Measuring the effectiveness of business cards in professional salons (Guide 2025)

Trade shows are the perfect opportunity for Make yourself known, establish professional contacts, and promoting your business.

But with hundreds, if not thousands, of potential visitors, how can you tell if your business card managed to stand out from the crowd and get attention?

Measuring the effectiveness of your business card at trade shows is essential to know if it contributes to your marketing and sales strategies.

What is a trade show? 🤝

A trade show is a happening where businesses and professionals come together to present and promote their products, services and technologies specific to their sector of activity.

Trade shows offer exhibitors the opportunity to meet potential customers in person, from make contacts with other professionals in their sector and to stand informed of trends and news of their market.

Trade show

A few figures on trade shows 📈

According to statistics from the Union of International Fairs (UFI), the france Was the Second country in the world in terms of the number of trade shows organized in 2019, with a total of 213 events !

💸 In 2019, the turnover generated by all trade shows in France was around 9.9 billion euros, with a Average of 47.5 million Euros in turnover by event.

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However, it is important to note that these numbers vary considerably depending on a variety of factors such as the size of the event, the industry, the number of attendees and exhibitors, and other economic factors.

Despite the health crisis, a trade show remains a essential in B2B. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary monetize your participation in it and get leads.

This constitutes a opportunity that you, as salespeople or business managers, must absolutely exploit while measuring your return on investment.

Chart on the turnover generated in billions of euros for all trade shows between 2016 and 2019.

Methods for measuring the effectiveness of your classic business card at these events.

In 2023, there are several easy ways to track the impact of your business cards at a trade show:

• QR code tracking : by using personalized and unique QR codes for each lounge on your business cards, you can easily track how many people scanned the QR Code on your card to access additional information about your business.
• The platform QR Code Generator Pro (generate a GR for free) offers you QR Code tracking statistics. This solution offers prices ranging from €8.99 per month unto 59,99€ per month, depending on the number of QR Code scans you want to track.

Business card with QR code

• THEpromotional offer : If your business card contains a special offer or promotional code, you can easily track conversions by monitoring sales or signups on your website or newsletter.

For example, you can offer a special price to anyone who brings you your business card or signs up for a newsletter.

Therefore, it allows you not only to measure how many people took a business card, but also how many people actually showed interest in your business.

Promotional offer

present on a business card

• Follow-up of interrogatories : You can also measure the effectiveness of your business card by tracking the number of inquiries you receive from potential customers after the trade show. You can encourage visitors to email you, call you, or fill out a contact form on your website to learn more about your business.
• Selective distribution : It is important to distribute your business card selectively at trade shows. By carefully choosing who you give your business card to, you can more easily measure its effectiveness.

You can distribute your business card to people who match your target customer base or to people who have shown an interest in your products or services.

If you really want to stay in touch with someone, Make sure he gives you his card in return.

Business card exchange

• Count the number of business cards handed out : it is a key indicator of your success. If you've dealt out all of your business cards, you can consider it a success. If you still have a lot left at the end of the show, it may be a sign that your business card hasn't garnered enough interest.
• Ask for an opinion/comment : If you met interesting people at the show, don't hesitate to ask them what they thought of your business card. This will give you an idea of the impact your map has had on them and will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your design.
• A business card that makes a lot of people's minds will potentially push your prospect to contact you again.

Original business card for a cheesemonger

The limits of these methods ❌

When your sales team devotes a considerable time At trade shows, it is essential to ensure that all information collected or exchanged, including business cards, is captured reliably.

This is needful In order to maximizing impact of your team with your target audience andoptimize your strategy of long-term sales.

While these methods are useful, they also present some limits to consider.

• Difficulty tracking interactions 😩: Business cards do not always allow you to track interactions between your sales representatives and prospects or customers. Information such as topics of discussion, identified needs, and follow-up actions to be taken can be easily forgotten or lost.
• Low response rate 📉: Your salespeople may receive business cards from people who are not interested or who will not respond later. This may result in a waste of time and effort for salespeople who need to sort and manage the contacts collected.
• Compatibility issues ⁉️: Business cards can be difficult to integrate into systems of customer relationship management (CRM) due to compatibility issues.

Additionally, manually entering contact information from business cards can be Time-consuming and susceptible to errors, which can make it difficult to effectively manage contacts collected at a trade show.

