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 🍪
179. Baking it Down - 2 Busy 2 Business
🤹 2 Busy 2 Business - 10 ways to up communication in Sept.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 179 - 2 Busy 2 Business, we wanted to talk about good communication (or the lack thereof... ahem... Bev).
Corrie led with a personal story where she left her client, Bev, in communication purgatory wondering when or if Corrie had gotten her inquiry. See, Bev was a referral from another client, Ashley, who loved a 4 day waiting period for cookie communication. But unlike Ash, Boss Bev needed a confirmation within 24 hours or not a happy camper she was.
And Bev was totally right in feeling like she got ghosted (too early for Halloween costumes, my twin sister). So thus we audited the 10 avenues we typically get bogged down with when we get too busy - and added some tips on how to sharpen up the communication skills ahead of Santa's sleigh.
(ps - do you know we have a Baking it Down Instagram that stores all these lil graphics for quick reference?)
A lot of this stuff we've covered in past podcasts, but the goal here is to optimize these communication channels for the busy season. 🚿 You know - where we're too busy to even shower let alone check our after-hours auto-responder. 🤗 The better the communication = the happier your clients. 💵 The happier your clients = the deeper their pockets.
👍 Rule of thumb: good communication means more money. It's as simple as that (and much easier said than done, oh do we know).
🤹 1. Autoresponders / Away Messages
- 🔴 Set a response window - setting an expectation of when you'll get back to someone buys you more time. Be liberal here, if you know it'll take you a while to reply, give yourself 48 hours. But ensure you're definitely getting back to them within the time frame or risk a bad review.
- 🟡 Have your booking form in your auto-responder - Your auto-responses can include clickable links to your website or form that way you're spending less time "back and forthing" and more time making money while your website does the labor in the background.
🤹 2. Google Business Profile
- 🔴 Use Maps app to reply to questions / get profile updates - Google Business Profiles are hooked to Google Maps - so having the app on your phone can give you immediate notifications of communications and reviews.
- 🟡 Remove phone numbers if you can't handle phone calls - if you simply don't communicate over phone calls, remove that from your GMB listing. While I'd like to think I'm good at answer the phone, it's just another avenue to potentially miss a lead, detail, or order change.
🤹 3. Website Forms
- 🔴 Ensure you gather all needed information in your form - audit your form. Are you gathering all the info you need there? Because if you're not, you're adding more back and forth which can be a stumbling block come busy season.
🤹 4. Facebook Messenger
- 🔴 Have in your notes app a readily available copy/paste for quicker response times - most smartphones have built-in notes apps. Use these to paste faster replies. I like to leave [BRACKETS] for info I can quickly replace to make my "copy pasta" seem more personable.
🤹 5. Social Media Comments
- 🔴 Replying to comments as soon as they're posted increases engagement - when someone comments on your posts, reply immediately, and ask questions. This gets people back to your post, replying to your question, and thus increasing engagement.
🤹 6. Reviews
- 🔴 Reply immediately to reviews - this shows you care about past clients and gives future clients a warm fuzzy feeling as well as
