Couple of suggestions:   First, regardless of the business - online or off - you have to focus on your marketing - that means understanding your market, their needs and how they get their information - then you can put the right message in front of them. If no one knows about you and what your business offers - then they will never find you.   Some ways of online marketing - think SEO - search for that terms and find more informaiton than you can handle.  You should have good content on your web site - content that your users or potential customers will want to find, good keywords to target those who search for your offering and relevant back links - one ways links that will drive traffic as well as increase your search ranking.

A couple of notes: -Twitter has been great for us to find suppliers -Our FB page which we advertise ($5 a day budget) gets over 200 unique hits per week, more then a lot of start up websites. Ask yourself, where would your customers hang out online? For anyone in the wedding niche, spend time, lots of time on The Knot message boards and find brides directly that way. Other then that I'd reach out to both local caterers and venues to try and get on their preferred list of businesses.

Utilize the social networking sites! Facebook, Twitter etc. Make groups and draw a following/group from your demographic, each day just make it a point to spend a bit of time paying attention to this aspect. Also, youtube is a great tool and can be used in union with the afforementioned sites. I'll let you think about how you could use that. colon cleanse ---This post was edited to remove a commercial link. Read our discussion policies for more Community best practices.

First of all, make sure you have good keywords for your website, because 'sunflowerfavors' doesn't say 'bridal favors' to me. Don't forget the power of face to face marketing. In other words, contact bridal shops, wedding planners, photographers and videographers, etc. Maybe you can make deals with them to put your business card in their shops, offering a small commission or finders fee. Also, try to attend a few bridal shows in your region. Sure, a web store can service a much larger area than you can personally, but don't ignore your neighbors, especially as you're starting up. You need to build a network of prospects if you want to grow, don't limit yourself to web sales. I would budget yourself 4 or 5 hours a week for face to face networking as part of your marketing plan. A real benefit to face to face marketing is that your prospects will be doing web-searches and find your competitors, but will think of you as a person. Some people would rather deal with a person then a credit card eating shopping cart on the web.

Thank you everyone for their input! erindoug1- You can learn more small business marketing in our guide here. Also make sure you are aware of and comply with online advertising law.

First of all Congratulation for starting your own business. Wedding biz is something different but it has so many scope. Regarding the marketing Join big social networks like facebook, orkut. Also join big dating websites network because it has more chances to get you new customers. Tell about your business to everyone you know like friends, neighbours. Whenever you go to some marriage or an event don't forget to tell party members about your business. These are few tips. Just make sure you do your work on-time and offer good service in a short span of time because many people book these these types of services at the end.

i'd keep everything online for now. find out what people search for (in regards to your niche) and build your online biz around them.