Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪
👋 Hey - Heather and Corrie here with the Baking it Down Podcast with Sugar Cookie Marketing (a group on Facebook full of sugar cookiers turned business owners).
🍪 We're here to help you rise with your reach, flood with new followers, bake up new ideas, and make that all-important dough (while makin' that dough - see the pun there?)
🤑. What’s it about? We’re a Facebook Group turned Podcast, Membership, Book Club, and Baking 101 that’s dedicated to assisting bakers in effectively marketing online to generate more sales and better manage their businesses.
🧠 With free Facebook Live classes, hundreds of resources, and thousands of like-minded bakers, there’s a lot to learn in "SCM" (aka Sugar Cookie Marketing). ️🎧 As an extension of our Facebook group, this podcast is here to let you learn by listening. 📈 We'll cover group topics, marketing trends, and more (leaving this wide open in case Corrie wants to start singing).
💸 We take the sweet art of selling online to the cottage bakery world with marketing methods that move products (and pastries).👂 So open up those glorious ear canals because we have a podcast! Just when you’ve thought you’ve “heard” it all with those marketing "miracle" twins (that's our last name - not a proclamation), we’ve got something just for you each week!
🥣 As a baker, you don't always have the luxury of two hands needed to scroll in Sugar Cookie Marketing Group or crack open a book in Sugar Cookie Bookies, but what you can do is listen (unless you're my kid asking “what’s for dinner” for the millionth time).
👐 Hands full of flour? No problem! 👍 18 dozen iced cookies due tomorrow? Let’s do this. The Baking it Down Podcast by Sugar Cookie Marketing is a weekly podcast geared toward helping you grow your bakery business - dropping (almost) every Tuesday.
📅 We choose a topic each week that's either something new and emerging in the world of social media or something that we saw in "The Group" that was a hot topic and we bake it down... I mean, "break" it down for you. 🗯️ What you can expect in the podcast is about an hour of chit-chat with the meat and potatoes right at the beginning of the episode.
🥔 That’s when we dive into the marketing topic of the week! 📞 Oh yeah, folks can call / text / email in with their questions too - a fun way to hear from other bakers out there.
Our promises to you:
1️⃣ We always make it clean = no cursing. We understand that you are busy and could be around little ones while also trying to get your weekly dose of business growth so we make sure that each episode would make our grandma proud and keep it clean so you can listen while also living your life.
2️⃣ We always make it fun. There’s a lot of negativity in the world so we try and make the podcast an upbeat and fun learning experience for you. I mean, we try to make the Instagram updates and changes as happy as we can, but come on Instagram! Give it a rest! No more changes!
3️⃣ Other than that, we take a positive approach to marketing We are also *not* professional podcasters. I feel like we need to say this because, hey, sometimes we get giggles! We do our best to extend our marketing knowledge to you all free of charge each week at the cost of listening to our higher-than-normal pitched voices and the occasional giggle spree.
4️⃣ You can find the podcast on all the major platforms and you can typically expect a new episode each Tuesday afternoon (unless life happens). We invite everyone to listen.
Either start from the beginning or work backward! The episodes don’t build off themselves so you won’t be confused hearing one before the other. You just might miss new Lives we mention but you can always catch the replay in the Sugar Cookie Marketing Group on Facebook!
Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪
112. Baking it Down - Dry July
Okay fam - here's what separates the marketers from the panic-ers. (is that a word??).
We're entering a period Corrie Mira and I like to refer to as 🏜 "Dry July" ☀️ - but it encompasses the entire summer months from June - August.
It's in these months (as reflected by this Google search report for "sugar cookies" - image below) that your orders will likely slow. 📉 This is expected for our industry.
Things you can do during this time:
- 🚫 Do not panic. Readjust your expectations in terms of ROI (returns on marketing) for this period. Slow = normal.
- ✅ Optimize your admin. Need to schedule posts? Do it now. Website time? Let's get it set up. Want to hire a VA? Let's get interviews scheduled.
- 🚫 Do not overcorrect. When the market slows, we always see people knee-jerk change course. This is the wrong bandaid for this wound. Stay the course - optimize what's worked last year.
- ✅ Invest in Yourself. Use slow periods to invest in yourself - you won't have that chance come the holidays - so now is the time (ahem - www.TheCookieCollege.com 👀). Hey - I'm learning a new 3D printer. It'll pay back in dividends.
- 🚫 Do not pout. It may feel like your audience is abandoning you - and your bank account. They're not - they are focused on their family vacations. Good marketing = assisting them in finding fun family things to do. It'll build trust and they'll be back come Halloween.
- ✅ Cut Costs. There's two ways to make money = make more or spend less. I love slow periods to assess where my money is going and where I can cut costs. If you haven't used it in the last 4 months, cancel it + sell it + downgrade it.
- 🚫 Do not stop. Marketing return is delayed. 🌱 What you plant in these months will grow in the holidays. 🌿 Don't stop marketing just because your engagement seems too low to make it worth it. It'll pay you back - trust me.
- ✅ Build out your Holiday Campaigns. It seems weird to talk Halloween / Turkey Day / Christmas in the beginning of summer - but this is how you build a campaign. You build it out now, have it dialed in, pick a launch date, and wait. You do not want to wait until the week before 🎃 October to start thinking about this.
- 🚫 Do not quit. Slow periods feel like failure - especially when you've done everything right. Do not quit - this is a season of business. Just like landscapers don't expect to have their highest earning months in winter - baker's big days are comin' - but not right now.
- ✅ Inventory. Perfect time to see what you got, what you need, and where you can put it. As we clear out the old, we can make room for the new. Cutters + packaging + class supplies + tools + that Cricut that's still in the box you know who you are (it's me). Figure out, organize, and optimize.
🤔 So lemme throw it back to your side of the court: What do you plan to use the next three "dry" months doing?
