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 🍪
217. Baking it Down - Video Marketing for Local Small Bakeries
📹 Video Marketing - For local, small cottage bakeries.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 217 - Video Marketing for Local Small Bakeries, Corrie wanted to talk about the wild world of Reels. Well, Reels, TikToks, YouTube Shorts - you know, vertical video. A topic made all the more important by Meta's announcement last week that all videos uploaded to the Facebook platform would now be categorized as Reels, thus shutting the door on horizontal videos (* Lives are still Lives, though).
It's what's in right now, and as small businesses who want to increase reach, we gotta bite the proverbial bullet and say cheese (trust me, I hate it too).
🎞️ 1. Start with the setup
The setup will make or break your quality, but pro-tip: it won't be perfect when you're just getting started. Don't let that stop you! The old adage was right when it stated, "Practice makes perfect." So yes, you may be tripping out of the gate, but the long-term benefits of Nike's "Just Do It" will make the juice worth the squeeze.
Products Recs from this Podcast:
- 🔗 Tripod - Canvas Lamp
- 🔗 Dummy Phone - iPhone 13
- 🔗 Editing App - InShot
- 🔗 Backdrop - The Backers Co in White Matte Finish
- 🔗 Teleprompter - Search Amazon for one that fits your setup
You'll want to find a natural indirect light source - this means the sun, but in a bright room where the sun isn't creating harsh shadows. If you can't get out of the sun because of the positioning of your house, using a silk curtain can diffuse the light enough to make it work.
📐 Most bakers struggle with the positioning of the tripod in relation to the cookie. Don't be afraid to position the camera at an angle - if you pay attention, you'll find most decorating videos are not directly overhead, although Corrie tells ya how to make it work with the Canvas Lamp (heads up - she does not use the lamp's light ring, just the phone mount).
🎞️ 2. Types of videos to record
Once you get your setup dialed in, you may be tempted to become a one-dimensional "cookie decorating video ASMR" content machine, but ya gotta mix it up. 🔑 This is the key point to the podcast - small, local businesses need to feature local content.
Consider who is watching your videos. ASMR-type decorating videos appeal to a wide audience - 🌎 like, "the whole world" wide. Not the goal if we want to increase our local customer base, but good for impressions (the number of eyes that watch your videos). When we feature hyper-local businesses, farmers markets, and event coverage, we appeal really just to our local demographic. That's the goal.
🪣 Here are some content buckets you could pull from to make a diverse content strategy that covers both broad and narrow targeting:
- 🎬 Read customer testimonials and give order details
- 🎬 Local event coverage - farmer's markets, new restaurant opening, town events
- 🎬 Tell a story or series - "I'm on my journey to open a brick and mortar - I'm taking you with me!"
- 🎬 Behind the scenes - "I have an order for 30 dz. Let's do it together."
- 🎬 Presale QVC-style video - "Here's what you'll find at my pop-up next week."
- 🎬 Baking Tips - "Here's how to make Royal Icing at home!"
- 🎬 ASMR-type decorating vids
🎞️ 3. Things to include for extra reach
Finally, try to include these when recording - it'll help your audience better relate and discover your content. And the more people who see your content, the more likely the algos are to show your content to more people = the endless cog in the marketing wheel.
