What is the most effective advertising for a start up small business?

It really depends on the business. You need to understand your target audience, and what type of advertising or promotion would get their attention.

Internet promotion can be free, if you use twitter and facebook, have a website, and know how to get placement on search engines, but it's only effective if it hits your target audience. Is your business local, or larger? Does it target young people, middle age people or seniors? Does it target sahm's or business people? There are so many things that you have to consider before deciding how to advertise.

Depends on where your audience is. Need more info from you.

Are you trying to get us to do your homework for you?

Depends on a lot of factors. For example, I'm a writer - so it would be kind of a waste to advertise my books in a video rental store, and a total waste to do it in a fashion clothing store. While *some* people might go to those places and pick up my book because of the ad, it won't be many. It'd make more sense for me to advertise at a book store, or even the library.

Online you can find a lot of free promo methods - facebook, twitter, joining groups, etc. - but again, it depends on your business. You need to figure out where (online or off) your customers would be, and that's where you want to advertise. Then you try different types of ads, different wording, photos, etc. until you start to see some results and then you know what's working and what's not and build on that.

Depends on several factors:

What is your product?
What is your business model?
Who is your target audience?
Free or paid advertising?

You need to answer those questions before you can decide on an effective marketing plan.

Coupons, incentives to shop at your store or buy your product to get word of mouth around.

Groundswell is what its called, Take your product to colleges and hand out samples. Find places that do the same thing and outside hand out handbills for your business. Find kids who need some christmas money and they can hand out adverts. Throw a welcome to the neighborhood party and have drawings invite your neighbors to come and meet you see what you do and serve some cake and give out small prizes that come from your business.

It’s a gutter cleaning service using an industrial vac. Sometimes people are annoyed by leaflets. At least, that's what I have found in my experience. But you should not give up in the gutter cleaning services, I would suggest that you keep going with your flyers, and with postings on local business bulletin boards. Craigslist (as mentioned before) also helped to increase visibility for me. In our area, we're allowed to put flyers in individual newspaper boxes (not in mailboxes, though), and this allows us to cover a whole lot of ground in a very short time. My children and I went out one Saturday, and covered 5 subdivisions, distributing over 400 flyers, in just under 2 hours.

www.merchantcircle.com
There is a free option.