Start simple. Solubility tests. If its water soluble, check the pH. Check the meltng point. If it doesn't melt under 300C, then its probably not your typical organic salt, its probably an ionic one. Drop some silver nitrate in there to see if any halides precipitate out. Maybe do a few more old fashioned methods like reacting with acid to see if CO2 forms (which would mean its a carbonate). The kick it up a notch and run TLCs on to gain an idea of whats int there. UV chamber will tell you if it has one or more benzene rings. It'll also give you an idea of solubilities of your isomers. You could try staining a TLC plate with permanganate, anything with a whoe load of easily oxidisable hydroxy groups, will turn brown in front of your giths. After that, I'll run an IR to. Then get as many NMRs that I can.