Significant complexity

• Printing hundreds of business cards with a unique QR Code for each trade show is extremely polluting and expensive. 💸
• Loss or oblivion of business cards 🤷🏻 ‍ ♀️: It is common for business cards to be lost or forgotten at trade shows, which can lead to the loss of important data and make it difficult to accurately measure the return on investment.
• 80% Business cards are discarded within 2 weeks after their exchange, which makes them fast Inefficient. 🚮

Wasted paper business cards

• Update All this data remains intricate and calculating the return on investment is still very perilous. 😬
• During a trade show, your salespeople will deal out their cards without subsequently getting real individual feedback from their approach. ✍🏻❌
• It is possible that the interrogatories that you receive after a trade show are not not directly related to your business card. 🤔

Visitors may have obtained your contact information from other sources such as your website or your stand at the event.

In this case, it can be difficult to know if your business card actually contributed to generating these inquiries.

The limits of paper business cards are numerous

At the end of the day, it's important to keep in mind that these methods for measuring the effectiveness of your business card at trade shows are approximate indicators and do not provide not an accurate measurement the impact of your business card.

It is therefore recommended that they be used in conjunction with other assessment methods to obtain a more complete picture.

Measure your effectiveness in the salon using an NFC 💡 business card

Les NFC business cards Today constitute the best solution to measure your impact at trade shows.

Indeed, these allow you to track the use of your card and your meetings professionals related to these events.

They offer you a advanced analysis to understand the effectiveness of your cards. With accurate measurement tools, you can understand their real impact and optimize your strategy for better results.

Chez JustOneCard, we offer you a 3 in 1 solution. 🚀

A card to share your contact.

📱 A mobile app to list your encounters.

✏️ A web platform to manage your information and your team.

• Your last lifelong business card, equipped with an NFC chip and a QR Code on the back, to share everything What matters to you instantly: contact details, commercial brochures, social networks etc.

Your contact can be directly saved in your prospect's directory, which limits losses and omissions.

Contact exchange with the JustOneCard business card

• Once your contact is registered, your prospect can directly leave you their contact details on the same web page. This encounter is automatically listed in the free application JustOneCard +.

This application allows you to contextualize your meetings at the end of your day for example.

So, You stay in touch with all your meetings to do Grow your business.

You can also scan paper business cards from within the app to automatically create a new contact.

Free app: JustOneCard +

Using the”notes”, don't forget any more information about your prospects.

Briefly write down your topic of discussion or the needs of your prospect in the Notes section.

Then add a Tag to sort easily your meetings.

You can now recontact these different people knowing what the conditions of your meeting and your conversations were.

Your commercial approach will be much more effective!

• After buying your NFC business card, you also have access to our online platform Company to personalize your profile digital and manage your teams salespeople and other collaborators.
• Thanks to the offer JOC Business, get access to advanced statistics on the use of cards such as uses and prospects, notable employees, and a comparison of your statistics by period.
• These advanced statistics will considerably help to measure the return on investment of your salespeople at trade shows. Follow your results in real time and give yourself the means to increase your commercial performance tenfold.
• In addition, you will be able to export Easily your meetings to your CRM.

Company platform - Statistics tab

→ Thus, buying a JoCard will allow you to increase your efficiency in exchanging contacts and collecting data from your prospects.

To go even further and connect your business card to your CRM, you can switch to JOC Pro & Business offers.

Request a demo on JOC Pro & Business → Request a demo

Summary table of the benefits of a JustOneCard NFC business card

What if I am not comfortable in the living room?

Too many people? Not sure how to approach the stands?

There are not only trade shows for doing business, if you are an entrepreneur, you can also turn to business clubs.

The aim of business clubs is toswap your ideas, establish contacts and find opportunities of collaboration.

An NFC business card is then useful for networking and for analyzing your return on investment at the end of these business clubs.

Business club members may come from different sectors of activity, but they often share common interests In terms of business development And of growth of their business.

Business Club B&You (created on the premises of JustOneCard)

To learn more about how NFC business cards can improve your networking, click here 👉 How can NFC cards improve my networking?

Conclusion

By measuring the effectiveness of your business card at trade shows, you can better understand its impact on your marketing and sales strategies.

You can use this data to improve the design and content of your business card for future trade shows and to adjust your marketing strategy based on the results you get.

Ultimately, measuring ROI allows salespeople to justify their investment in trade shows, optimize their budget and maximize their impact on their target audience.

It can also help inform long-term strategic marketing and sales decisions.