Advertising does work. Every day. So before you kick away advertising (or websites, or brochures, or any other marketing medium), first consider which of these four basic reasons applies to your effort:

Your ad wasn't created to appeal sympathetically to correct customer need.

You can't force a sale, as much as you might want to. Your best, most reliable, most profitable customers come to your business because you meet particular needs that your competitors don't. Simple as that. These needs may be material, psychological or emotional, but when they present themselves, their owners come to you.

The goal of advertising is not to pitch a sale, but to establish name and brand recognition for your company by associating your name with your ability to meet special customer needs. This helps promote that "good gut feeling" that your best customers have about you but can't really explain.

If your ad isn't built around right specific customer needs - not wants, not desires, not self-image, but needs - then it's almost doomed to fail.

Your ad doesn't establish your own credibility for meeting customer needs.

Etch this on your forehead: Credibility begins with evidence of understanding.

It's not enough to hit on right need. You have to demonstrate in some way that you truly understand and can meet it. This step doesn't have to be fancy, and is often very subtle, sometimes involving no more than certain writing, visual design or layout decisions.

If your customers need a strong, professional company, your ad should reflect that. If they need to know that you come highly recommended, or that you have a certain degree of experience, or that your services are unique to your area, that should somehow be a part of your advertising.

Just don't overdo it, turning your ad into a sales pitch. Provide just enough credibility to satisfy those customers looking for it. Save rest for your other marketing efforts.

Your ad wasn't placed in an appropriate medium that offered regular exposure to specific customers you serve.

As we all know, majority of business cards that are handed out either get forgotten or thrown in trash very quickly.

By making unique business recipe cards, you’re not only providing something of value, but you’re also advertising in a way where people will see and remember your business.

All you need to get started is a home computer printer, some recipes and some blank index cards.

When choosing your recipes, make sure that you have legal rights to use them.

Although recipe ingredients cannot be copyright protected, recipe instructions are, therefore you can’t just pick recipes out of magazines and books to use in this way.

You will need to either use your own unique recipes, or you can use recipes that have now fallen into public domain where copyrights have expired.

To help get you started, you can obtain over 260 public domain recipes in The Bread And Biscuit Baker's And Sugar-Boiler's Assistant.

Every recipe provided in The Bread And Biscuit Baker's And Sugar-Boiler's Assistant is now in public domain and free for anyone to use (for personal use or profit), and considering that they are for wonderful cakes and candies, these are perfect for your unique business recipe cards.

You can obtain a copy of The Bread And Biscuit Baker's And Sugar-Boiler's Assistant at following URL:

http://www.craftyprofits.com/bread

To make your recipe business cards, you will want to print one recipe on one side of a blank index card attractively, and your business ad on other side of card.

Make sure that you include a small line at bottom of card, on side that you have recipe that states something like following:

For more delicious recipes please send a SASE for recipe list to: YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS

This is so that you can send a price list (25 cents per card is good) for more cards to promote even more recipes (and ads) on your cards. Make sure statement is in a smaller font than actual recipe so that it doesn’t take up much room on your cards.

Be sure to be very creative and add nice graphics to backs of your cards to make your ads more attractive.