I was interested in starting my own business and was wondering what the most successfull type of marketing is.

ex: direct mail, internet, billboards, radio shows, commercial

You are confusing marketing with advertising. Advertising is part of marketing, but marketing includes the entire process of selling your product.

Anyhow, advertising with any of the methods you mention can work, but TARGETED direct mail is the most effective.

Of course, budget is also a consideration.

For some of the best advice on how to use direct mail and advertising in general, get ahold of Dan Kennedy's Magnetic Marketing course. You can do a google and find it easily.

Hi there,
It really depends on your product, and your budget. The act of defining your target market is crucial, then you find the most cost effective way to reach them.

Will your product have a long sales cycle, requiring lots of branding and third party / market validation? If you have a poor web site, then advertising on the internet is not a good choice. Me personally, I love the internet (maybe a little too much) but anyway I think that a solid web site with highly targeted traffic can produce very economical results.

You sound like your in the inital phases, and probalby don't have a business plan yet (you are probably working on it with this question, good start!). If this is your first business, I recommend go the the small business adminstration web site - there are lots to be learned there, including business plan help, market research, etc. I think it's sba.gov, but you can look it up in google to be sure.

Is there a way to soft lauch your product / service? That is if it's a new concept you might want to validate what the market will pay for it, and if it's worth going full bore on a big ad budget.

Ask more specific questions, and I'd be happy to help if I can. Best of luck!

Thanks for your help, both of you gave me some really helpful information. When I have some more questions, I won't hesistate to ask. Also, thanks for correcting me on the Advertising/Marketing language.

I am a big fan of pay per click advertising. The best pay per click advertising provider IMHO is Google Adwords. You pay each time that people click on your ads and you can set your own CPC and budget.