Gift Basket Marketing 1-2-3

Gift Basket Marketing 1-2-3

Tips for advertising and marketing your gift basket business.

The key to your business's survival is it's customers. It's important to have a gift basket business marketing plan and budget in place before you launch your start-up so that you don't end up losing money and wasting a lot of time.

Whether you provide gift baskets to individuals or businesses, or whether you deliver gift baskets or sell your packages online, etc.. you can generally use the same marketing techiniques listed below. The reason for this is that overall, your customer base will be gift-givers who want an easy shopping experience.

Placing ads in your neighborhood yellow pages and local newspaper is a starting point. You can also get creative in your advertising strategies, which can mean lower marketing costs and reaching a more targeted market. The more different marketing methods you use, the greater exposure you'll have, which can bring your more gift basket customers.

Keep in mind that marketing a gift basket business is an activity that is continual. However, if you invest more in advertising during your initial launch phase, you can build your gift basket customer base much more quickly. From this client base, you can gain customer referrals and of course repeat business, so you generally will not have to spend as much money or time on advertising thereafter.

Business Cards, Free
Yes, you can hand out business cards so that people have your contact information, but you can include much more information on them to essentially promote your gift baskets like an ad would. You can design your own business cards online - and get simple tips for increasing your sales.

See also: 30-50% off postcards and brochures. Design your own marketing materials online using professional templates. Designs provided, printing done for you.

Get Free Publicity
Write a short and simple press release or "letter" to your local paper announcing the grand opening of your new gift basket business - or (if your business is not new) an event that you will be hosting (like a drawing for a prize, a workshop you are hosting or event you are sponsoring).

Your press release can be short and simple, and you can find press release samples you can follow on this page: How to write a press release and where to distribute a press release online.

Gift Basket Business Websites
For about $5/month, you can get your own gift basket business website that you can design yourself - with over 2,000 template designs in 100 different business categories with easy-to-use website maker.

Advertise with Coupons
Customers love saving money with coupons, so it can be a very effective way to market your gift basket business. Even coupons that are not redeemed give you publicity in newspapers, magazines, online or in neighborhood coupon mailers. More information: Advertise with Coupons

100 Postcards from $1.99 | Postcard Marketing
You can send a more targeted or specific message to prospective clients by using postcards. You can save money by using online services for qualified customer leads, postcard design and printing.

First, decide on a special introductory offer or discount. Second, design your postcards online using professional postcard templates with VistaPrint (you can get 50% off here). And third, get targeted leads through a lead generation network (where you can compare several lead providers to get the best price) like Resource Nation.

Free Car Door Custom Magnet
Easy online tools let you design your own car magnet for cheap, and then you can basically get free advertising whenever make gift basket deliveries or even park your car in a busy shopping area. Make it clear and easy to read by using large print and not too much text. Images work well only if they help communicate your business service.

Local Search Directories
More and more people are looking for local businesses online (instead of the traditional yellow pages) - and you don't want to miss out on this market. Local Search sources that are affordable and receive substantial traffic include: Google Local, Local.com, Yelp and Super Pages.

Advertise on Facebook
Facebook is growing fast in popularity, and they've made it really easy to advertise on the site. You can pay-per-click or pay-per-impression. Either way, you have the ability to target your ads to a very narrow market, using their ad filters. For example, you can filter by location, age, gender, education, interests and more. This way, you're not wasting your ad dollars advertising to the wrong market.