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 🍪
261. Baking it Down - Lawn Funnel
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🌾 Lawn Funnel - Understanding the marketing landscape.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 261 - Lawn Funnel, Corrie really wanted to stick with the 🌱 landscaping analogy - so baby gets what she wants. The topic = funnels. The analogy = a lawn.
We use the buzzy word "funnels" a lot when we talk - acquisition funnel, conversion funnel, reengagement funnel, funnel cakes (wait... no) - lot'sa funnels. But what does "funnel" mean in marketing?
🔽 Think of a legit funnel - note how it starts off wide and tapers to a small point. This is the visual representation of how your marketing funnels work as well. 🔽🔽🔽 You cast a wide net by posting in a local Facebook group (top of funnel), 🔽🔽 then you make a post asking the same group to vote on a cookie class theme to teach (middle of funnel), 🔽 then you pitch them on signing up for said class (bottom of funnel).
In each layer of the funnel, you get fewer and fewer people until the final few click that sign-up button, 💲 and you've made a sale. This is by design. How your funnels are configured can be compared to how someone maintains their lawn.
🪴 Rotor-Sprinklers - Spray and Pray
A lot of baker's marketing funnels start and stop here - which negates the funnel concept entirely, and you're left with a really wide tube that's letting your leads fall out immediately.
This is the type of content that should sit at the top of your funnel (TOFU) - it's your decorating videos or your baking tips and tricks. You know, that stuff that stops the scroll and tends to go more viral than your other content. This content should cast a wide net, but that net will likely catch more than just your target audience.
Which is why we need to move from 🔽🔽🔽 TOFU (top of funnel) to 🔽🔽 MOFU (middle of funnel) to sift out our seed from our chaff. Views are cool, sales are cooler.
🪴 Drip Irrigation - Target Specifically
This is watering the root system for specific needs in different areas of our lawn. 💦 Your veggie garden isn't going to need the same moisture strategy as that dead patch in the back. 💧 Targeting a specific plant with the specific amount of water that creates the environment for it to grow is key.
Same with your audience. The lead you acquired from a cookie class is going to think it strange when you send an email saying, "THANKS FOR ATTENDING MY VENDOR SHOW." This is where list segmentation and distinct funnels really shine (like the sun... see, the plant analogy sticks). Here's a content funnel designed to get your audience to sign up for a cookie class:
- 🌿 TOFU - A Reel of you setting up a cookie class
- 🌿 MOFU - A Reel of you telling people what they'll learn in class
- 🌿 BOFU - A Reel of you telling people how to sign up for class
🪴️ Fertilizer - Grow What's Growing
Then we have the lush, beautiful lawn that's perfect and making the neighbors jealous. DO NOT forget to keep up with this lawn. The tendency of bakers to say, "They seem happy, let me tend to this dormant patch back here," and leave our green grass clients out to dry happens when we run out of time. And while both are necessary actions for a healthy lawn (audience), the returning clients are some of the cheapest to maintain because they're already happy, they don't mind your prices, and they know your workflow.
🪴️ Aeration - Reengage the Dormant
Dormant patches of grass (cold leads or leads that haven't returned) can have their own dedicated funnels too - think of a reengagement funnel strategy that starts with a "We Miss You" email, followed by a newsletter about an upcoming product drop you'd like to give them first access to, then followed with a discount code (this would require an email drip software with an exit action - Flodesk do this). That's one way to see if we can aerate these dried-up leads or cut them loose.
👂 Snag this podcast on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or watch it on YouTube) by searching for Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 261 - Lawn Funnel.
