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 🍪
155. Baking it Down - Upsetspectations
😡 Upsetspectations - How setting expectations up front can keep us outta hot water.
Upsetspectations - the tongue-twister we came up with to describe what setting expectations as a baker and then not meeting them as a baker creates in your clients.
🛫 Listen - you're the one piloting the plane here, you get to set the expectations because likely your clients don't really have a clue what goes into baking. But when you're the pilot 💺 and don't tell the cabin to buckle up, you set yourself up for some troubled turbulence (and a bad review).
In this week's podcast, 😳 we cover things we find sugar cookiers forget to set flexible expectations that blow back in the baker's face (😭 and land you in Sugar Cookie Marketing group begging the comments not to client bash so your thread doesn't get prematurely locked).
When we see these threads pop up in the group, the first question always asked is: 🤔 What were the policies in place before this became an issue?
You'll live and die by your disclaimers, TOS, expectations, and heads-ups.
Here's the most common complaints that we see posted in the SCM group. When you find out one of these bad boys is causing an "unset expectations" issue for you, you'd pay just about any amount to travel back in time and tie these loose ends up. 🪡
- 📑 Color Accuracy - "colors will be close, but aren't guaranteed to be 100% accurate."
- 📑 Hand-Made Disclaimer - "cookies are a hand-made product and made include some minor defects. While kept to a minimum, please remember these are delicious, but not perfection."
- 📑 Follow-Ups - "thank you for your order - you'll hear from me again 2 weeks from your pick-up date to confirm details."
- 📑 Refunds - "my bakery has a no refund policy - if you're unhappy with anything about your order, please let me know and we can find a resolution that works for you."
- 📑 Invoice Paid to Reserve - "here is your invoice - please note that the invoice must be paid to reserve your date, and I cannot guarantee the dates availability after today"
- 📑 No Show / Porch Pickup Policies - "your pick-up time is X:XXAM. in the event you cannot show up for your pick-up, your cookies will be..."
- 📑Price Transparency - "my custom dozens start at $X and increase based on design and set complexity and order size."
- 📑Delayed Disclaimers - "in the event that the baker cannot fulfill the order / teach the cookie class, the policy is..."
- 📑Cancelation Policy - "we do not offer full or partial refunds if your event is canceled - but these cookies will taste delicious regardless."
These will only get ya started. The key to remember is: NO ONE IS READING YOUR TOS, DISCLAIMERS, OR WARNINGS. So you have to keep reminding clients bringing to light the expectation that fits them best.
👀 Tune into a client you suspect really wants exact color matching - then set their expectations on colors and icing.
👀 Look for clients you think may want really frequent communication schedules - then set their expectations about your response times.
👀 Check for clients with spotty communication once you've sent the invoice - then set their expectations on your "pay to reserve" booking system.
