Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

You do know that baking out of a home kitchen will probably not be acceptable to the health departmemt. I'm not sure about buying the cookies elsewhere and assembling.

When I owned a restaurant we did cookie baskets. They were very popular with realtors-- they almost always give a gift to the new homeowners.

There is an old, but still good book I reference in questions like this. Mining Online Gold with an Offline Shovel-- it's going to tell you to market your online store as though it were a bricks and mortar store.

And don't forget social networking. Decisions are being made now for corporate gift giving-- so timing is of the essence!

You will still have to run it by health code officials. It will be subject to routine inspections too. They have rules on how the kitchen has to be built and equipped.

And do follow Phil's advice. One person has an allergic reaction (didn't read the cookies contain peanuts) and it's a big mess!

Carol and Phil are right on the money. Only when you have all of the health regulation papers in place can you begin to think about what you will offer.

And before you consider how you will market, assuming you are approved in all health codes, you should define what products you will provide for whom at least in the first year. Maybe-this-maybe-that will only confuse you, and most importantly, your customers. Have a plan an stick to it until you're ready to expand.

Jay is right. Start small ... in your town, city or neighborhood. It will give you a chance to see what people like, how they respond to different kinds of marketing approaches, what comments and suggestions they can offer.

Then when you've tried a few things and learned a bit about your target audience, and how to market your product to them most effectively, you can develop an expansion plan.

The reason you want a plan is that it's easy to overextend yourself when you're expanding. Marketing and manufacturing costs can get out of hand, and the banks may not be willing to lend you enough money to do a good job. The result could be a really solid business idea that fails because of poor planning. It happens way too often.

When you are small it's much easier to have your hand on the pulse of the business. When you get bigger, it's not quite so easy. In these early days/weeks/months, you're much better off with a small operation that you can watch closely yourself ... and learn what works and what doesn't.

Hope this helps.

Not familiar with google checkuot, but paypal works great for me. The money request feature is particularly helpful if you need to set different prices (as when you/customer pre-negotiate a fee).

Best,
jag
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