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 🍪
272. Baking it Down - S-Tier Lead Gen for Cottage Bakers in 2026
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👩🏻💻 S Tier Lead Gen - For cottage bakers in 2026.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 272 - S-Tier Lead Gen Sources for Bakers in 2026, there's a new trend where people rank things they like and hate by tiers - 🟨 S-tier being the elite. For the oldie goldies like me, "S" apparently stands for superior.
Following down the rankings, 🟩 A-tier means really good, 🟦 B-tier represents what's probably good to have around, 🟪 C-tier is a take-it-or-leave-it, 🟧 D-tier is more of a leave-it, and 🟥 F-tier is the "I wouldn't waste my time."
So this approach to ranking sugar cookie bakers' lead generators is opinion-based, but that opinion comes after years of watching where bakers are getting their leads, how they get those leads, and if those leads seem worth the hassle.
🟨 S-Tier Lead Gen
S-tier lead sources (superior, as the kids call it) are the lead gen sources we'd ask bakers why they aren't on them. These methods of generating leads are what have proven to work in 2026 for cottage local bakeries. Now, will we say the same thing in a year? Maybe not. But if you're on the fence about one of these, consider jumping both feet first - it's working well for your coworkers.
- 🟨 Facebook Groups
- 🟨 Email Marketing
- 🟨 Google Business Profile
- 🟨 Website
- 🟨 Word-of-Mouth / Referrals
🟩 A-Tier Lead Gen
Our A-Tier choices were Facebook Business Pages - not because they're not S-Tier important, but because they're very restricted by algorithms. Thus, we knocked it down a peg. That said, you definitely need one to get those juicy analytics you can only get through Business Suite dashboard insights - it'll really allow you to understand exactly who your audience is. Something you can't capture in Facebook groups unless you're an admin.
SMS (text) marketing is a newer form of marketing, and in the right hands with a solid strategy, can really get conversions going. Spamming SMS is a disaster though (lookin' at you - Paula's Choice).
🟦 B-Tier Lead Gen
B-Tier could be a few bakers S-Tier, so just because we don't see it mentioned a lot in the groups, doesn't mean it can't move the needle.
Instagram, Facebook Marketplace, and a personal Facebook profile used to sell can be a treasure trove for bakers willing to deal with the trade-offs, like Marketplace tirekickers and removing your privacy to make a Facebook personal profile sale.
Instagram can be extremely rewarding if you invest time into cultivating an audience (and recording those darn Reels!).
🟪 C-Tier Lead Gen
LinkedIn, TikTok, and NextDoor have their places and can be a great lead gen for digital downloads, corporate orders, and local business (when your NextDoor is active), but if you're torn between investing your limited time in an S-tier lead source or a C-tier, we'd recommend focusing on the S-Tier before even glancing at the direction of the C-Tier.
LinkedIn works when you hit the pavement and attend networking events; TikTok is starting to gain more local foot traffic (it may become a B or A-tier by next year for local business leads), and NextDoor is tightening the belt on business reach (so we may lower its ranking by next year - who knows what the wild work of marketing holds).
For the D-Tier and F-Tier hot takes, snag this week's podcast!
👂 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 272 - S Tier Lead Gen Sources for Bakers in 2026.
