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 🍪
113. Baking it Down - S-E-Oh My
🕵️ S-E-Oh My
We've talked "SEO" on previous podcasts, but it's always great to revisit the cold audience maker by touching on four points we think will help you reach more search engine traffic.
(Search engines = placed where you can look up words and find results. Google is currently the biggest search engine in the world.)
This is SEO in a Google Search Engine Results Page (also known as a S-E-R-P) - see those white arrows? Those are all places where SEO can drive you more leads. But SEO is more than just Google - and in this week's podcast, we cover this topic to better explain this business branding buzzword.
What is SEO?
- 🍕 Definition: let's say you want pizza but you're out of town. What do you do? Search "Pizza Places Near Me." The results that your phone shows you? Yeah - that's SEO. Ever wonder how Google chooses which business shows up first?
- 🍕 How it Works: You optimize your website so that the "robot" (called crawlers) can better understand the content and, when someone googles something that your website has the answer to, Google will pull up your website first!
- 🍕 How it can Benefit You: keywords are the phrases you type into Google. The intent behind those keywords determines if people are planning to spend their money. If someone searched "how to bake sugar cookies," they probably aren't looking to pay you to bake them. But if someone searches for "sugar cookie bakery near me," often this results in an online lead - these are called money keywords because people who search for this word will likely spend that cold, hard casheesh.
Places to Consider SEO
- 🕸 Website: while you can't own the internet, having your own website is about as close as you can get. And search engines love personal websites! If you ever consider hiring an SEO (they are kind of expensive - heads up), they'll likely start by asking you if you have a website - yes, it's that important.
- 🕸 TikTok: TikTok (as long as it isn't banned) is one of the fastest-growing search engines because of its recent addition of SEO-optimized captions that are searchable. With a quick search, you can find hundreds of videos walking you through how to check your oil, change a tire, or install an under-sink p-trap. You can also find a baker offering local fun things to do (hint hint).
- 🕸 Reviews: Did you know that Google now crawls user reviews in Google Maps? Yep - reviews and websites can now help your GBP (Google Business Profile) show up in maps - just because it contains the right keyword (even if you're a service-area and not a brick-and-mortar).
- 🕸 Google My Business: Google Business Profiles (or GMBs) can also be search engine optimized - often by filling out the many options for text, adding photos, and posting regular updates. More content = king when it comes to GBPs.
- 🕸 Eventbrite (Directories):
Rebranding SEO Considerations
- 👍 Google Search: ranking in Google takes a multi-faceted approach. Ranking a website, getting a Google Business Profile, securing social profiles, and writing quality content (more on that in a second).
- 👍 Social Media: Social can be optimized too (remember - if you can search on it you can optimize for it). Filling out your Facebook page's about section, connecting social media accounts, and writing content that contains keywords are all ways to SEO your social profiles.
- 👍 Caching / Browser History: Do a dirty check on your SEO efforts by either clearing yo
