a bigger problem. This will help you to connect meaningfully.

 

3. Connect meaningfully with prospects: Show your potential contacts how they will benefit from the alliance, communicate your USP, and you may even begin your relationship with a small gift. In no case should you ask for a favor before you have established a relationship. This can ruin it all.

Additionally, if time allows, work at expanding your network pool beside your decided target group, and intentionally seek out an entirely different set of people you come across during the conference. This can help you to know a brand new cluster, which may prove to be useful in long-term.

However, since time is limited, don’t just keep interacting, rather collect the contact info as quickly as possible.

 

4. Gather contact information ASAP: Once you have located your target contacts and begun conversing meaningfully, make it a point to quickly collect their info before you lose them. Use a smart business card scan app like ScanBizCards to scan their business card info instantly, and to exchange a quick intro so you can follow-up later with an in-person meeting and detailed discussion. Also, quickly export contacts to Salesforce or another CRM to make sure your contacts are safely stored so that you can follow up later.

 

5. Zoom into your powerful new connections. Follow-up with a thank you note specifically tailored to your prospect’s choices. Start nurturing your relationships. Engage with them on social media—be helpful. Keep them in touch, and make an attempt to seek a common ground—and earn a right to ask for a favor. They will likely reciprocate.When handled aptly, this may turn into a long-term relationship.

In a nutshell, when you are invited to a networking event, do not restrict yourself to a corner, or to passively listen to the speeches, or meet the elite class. It’s an opportunity to strategically analyze what you may be able to gain through the event, and hence, plan beforehand and invest sensibly. After all, we rely on our connections to get a foot in the door. So, prepare yourself, do your homework, reach out intelligently to the priority targets, act on the occasion, connect sensibly, and follow up. It’s a chance to make a real difference.

Do you remember your last networking event? On their faces, all events look same, and so do the crowds attending them, but what we normally fail to observe is the distinct modus operandi that disconnects seasoned networkers from laggards.

Let’s try to reflect upon the differences from the start of the event. They all normally begin with introductions followed by planned activities. Ordinarily, as the keynote presentations end, most people spread out in small groups or get busy with their tablets, phablets, or phones, randomly adding contact info with their contact management apps; or they simply flock around refreshments and catch up with those standing nearby. Where do you find yourself at this moment?

Amazingly, focused networking activities at this juncture can be a real game changer, but you must be prepared well in advance as the available time is limited – the event will be over before you even realize. So, the best way is to start by preparing for a given event as soon as you get an invite.

Do the Necessary Groundwork

You have an event invitation – now look at it meticulously. Look at the facts – check the event type, the organizers, the number of people attending the event, past events, and most importantly – what’s in it for you? Go through the speakers’ profile; understand the kind of audience that’s likely to attend the event, and ascertain the best way and time to identify and approach the prospects. Additionally, prepare a concise yet crisp elevator pitch with clear goals in mind. Make sure the pitch is not ornamental or fluffy. One that’s a bit informal can lead to some constructive interaction. All these constitute the main ingredients of the veteran’s networking recipe.

Once this is done, get your networking tools ready.

Get Equipped With Useful Networking Tools

Once you have a plan in place, equip yourself with the right networking tools. You are sure to meet many people during the event. It’s not sensible to continuously stack business cards or to manually add each and every number to your phone — only to be scrutinized and later transferred to the CRM system, consuming a big chunk of your networking time.

Instead, browse through the contact management apps for professionals and download the one that meets your requirements. A business card scanning and CRM export app can save you some significant time and cut back on the effort required.

CircleBack’s ScanBizCards Enterprise App can be a savior with its easy, accurate, best in class business card scanning feature. Using the Tradeshow mode, considerable time can be saved by exporting to Salesforce after scanning. The batch export, custom fields, and offline export mode makes it functional and feasible. With the app, you are all set to go to the event.

Reach the Venue a Bit Early

Seasoned networkers arrive early, allowing them to meet with a few prospects and exchange useful information early on. This offers some quality time in addition to what’s available after the keynote presentations are over. You won’t have limitless time for networking, so make the best use of what you do have and stay focused on your goals.

Stay Focused On Your Goals

People who are swayed by the speeches, the excitement, and thrill of getting to observe the key speakers – leaders in their domain – tend to fixate on the conversation about them.

On the contrary, seasoned networkers, or the smart ones, always come to an event with a clear focus and never lose sight of it. They make sure they have the time to identify the right prospects and exchange useful contact information so that they can later engage with them in a meaningful way. They also make sure to clearly express how that they want the relationship to be mutually beneficial, and they are prompt in following up after the event.

Follow Up After the Event

Networking experts don’t waste any time after the event. They know that the sooner they get in touch with their prospects, the better. Conduct a little research on the contacts added to your CRM via your business card scan app before approaching them. Getting to know them better and reaching out to them in a way that best suits them increases the possibility of converting the prospects to clients.

So, follow-up with your new contacts — make sure to keep mutual contacts in the loop, if any. Also, refer back to the conversation you had with them, and you are all set for creating meaningful long-term relationships. Happy Networking!