Small Business Marketing: Are Business Cards Dead?

I recently placed an order for business cards. Yes, paper business cards. One thousand of them, to be precise. I have business cards from a few years back, but I wanted to get new ones that reflect my new website design.

My inital plan was to go cheap. Simply throw on my new logo, some basic information and order them online as I did my first ones. Simple. Done.

But then things quickly became more complicated. When I fired off an email to my wonderful web designer to discuss, I moved from “get me the cheapest card possible” to “anything worth doing is worth doing well.”

Then there were more decisions. Did I want one sided or two sided? Gloss, semi-gloss, matte, uncoated or recycled? Spot UV printing or no? Rounded corners or square? Digital printing or offset printing? I ended up going top-of-the-line with pretty much all of it.

How did I justify the expense of paper cards in this age of digital everything? Aren’t business cards old-fashioned or even (dare I say) dead? Not always. My target market of small business owners still expects companies to carry business cards. And although I don’t hand out many, to not have one at hand when needed could put a crimp in my marketing.

Besides, I need something to put in “win a free lunch” draws.

Do you have business cards? How often do you hand them out? Is it worth getting a higher-end card as part of your small business marketing or can you make do with cheap?