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 🍪
153. Baking it Down - The Facebook Ouch-tage 2024
👎 Facebook Ouch-Tage - And what we can learn from Papa Zuck.
I remember exactly where I was when it all happened... I was... sitting at my computer like I always am. I reached for my phone - only to realize, in horror, my access to the mighty blue thumbs-up app was no more. How was I supposed to post that absolutely hilarious baking meme (see bottom of email)?! Or... or... heart-care react to someone asking whether the "copyright violation" email was a scam or not?!!
😭 Where were YOU when Meta went down!?
Okay - so it wasn't that serious - in fact, a lot of you probably missed it, but for an hour around 11AM est on Tuesday last week, all Meta apps went down - Threads, Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger.
😰 And while an hour of outage ain't a world-ender - it could be a business ender. Imagine if Facebook disappeared tomorrow - how long would it take you to rebuild your lead funnel? Would you be able to fill seats for that cookie class next month? Or would you still have been able to reach out to those 2 clients with pick-ups today??
⏰ Yeah - this isn't the first time Meta took its 15-minute smoke break per se. It happened back in 2021 too - and many of us swore we'd never be caught with our digital pants down again. But many more of us got busy and never got around to shoring up our loose leads ends.
So - what can we do not to let this upend our customer base should it happen round 3? We (as always) have a list!
What We'd do if Facebook never Existed.
1️⃣ Create an Email List.
👉 Recommended Apps: Gmail, Mailchimp, Flodesk
Right off the bat - create an email list. If you're reading this newsletter, you got an email from me ✨5 minutes✨ after Facebook went down. See - that's the power of an email list. An easy way to create an email list is by adding your past clients. If you weren't collecting those before, start now. You can add an opt-in on your submissions forms that reads: ✅ Yes, I don't mind being added to your email list for pick-up updates.
2️⃣ Diversify your Social Media Presence (outside of Meta).
👉 Recommended Apps: LinkedIn, TikTok, GMB / GBP, Nextdoor, Yelp
Facebook and Instagram are the fan favorites of bakers because they really just work well in bringing in leads. But if Meta pulls the plug, we're going to need to have backup socials to reach our audience. This is not a "if you build it, they'll come" scenario - you'll actually have to work on growing these platforms - same way we say to work the Facebook algo. Start now, reap when Zucky's having a bad day.
3️⃣ Get a Website STAT.
👉 Recommended Apps: Square, Wix, Shopify, MyCustomBakes
Websites are the "digital hub" of your business. From a website, I should be able to contact you, buy from you, learn about you, and connect with you (on social media). They're also a handy way to pass along information quickly. A simple banner stating "ALERT - PICK-UPS SCHEDULE FOR TUESDAY ARE STILL ON."
4️⃣ Always Capture Emails / Phone #s.
👉 Recommended Apps: Google Workspace / Google Voice
Newsletters are for promotions or mass emailing, but Google Workspace (Google's business Gmail) is for regular contact with clients. Collect those emails, then take the conversations out of Facebook Messenger and into Gmail - a much more reliable form of communication. And while you're at it - snag their phone numbers too - perfect backup-to-the-email-backup-to-the-social-media-platform backup.
