Advertising & Marketing: Marketing Ideas for An online Jewelry Store

So this winter break, I've been helping my dad out at his shop. He has a jewelry manufacturing shop in Downtown Los Angeles. He is ready to retire so I want to take over the business.

Long story short, I have found an investor willing to purchase some jewelry, and I'll be taking pictures of it and designing the store online. Everything is about ready to go and we have a launch date of Jan 15.

I need some ideas for marketing. I want to target people around my age (21) because the jewelry isnt really pricey but its perfect for people my age. Ive been thinking about putting some ads on facebook and maybe creating a page on there and myspace too. But i know thats not enough or maybe not a good idea. This is one of my first ventures and I have never done any e-commerce so Im clueless. Any ideas YGG's?

Oh and once I launch, expect to see a nice coupon code on these forums! :-)

Thanks guys!

Why is it out of your budget?

Well I can tell you facebook won't be cheap from what I have been told....

I'm sorry, but did I miss something? Read the first two messages on this post. They're both from you, one says you're gung ho, then the next says it's out of your budget. Did you get a "whisper" (private message) about a specific advertising and just reply to the entire forum instead of whispering back?

There are many ideas that I could give you. Some of them free and some of them cheap. Generally to get a person to partake in a good or service the idea must penetrate the mind nine times. To achieve that the person would have to see your business advertised at least three times that. Newspaper,tv and yellow page ads help accomplish this in a inefficent way. There are many better ways to do this.
If I were you I would start with fusion marketing. Find a business that is similar to yours but not in direct competition. Then come up with a fusion marketing campaign to drive business to each others businesses. For example, you don't do watches, but another business person you know does. Set up an agreement that if a person buys a certain amount at your business, then they will get a discount at the other business and vice versa. When you advertise, advertse together and split the cost of the advertisement. If you both have websites, have links to each others business and talk each others business up on the sites. This is a great way to get assured word of mouth because your marketing partner has a vested interest in your business. Create as many alliences as possible. I have helped more then one business set this up and it works great for small businesses and help them grow and also compete with the big boys.
Make the most out of your business card. Most business cards are taken and then lost or thrown away. Have a deal that they only get by having your business card on the back of the card. If you are fusion marketing, maybe have that deal go to more than one business. Then they have a vested interest in keeping your card and are more likely to think of your business when shopping at one of the others on the back. You get customers thinking about your business. I have found this also a great way to promote business. This and the fusion marketing is great in that it is marketing that you can track easily. Many other forms are hard to track.
Realize that when you get your site up and running, that is only the very begining part of that process. To many businesses think that if you create a site then money will just start rolling in, and this is why most fail. You need to get you site as high up on search engine sites as possible. If you have the money I would suggest hiring a company that will help do that for you. If you have the money or not I would market the site heavily offline. Meaning I would market it like any other brick and morter store with guerilla marketing techniques instead of traditional marketing techniques. There is a whole set of books under the title Guerilla Marketing that every new business person should read and a succeed. Many successful marketing campaigns that I have done was using ideas from those books. Most libraries have them or you can get them cheap from half.com.
Ben