I meet several small business owners who use leaflets as a way of promoting their business. But, one of the biggest complaints with this method is that it hasn’t worked. Whenever, someone tells me this though, my question back to them is "how do you know?"

Think about what happens to leaflets once they come through your door or into your office. Probably one of two things – if they’re of no interest and never likely to be, they’ll end up in the bin. But, if they are of interest, it’s likely that you’ll keep them for some point in the future when you’d like to use the product or service being advertised.

If you’re anything like me, the leaflets I’m interested in go in a drawer or on a notice board. The problem is that I’m only likely to look at them again if I either tidy out my drawer or notice board or something makes me remember them i.e. I receive something else from the same company like another leaflet or a newsletter for instance.

The point I’m trying to make here is that if you just send one leaflet out, even if the person is interested in your products or services, they’re unlikely to do something about it unless they keep hearing from you and you make an effort to build a relationship.

There’s two ways you can start to build a relationship with someone. The expensive way is to keep putting leaflets through their door; send them mail or give them a call. But, you may well be continuing to contact them when they’re not interested and the danger then is that you start to annoy them.

The cost-effective way is to plan this right from the start – before you design your leaflet. You need to get the person to contact you and give you their details in return for something useful. This can be a free report; free brochure; a sample; entering a competition etc, but shouldn’t be anything too big. In other words, if you offer a free consultation, you’re likely to scare people who may not be ready to buy from you just yet – so start with something small.

If, when you send the leaflet out, a person then requests your free gift, what they are telling you is that they’re interested (to some degree) in what you do. It’s then up to you to build that relationship with them and find out how interested they actually are – did they just want the free gift and nothing else or are they a hot buyer and want to be sold to right now?

Either way, if someone requests the free gift, you know immediately that your leaflets have worked and you will have a whole bunch of people who are interested in what you do to build a relationship with and ultimately sell to.