Handing out cards and flyers has been a marketing tool used by many businessman. I recently read about an individual who expanded on this idea by writing his site URL on Post-it® notes and leaving them in public restrooms. At the time, I thought this was an interesting idea as you could create mini billboards that could be left anywhere, but hand written, they would not appear very professional. I then wondered if you could have custom Post-it® notes made (you can) and would this type advertising pay off. It then dawned on me that I might be able to create my own custom Post-its with my ink jet printer. The end results of my experimenting with this have been quite successful and below are instructions on how you can make your own.

Step One:

For starters, create a document in Corel Draw, Illustrator or any other vector based graphics program and layout 3″ squares on a 8-1/2″x 11″ page. The 3″ square is the size of a standard Post-It® note. Then printout this page as you see below.

Step Two:

Then create the ad copy you want to have on your Post-it® and lay it out repeatedly on the 6 squares created in step one. Once you have the ad the way you want, delete the outline of the squares as you don’t want them to print.

Step Three:

Next, you will take individual Post-its and place them on the printout of squares that were made in step one. Align them to each square and press firmly along the gum edge to secure them.

Step Four:

Using the above sheet to print on, print the document that was created in step 2. Be sure to feed it so as the gummed edge of the Post-its enter the printer first to avoid paper jams. Then take the individual notes off the page and stack them on top of each other creating your new pad of custom printed Post-its.

Finished Product:

The beauty of this method is that you can create limited quanities of the notes with different ads to see what works the best. The above example using just the sites name and URL may not be the best method as there is no incentive to visit. Maybe something where the Post-it® features a coupon code that can be used to register for a t-shirt giveaway would spark more hits. If you try this or have any suggestions on how they can be used please leave a comment.