Everything is Marketing

Steve Raines
The Roundtable
Published in
2 min readJul 4, 2015

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Being actively involved in growing multiple organizations means ending up with a lot of business cards that have my name and email on them. I actively carry batches of at least three different cards with me for the core businesses plus a deck of cards — but that’s another story. I was lamenting this (read “whining”) recently to one of my co-founders. Why should we still have to carry around physical cards in the digital age? Once connected on LinkedIn or in your address book, who ever looks at a business card? Most employees value them on the day they get them as validation of having a “real job” but within a week the primary purpose becomes a lottery ticket for a free lunch at the local Tchotchkes.

So many cards!

My co-founder politely (read “derisively”) reminded me of a key tenent of business that’s easy for even experienced business people to forget. Everything is marketing. Each and every way that you, your employees, and even your customers and vendors represent you is a tool for growing your business. The internet has opened up a huge new set of tools, but that doesn’t mean we should get rid of the old ones. Sure, business cards used to mean that you were a “real company” because the barrier to entry of getting them was pretty high. The advent of at home printing and companies like Moo eliminated that. But that same revolution means that cards are super cheap and they are still a little representation of your business. Anything that gets someone to remember your company is valuable. So go get your people cards and get them handing them out… even if its only to friends and family. After all, with six degrees of separation, you never know who’ll end up with a card at the family reunion.

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Steve Raines
The Roundtable

Building amazingly simple products for work order management and field service that help owners run more profitable businesses. Co-founder @gopointman.