If your ad properly recognized and appreciated your customers' needs, consider possibility that ad appeared where it wasn't appropriate. Why were your best customers looking for you there? How does your choice of medium speak to your credibility for meeting your customers' needs?

Consider time as well as position: a swimwear ad would face an uphill climb if it ran in a Michigan newspaper in December. Remember that customer needs often change as seasons change.

You expected too much from your ad.

If ad is solid, and medium is appropriate, then problem is you.

Advertising alone doesn't revolutionize profits. Like all marketing tools, advertising is a precision instrument, an individual tool designed to perform a specific task. Relying on only advertising - or only networking, or only cold calling, or only a website - to promote your business makes as much sense as an auto mechanic who uses only a hammer to fix your car.

Since human beings are complicated, so are sales problems. Complicated problems require skilled collaboration of multiple tools, of which traditional print advertising is only one.

The role of advertising in a modern marketing campaign is to establish name and brand recognition for your company, not to pitch a sale. The idea is to make sure that your prospect has already heard of your company - and has a favorable "feel" about you - by time customer need presents itself or your salespeople come calling. Advertising helps pave road for your other marketing efforts.

If you expected sales to double last month because you ran an ad but did little else, you probably expected more than reality could provide. It's in fact possible that your ad did work, but that it provided benefits that your business didn't capitalize on because you expected different results. Next time you run an ad, do it as part of a coordinated marketing effort that includes ability to follow up with audience that was exposed to it. Take advantage of good will that your advertising helps generate.

If your ad is written to appeal sympathetically to correct customer need, establishes your credibility for meeting that need, and is placed in an appropriate medium that offers regular exposure to your most likely customers, your ad will do that job. Every time.

To do this, make up about 10 separate cards, using 10 different recipes and 10 different ad designs that you can use as samples of your work.

Next, create a short letter that explains benefits that businesses receive once you start distributing cards with their ads on them.

Point out that recipe cards are extremely likely to be used over and over again, and that they provide an excellent opportunity to have their ads seen by hundreds of local consumers.

Further explain how you plan to distribute your cards to local consumers, so that they understand that there is no work involved on their part.

Provide your prices on a "per ad" per card basis, usually 25 cents per card is a nice round figure, and include your phone number so that you can be reached if they would like to place an order.

It’s best to suggest a minimum order of 100 cards so that you don’t get orders so small that it would be a waste of time to print them.

Include a few of your sample cards (3 cards per letter is good) and start mailing your letters to businesses that pique your interest.

Once you receive some orders, there are several ways you can distribute cards quickly and easily.

You can advertise in your newspaper to send a free recipe in exchange for a SASE.

You can include ads on cards that people will order from after requesting your recipe price list.

You can compile several hundred different recipes in a regular index box and resell recipe boxes for even more profits.

You can also sign up for free tips course to help you make your new recipe business card business a success. The tips course provides wonderful tips to ensure your businesses successful launch, and provides methods that you can implement to make several hundred dollars per month in additional income.

To receive free tips course please visit following URL:

http://www.craftyprofits.com ips

Think creatively and I’m sure you can come up with many more ways to profit from creation, distribution and sharing of these wonderful recipe cards. Believe me, locals are going to love them!