GiftBaskets.us increases its site traffic over 200% each month since opening.

Using innovative marketing techniques it is still possible to take a startup to stardom. GiftBaskets.us President, Leigh Ann Tuttle says "Marketing is a 24 hour job. You win the game one link, one impression, one customer at a time."

When entrepreneur Leigh Ann Tuttle decided that her two teen boys were grown up enough to take care of their own after-school needs, she opted to start a company rather than go back to work for one.

Her gift of organization and her love for people made starting GiftBaskets.us, a Gift Basket and Flower Gift store, an easy decision. The hard decision was where to spend her money to get traffic to the site.

"Things started out slowly, but now we are seeing hundreds of new visitors each day. It was very disappointing at first, but it helps to have a husband (that happens to be Vice President of Marketing for a 25 million dollar online retailer) coaching me on what to do. He has encouraged me not to look at sales as an indicator of my success but of the incremental increase in traffic each day. We are seeing traffic double about every two weeks."

Pay per click search engines is one strategy that has worked very well. "You have to watch them (the engines) though because sometimes we've noticed a robot automatically clicking our links and running up our balance. Most engines will rebate charges if you catch that, but you have to review your website logs every day" says Tuttle.

Email advertising has been effective for GiftBaskets.us, but some hard lessons were learned. Emails must be personalized. "No one likes getting the dozens of spam emails everyday, so a personal invitation or referral works best", says Tuttle. She simply works her personal contacts and asks for referrals. "It is very effective".

"Search Engine Optimization is my husband's favorite strategy. He spends hours and hours working to get a few key pages closer and closer to the top of the major search engines. I think he's a genius when I see a page at number one on Google that we did not pay a dime for."

The Tuttle's believe that servicing the customer is as important as bringing visitors to the website. "With our 100% satisfaction guarantee and skyrocketing growth, we believe that we can build a very popular company. If my husband can get my business to the $25 million dollar level, I think I just might retire", grins Mrs. Tuttle.