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 🍪
168. Baking it Down - Alotta Parking Lots
🚶♂ Alotta Parking Lots - Volume-based pricing versus high pricing.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 168 - Alotta Parking Lots, Corrie wanted to talk... well, parking lots.
🌴 We took off from the podcast last week to visit VA Beach (love that beach if you're passing through the great state of Virginny). There's a three-mile strip that runs along the oceanfront where hotels, restaurants, and shops are lined up as far as you can see (or walk). In between this sea of spending, there are parking lots for the endless number of cars driving to spend the day feasting and beaching.
🚗🚕🚙 Some of the parking lots have better beach views (🌞 you know - for when your car apparently wants to relax /s) than even some of the restaurants! And some parking lots felt like they were a 3-hour walk to the destination. Pricing for parking spots ranged from $5 - $30 depending on where the lots were and at what capacity they were at. Prices also went up the closer to the weekend it got (gotta love surge pricing). By Saturday Night, the boardwalk is absolutely packed with people (and their parking spots).
This begs the question - 🤔 how can all the parking lots be marketing money when some charged $50 and others charged $5? Are some parking lots working at a loss? Are some lots price gouging?? What gives??
Simple - 🔪 far-away parking lots are operating with razor-thin margins but working at higher sales volume, and featured parking lots charging a premium to cover all of their add-ons (and proximity) but serving fewer cars = higher margins and lower volume.
In essence - both parking lot pricing structures can result in profitable parking businesses. As long as the parking lots' costs are covered (electricity, asphalt upkeep, parking attendee, towing contract), both models produce a profit (a key when it comes to surviving in business).
🤔 "But why wouldn't the cheap lot just charge more? Sounds like people are willing to pay it."
💵 The parking lot charging less often does so because it costs less to run it. 💸Think: 🚙 hiring a parking attendee with 20 years of valet experience versus a college kid on summer break who doesn't know how to parallel park.
Same with parking lot lighting. 💡 The high-end lot we ended up parking in (because it was the only one servicing our hotel) had automatic motion sensor lights in their covered multi-story garage whereas the cheap lots off the strip had next to no lighting at all. Security gates, parking passes, in-and-out privileges - it's easy to see the cost savings versus the cost splurging.
But here's the thing: all the parking lots were full. 🚘🚖🚔🚖🚘🚖🚔
The ones 4 blocks off the strip ✨and✨ the ones right on the beach were all filled with their target demographic. And the overpriced lot we parked in? So full, in fact, they were sending folks to the cheaper lots and shuttling them over.
Same with bakeries.
As long as the costs are covered (math says you can't run a business at a loss), you have bakers who charge a little ✨but✨ make up for it with their high volume of orders, and bakers who charge a ton - which limits their leads - ✨but✨ they have such high margins built into each order, they're still profitable.
You pay the pied piper one way or another. Either working by baking more or working by marketing more. It's up to you, your personality, and your expertise as to which you prefer to be.
🙅 An introvert may like to charge less per order if it means they don't have to speak at a chamber meeting. 🙋 An extrovert may prefer giving a 10-minute presentation and raking in corporate leads if it means they don't have to be stuck in the kitchen for the next month.
