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 🍪
201. Baking it Down - Value over Price
💰 Value over Price - How to stand out in saturation.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 201 - Value Over Price, Corrie happened upon a "bomb pop Facebook Live" - and from a marketing standpoint, it's a fascinating business model.
It's a multi-level business model - but that's not what the podcast is focused on. The concept is this: the seller pre-sells 5 bath bombs for $20 a piece - bundle price of $100. Once purchased, she reveals what the bath bomb hides - a piece of jewelry.
After the reveal of each piece of jewelry, the seller exclaims, "Wow - a ring valued at $350! What a steal - you got it for just $20!" And therein lies the key - value. Because we all know that the costume jewelry wasn't worth $350, but value is relative to the perception of the buyer and seller.
In the words of the ever-successful Warren Buffett, "Price is what you pay; value is what you get." The same applies to cookies.
Instead of competing on price (an unwinnable negotiation when Oreos are in play), compete instead on value. By increasing perceived value, we can maintain and even increase price.
Increasing value can be done in many ways - just being readily available or responding quicker than the next baker can increase the perceived value of your clients. It sharpens the industry as competition strives to increase their perceived value over the next baker. The consumer wins, the sellers don't get complacent, and the invisible hand of the economy keeps the wheels turning.
It's increasing value across your brand that makes the big difference between you and your competitor - so always be looking for ways to "up the ante."
But if you'd like a list (because you know the twins like them a list), we've got one for you. Here's the big takeaway though: move every chess piece in "value added" before you move the "price adjustment" piece. Your price is your profitability - messing with that is a recipe for a bad bakery.
💰 1. Increased value through photography.
We buy with our eyes - and our eyes see good photography. By changing nothing but increasing the quality of your product photos, you can increase value without having to decrease price. With high quality standing, images, and backdrops - you can nearly have your cookies jump off the newsfeed and into the hearts ( and wallets) of your customers.
💰 2. Increase value through customer service.
My favorite way to increase value is by increasing the value of your customer service. Answering emails faster, having better ordering guidelines, handing refunds quickly and without opposition, heck - replying to Facebook comments in groups and keeping your branding updated on your page all signal to the client that you're putting a value on customer services (and thus you can charge accordingly).
💰 3. Increase value through decorating skills.
If communication ain't your thang, you can always work on increasing value by increasing your skill set. A better product is a part of perceived value. Couple a stunning product with stunning photography and you've got a match made in value heaven. Being able to accommodate more requests because you possess those skills is a way to carve out your place in a crowded market.
💰 4. Increase value through ease-of-ordering.
A better website, a better organization of products, better website copy, better check-out options, better order confirmation - all of these are methods you can use to increase your value perception within your market.
💰 5. Increase value through customer reviews.
Easy one - have enough other people proclaim your value that other potential clients can't help but increase their perception of you.
