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 🍪
205. Baking it Down - Top User Submitted Marketing Tips
🪄 Top Marketing Tips - Submitted by group members in March.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 205 - Top User Submitted Marketing Tips, we challenged the Sugar Cookie Marketing Group in March to make more posts - and 4 winners would be chosen to join The Cookie College on our tab (I'll announce those soon). But the marketing tips were so good, we thought we'd feature a few on this week's podcast!
The layout of this newsletter will look a little different since I'll include the 📸 screenshots from the authors (gotta give credit where credit's due). I read them in no particular order, but they're all great tips. If you want to see the screenshots, snag our blog at www.sugarcookiemarketing.com/blog this week once I've updated it.
🎧 The rest of this post will be those marketing tips - but snag this week's podcast episode to hear our take on 'em.
✨ 1. Reach back out to corporate clients
"My marketing tip is don't be afraid to reach out to past corporate clients about ordering again. I just received two orders (one for 300 and one for 1000 cookies) just by reaching out and basically saying, "Hey, you ordered this time last year, would you like to order again?" Sometimes they just need a reminder that they want your cookies." - Tammy
✨ 2. Use “for sale” homes for headshots
"Want to do a branding photoshoot, but thinking your kitchen ain't fancy enough? Why not use a nearby model home? I haven't met the homebuilder yet or the sales person for them, who didn't appreciate the shout-out when you post your pics. Guess what? It's free. I called to ask when their slowest times were & I made plans for an hour. I left them all the baked cookies I had for the shoot." - Sharon
✨ 3. Incentives through discounts
"Every cookie class I've hosted, each attendee gets a little take home gift. I'd love to see what ever one else does! Here’s a sample of mine: I make a mini 3D printed cookie cutter and provide a coupon for either custom orders, or it may sometimes be $5-$10 dollars off the next upcoming cookie class. I find it’s been working very well to get those to return to classes or place orders for customs." - Jennifer
✨ 4. Seek out strategic local businesses
"Local. Businesses. My husband and I have made a list of local businesses in our area, from mom and pop shops to large warehouses, and we've been strategically picking some to take boxes of samples and business cards to.
- Would this business employ my target clientele?
- Would bringing samples to this business get my business name in places it isn't currently known?
- Does this business openly support other small businesses?
...are a few of the questions we've been considering.
We've gone to car dealerships, furniture stores, medical offices, boutiques, salons, coffee shops, YMCAs, and we have more on the list.
Doing this has greatly increased my following; and shortly after beginning this, the owner of the local Harley Davidson reached out!" - Alayna
✨ 5. Be your #1 fan and believe it
"Start actually thinking of yourself as a business owner! I'm a stay-at-home mom, so when people ask me what I do, that’s what I reply with. I've been listening to the podcast and it's empowered me - and at the dentist the other day the hygienist asked what I did and I said 'I own a custom sugar cookie business' By the time I'd left the office I handed out 5 business cards and have already gotten an order from them." - Tara
✨ 6. Save for samples
"Marketing tip - Have extra cookies left over? Great, cut them in quarters and freeze them. Save them as samples to give out at the next market or event. Always only offer one flavor of a sample otherwise, people will want to try
