Step 3 : Marketing Plan

Step 1 was coming up with the Product Line. Step 2 was building a professional looking website. An yes, you can do it yourself using Yahoo ! hosting (it was quite easy actually) but at some point, you will probably need some "professional" guidance especially if you are dealing with e-commerce. If you like my website, email me and I can get you in touch with John Cowin who worked closely with me designing my site. Sometimes it is frustrating not being able to do things yourself but he followed MY vision and didn't take away the control...just the tedious work ! Step 3 is arguably the most important - Marketing ! You can have a great product and a great website but if people don't know about it, what's the point of it all ? And the WWW is such a vast space that you need to take it upon yourself to DIRECT people to your Site.

I had the pleasure of having coffee with my friend, and a fellow preschool mom, recently, and as luck would have it, she has a background in marketing. Don't you love that when things work out like that? We brain-stormed for an hour and came up with some excellent marketing tools (some of which are too juicy to share here). The most obvious one of course is to email All of your friends including those on facebook, twitter, playgroups, etc etc and offer them a 10% coupon. Who doesn't love a coupon? Then ask them nicely to pass it along to their friends and so on and so forth. Your first dozen or so orders will most likely be from "a neighbor, sister, or a friend of a friend of a friend". I want to thank all of my friends who were gracious enough to help me out in this regard. 90% of my first 2 dozen orders were from one of these emails (I can trace it back by the coupon code - smart aren't I?). In time, as your friends and their friends have a wonderful shopping experience, the net will be cast further and further out into the World Wide Web.

The main point I took away with me from that "pow-wow" was that "everywhere you Go, there is a potential for a Sale" e.g. writing the name of my site on the back windshield of my car and my husband's car. My favorite is her idea to embroider my site's name onto our beach/pool bag ! I love that idea and remember how the person who designed "jibbitz" for Crocs was discovered at the local pool by the founder of Crocs himself (their daughter was sporting them at the local pool).

Everyday this week, I plan on doing 2-3 things to further my goal of "spreading the word" including of course writing this blog. Due to the "viral" emails (don't SPAM people please!), I have received orders from states as far away as HI within just a few short days of releasing a coupon code. Btw, if you read to this part, you deserve an award so here it is : Use coupon code "thankyou15" for 15 % off your next purchase at www.mom2sarah.com ! Yes, I am a nice person :-) And SPREAD the WORD.