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 🍪
122. Baking it Down - A$$et A$$umptions
💲 Asset Assumption 💲
"A$$uming makes a butt outta you and me" - words have been changed to protect the innocent, but the stance stands true. Assuming client expectations rather than communicating them steals your business a$$ets and leaves you with an empty bank account and an angry customer.
But I get it - communication is hard, we're busy, the clients are vague, there's more dough than hours in a day. But assuming our clients ✨should just know✨ is leaving a lot up to interpretation - and that includes our profit margin.
👍 Rule of thumb - if you don't communicate effectively, you better have a well-funded "Oopsie" budget for refunds. 👎
But why refund when you can just recall an email that spelled the entire client quote out - down to delivery date, set details, invoice total, and pick-up location? We're not sayin' over-communicate - but oftentimes, what we think is too much communication is actually probably the right amount of communication.
Examples of places where we can firm up the vocabulary include:
- 🗣️ Quoting - it's awkward to quote a price because we assume that our clients either don't know our worth or that we priced too high. That's over assumption and it's costing you cold hard cash.
- 🗣️ Order Details - confirm, confirm, and reconfirm order details. I like to end each email with a summary of the quoted services - that way nothing is up in the air except the smell of sugar cookies in the oven. Use a "quote recap" as a templated part of your email signature to force the habit.
- 🗣️ Refunds - I like this one. It was someone else's comment in the group that I really liked. If a client is upset, ask them what you can do to make this right. It directly acknowledges (ahem communicates) that something missed the mark, and you ask (ahem communicates) with them to find a mutual resolution.
- 🗣️ Pretails - (made up word for pre-details) Communicate the details that may dissuade a client right off the bat. Location, minimum price, availability. Do this before you get into the quote nuances which will eat up time but won't equal money if you're out of their budget.
- 🗣️ Threat of Viol💀ence - we talked about this in another podcast, but add a communicated escape pod. "Hey - this invoice is due by Monday at 5PM, and if I don't see payment come through by then, no sweat at all! I'll assume you took your delicious desserts in another direction, and I'll release the date to another client. Consider me for future events - I'd love to work with you!"
Communication makes the world go 'round and your bottom line go up. Snag more tips and tricks and learn which beige flags Heather and Corrie are waiving in this week's Podcast - Episode 122 - Asset Assumptions.
