Creating and mailing business post cards is a logical choice when your small business has a small advertising budget.

Here are five factors to consider:

1. Your data base list of customers might well be under 500 names.

• You can manage this list yourself on your computer and print out mailing labels. And since there are so few names, you won't have to hire a mailing company to affix the labels, sort by zip code and take it to the post office for you.

2. Our advantage as small businesses is in cultivating a personal relationship with our customers. This holds true whether your business is entirely local or operates in a special business niche market on the national or international level.

• A post card is intimate. Emotionally, who can resist reading a colorful post card? Especially those with a nice glossy front side with a compelling message. It's like a personal message from someone you know.

3. Postcards are a private communication between you and your client so your competition has no idea of what you are doing.

• There is no "waste" circulation since only those on your mailing list are included. This will produce better results for the post card, especially when compared to those you get from the "mass media" of newspapers, magazines, etc.

4. We are all receive flyers, circulars and advertising mail whose print runs are measured in the millions. By default, they set creative standards that we feel we should equal or exceed in our own efforts.

• Since you have so few names to spread across paying for high-level creative services and long-run printing, these services become prohibitive on a cost per address basis. But thanks to digital technology, the creative, printing and mailing costs have been reduced to where they are well within reach of almost anyone.

5. Postcards are a wonderfully fast and efficient way of getting specific messages delivered in a permanent format to your own mailing list and other specific mailing lists you have purchased.

• Your postcard can generate immediate response or can be easily set side as a reminder for future action.