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 🍪
178. Baking it Down - Reading the Cookie Room
🗣️ Reading the Cookie Room - Tells your market's telling you.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 178 - Reading the Cookie Room, 🍿 Corrie jumped in with the Tiktok flavored popcorn to tell us about a viral series of posts made this week by a wedding make-up artist who was guilty of not reading the room... er, well, cathedral.
What started as an innocent disclaimer in the contract that allowed the make-up artist to gather content for their social ballooned into an uninvited (and intrusive) extra guest to the wedding - complete with drama, tears, and an upset bridal party (did I mention a 3-series long TikTok vent sesh to boot?).
So we wanted to talk about "Reading the Cookie Room." Hey - whether we like it or not, our businesses put us face-to-face with clients daily. Knowing how to read subtle hints from body language and speech can allow us to be better salespeople - and just better people in general.
🔎 We've come up with a list of conversational potential pitfalls and blind spots you might want to consider if you don't feel like you've got the gift of gab. 📖 PS - if you're looking for supporting reading material, check out the books "What Every Body Is Saying" and "How to Win Friends and Influence People."
Here's the takeaway: not all of these may apply to you. If only one does, you're probably reading the "cookie room" full of your clients just fine. But if you find yourself wincing at a lot of these - then take a minute to assess the situation and slowly learn what you can tweak. Blind spots are hard to see - that's why we call them blind spots. This podcast is just a hint towards lookin' over you conversation shoulder and making sure you're not missing the closing curtain.
🙏 Your bottom line (and your neighbors) will thank you.
👀 1. Are you constantly having to find new customers?
Do you constantly find yourself running through clients (🏃♂ churn is the buzzword here)? If so, you may be the one scaring them off (and just in time for spooky season too). Talking too much or too personally can run off clients, so ask yourself how often you see similar names comin' back to order.
👀 2. Are your female clients sending husbands (to avoid conversation?)
Oddly specific, but Corrie says she finds herself sending out her "husband of few words" to deal with the neighborhood's chatty Cathys. 🧍♂ If you find that your pick-ups are generally with wall flowers, consider that perhaps someone is avoiding long conversations with you. 👨 Again - more of these have to apply to you than just one to be a blind spot - but it's worth mentioning the men (this can be either gender - the takeaway: if someone's sending the "quiet one" to pick-ups, it may be a tell).
👀 3. Track the average length of pick-up conversations. Are they over 5 minutes?
"Time just flies when you're playin' hostage." Do you keep your clients hostage on your porch? ⏰ A "tell" is tracking how long conversations last. If you find them averaging over 2-minutes - maaaybe ask yourself if you're keepin' people past the normal length of porch-pickup courtesy convos.
👀 4. Release the Cracken - are you giving people options to exit?
Corrie's husband Nate has an affinity for ending conversations by saying "Welp, it's time I hit the ol' dirt road," 🛣 and while hilarious, we can all take notes (and wagon rides apparently). Adding "exits" to your conversations can help people pull the release ripcord. "Well, I don't want to keep you." "So, that's it on my end, any questions on your cookies?" "I can let you go - traffic is going to be bad for you in about an hour." 🚗🚗🚗 These are all release points to let people out of conversations with you.
