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 🍪
172. Baking it Down - Choc-A Lot
🍫 Choc-A Lot - How to increase price by increasing value.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 172 - Choc-A Lot, my sisters and my mom partook in our annual "Christmas in July" gift exchange. For a family who loves gift-giving with birthdays from November - February, the rest of the year feels like a gifting desert. Ergo - Christmas in July for the fourth year running was born.
The rules are simple: you must buy everyone a gift that is $50 each, and you must give everyone the same gift.
I'm still in my minimalist era, so I wanted to go with a consumable (something that won't live on the shelf collecting dust), and a new local chocolate shop opened at our favorite mall - Läderach (good luck pronouncing that).
Their claim to fame is giant chocolate slabs you can see walking past their pretty storefront (pic in the newsletter is from their Facebook page here). Yeah - definitely a head-turner for just about any "sweet treat" addict like myself. I ended up shellin' out $250 to meet the "Christmas in July" spending requirement (while also sweet-treatin' myself), and lemme tell ya - Y-U-M-M-O.
But cheap ain't luxury and luxury ain't cheap - so here are the 10 things we found that made the difference between Laderach and Dove chocolate (no hate to Dove, those are my go-to Saturday night sweet treats).
🍫 Packaging Packs a Punch.
I swear they had more packaging options than they had chocolate - and for good reason. This chocolate is meant to be gifted. Their store screamed "This is a perfect gift for the hard-to-buy-for" with so many selections for varying chocolate sizes and truffles combos - there was a gift box for every budget. If you were worried about presentation, worry no more - this brand was a packaging powerhouse.
Same with your packaging - the bigger, flashier, funnier, brighter, cuter - the better. We're not selling food. We're selling really delicious gifts - just like Laderach.
🍫 Samples Sell.
I'll be honest - this chocolate shop has been fueling my mall powerwalks for months - there's always a person at the front door offering bits of broken chocolate slabs for the passersby to tempt themselves. They don't hard-pitch you on anything - just merely ask, "Would you like some chocolate?" That's one question you'll never hear me say no to. The fun fact is - they'd given me three samples before I finally reached into my chocolate change purse.
Same with samples at vendor markets. No, I don't think you're "giving away product for free" - I think you're building a returning customer base. Remember - it took me three completely free samples before I spent $250.
🍫 Location Location Location.
Laderach had one thing on lock - their location. Between a mall entrance and a high-foot-trafficked anchor store (Macy's), there were tons of people walking by (did we mention their all-glass storefront where you can drool... I mean... see the stacked slabs of delicious chocolate).
While your bakery may be at home, your location at vendor events can make all the difference. See if you can find a spot next to a popular vendor (stay away from direct competitors) and an entryway.
🍫 Brand Fans.
If being decked out in branded aprons, crisp button-down white collared shirts, and fancy black slacks wasn't enough, the staff truly seemed to be fans of the brand they worked for. One staff member heard us struggling (see: slaughtering) pronunciation and chimed in not only with the easy way to remember the name but added some history about the brand. "That brother works in the kitchen developing some of the most unique chocolate pairings I've ever tasted - he's a chocolate genius."
Are you excited about your brand?
