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 🍪
212. Baking it Down - Admin Hours
⏰ 1-Hr Admin Tasks - Setting up time blocks for tasks.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 212 - Admin Hour, we break down four different "admin hour" frameworks you could spend each week pluggin' away at to be a better baking business.
"Admin Hours" are groupings of tasks that take up an hour spent on one specific aspect of your business - social media, bake prep, customer management, and inbox management - the four frameworks we cover this week.
By spending a dedicated few hours a week on these "admin hour" tasks, you'll save yourself a future headache, streamline your workflow, and become a competitive baker in your space (as well as stress less as you forget fewer orders and run out of fewer cookie tags ya already sold).
🕰️ 1. Social Hour
Staying consistent on social media will be a great foundational strategy. But to be consistent, we must make time to create content. Here's a social media "admin hour" framework you can build from:
- ⏰ 20 Mins - Schedule this week's posts (3x/wk minimum)
- ⏰ 10 Mins - Reply to comments
- ⏰ 10 Mins - Comment on posts in a few local groups
- ⏰ 30 Mins - Make a Reel (film / edit / voiceover / post)
You can add multiple "social hours" to your week depending on how aggressive your social media marketing focus is. And these hours can ebb and flow throughout your cookier calendar year as needed (for example, when you're fully booked, drop down to 1 hour, when the upcoming month looks light for orders, add in a few more social hours).
🕰️ 2. Inbox Hour
If you've not tasted of the sweet nectar that is inbox zero, you're missing out. Walking up to an inbox only full of actionable emails you got in the last few days is a breath of email-fresh air. Once you reach the coveted "Inbox Zero," your inbox-power-hour will look something like this:
- ⏰ 20 Mins - Reply to all emails / Ping follow-up emails
- ⏰ 10 Mins - File emails away to reach Inbox Zero again
- ⏰ 10 Mins - Transpose orders / tasks to Google Calendar
- ⏰ 10 Mins - CRM - Follow up with orders placed this time last year
Getting an inbox hour on your weekly task list puts you in control of your calendar (rather than the stress of being a slave to a calendar missing your dentist appointments and that one order you forgot to write down).
🕰️ 3. Admin tasks
Likely the one you don't wanna do but are forced to do, running a business requires admin tasks. Here's how we'd break up that hour spent "behind the scenes" of your bakery biz:
- ⏰ 10 Mins - QuickBooks Bookkeeping Update
- ⏰ 10 Mins - Adding new leads to CRM
- ⏰ 10 Mins - Inbox Zero
- ⏰ 10 Mins - Inventory Check
- ⏰ 10 Mins - Weekly Meeting (Asana)
- ⏰ 10 Mins - Plan Out Week
So again - your admin tasks may take longer than this - and that's absolutely fine. The goal is to consistently show up for at least an hour for these recurring tasks, turning you into a consistent working powerhouse.
🕰️ 4. Baking Prep
Baking preparations for the week can streamline your baking workflow because you're not stuck running to the cutter corner for every order. I prefer to do this stuff on Mondays and capitalize on the time saving all week. Whichever days you choose for your admin hours is up to you, but sprinkling in a baking power hour is a must for a ballin' baker.
- ⏰ 10 Mins - Wash Baking Mat and other supplies
- ⏰ 10 Mins - Wipe down Surfaces / Disinfect
- ⏰ 20 Mins - Collect Cutters for the Week
- ⏰ 10 Mins - Dough Ready / Dough Day Planned
- ⏰ 10
