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 🍪
280. Baking it Down - Scary Scope Creep
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😱 Scary Scope Creep - How to stop the spread.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 280 - Scary Scope Creep, we are scarin' you straight back to staying within scope, aka what you and the client originally agreed on for their order.
Scope creep is the scary term for agreeing to a design and a price, but over time, through minor changes and alterations, the initial quote no longer matches the bloat. You're now making less profit or, even worse, losing money on this order. And really, it's everyone's fault while also being no one's fault. No one sets out to "get one over on their baker," and no baker sets out to lose money on an order they worked hard on - that's why it's called creep - it creeps in slowly, stealing your profit and your peace of mind.
Here's how to stop scope creep in its scary tracks.
🧟♂️ Creepy - Not Having a Form
Let the form be the scary bad guy here. Having a form forces your client to stay in their order lane. Two dozen minimum? The form communicates that. Payment due to click submit? Form forces their hand (and wallet). Having a form is the first line of defense against scope-creeping clients.
🧟♂️ Creepy - Not Limiting Emails
Scope creep is rarely brazen. No client is going to send you an email that says, "Hey - I know we agreed to X price, but I'm going to add Y changes and still expect the price to stay the same." Oftentimes, it creeps in through endless back-and-forth emails with changes that aren't reigned in. When you see that a client will be coming up with an endless list of ideas, rate-limit their emails. "Awesome - two more emails to dial in design and lock in the final details, and we'll be all set."
🧟♂️ Creepy - Not Requoting
When a change is made after the quote was finalized, don't be scared of saying, "Awesome - let me requote that for you." You're not forcing them to pay it; you're letting them know the change in scope results in a change in rate, and they have the option to accept or reject that change. It's a great way to train your clients that changes result in charges. Otherwise, you're training them to scope creep - and it won't go over well when you eventually decide to walk that "free work" back one day.
🧟♂️ Creepy - Scope Creeping Yourself
The client ain't always the one to blame when it comes to scope creep. If they agreed to X, but you added gold, 2 more designs, and 3 more cookies to their order - you just robbed yourself. "But I just want to overdeliver!" Overdelivering when you're losing money is bad business. Put on the good business owner hat and instead of over-delivering for $0, try upselling them. Maybe they'll be willing to pay too!
🧟♂️ Creepy - Not Knowing Your Numbers
The easiest way to fall victim to scope creep is not truly knowing your numbers - ingredients, labor, packaging, overhead, and profit. If you're unsure if your costs are covered and that you're pulling a profit, you won't know where the scope creep haunts ya. Good thing The Cookie College is rolling out the Profit Blueprint this October!
👂 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 280 - Scary Scope Creep.
