Tips and Insights For Marketing A Cake Business
If your cake business is up and running, you can dive into the information for promoting your cake business below. However, if you haven’t started yet, you may want to look at our article on how to start a cake business. You may also be interested in how to start a bakery.
Setting Up Your Business For Marketing
To market your business effectively, set it up so you can advertise your strong points. For example, customers continue to purchase cakes from you because of the delicious taste or because they love your unique designs. To advertise your strong points, you have to create them and ensure customer’s come back because of them. Therefore, the first part of this article will focus on this area.
You can use traditional marketing and advertising techniques to improve the awareness of your cake business. This article will use online and offline marketing methods to get your creativity flowing.
1. Define Your Competitive Edge
A competitive edge is important. Without one, there is no reason for customers to purchase your cakes over the competition.
A competitive edge doesn’t have to be something new. For example, you could do something better than the competition. Find a weak point in the marketplace and make significant improvements.
On the other hand, you could find something that’s missing in the industry and introduce it to your customers.
When looking at a competitive advantage, you want to identify how easy it will be for your competitors to copy it. Of course, there are many times when you can’t keep your competitors from using your idea. However, let’s say you did come up with something special that your competitors can copy. By launching a strong advertising campaign, you can be the first to introduce and promote the concept. Despite others copying your idea, you will be the leader in the minds of your customers if you are the first.
Looking at trends and statistics for your industry may give you an idea of creating something new or making improvements in a weak area. Also, studying the competition can uncover areas of opportunity.
2. Taste Is an Important Factor
Cake businesses must have great-tasting cakes to succeed. If your cakes taste bad, how long will your business last? Not long at all. Thus, developing recipes that set you apart from rivals can be a competitive edge. It is important to keep your winning recipe a secret once you have it. To this day, KFC has a recipe under lock and key. To further protect their secret recipe, they purchase ingredients from different companies.
Creating a winning recipe takes time. Therefore, you must improve your recipe one step at a time and only make one change. If you change, for example, an ingredient and change the baking process, you won’t be able to tell which process affected the change.
Test one thing at a time and document every test. If things improve, test the process again to ensure you get the same result. Once you do, you know you have a better recipe. This will be your new recipe; you can try and improve it if you like. You keep repeating this until you are satisfied that you have a winning recipe your customers love.
3. Become an Expert
Becoming an expert in your field brings credibility to your business. The more credibility you have, the easier it is to market your products and services. When you’re known as an expert in your area, your business starts to market itself through word of mouth and other methods discussed next.
Signature Items
For example, you can incorporate your name into your design of specialty cakes. You might have a few signature items called Janet’s Black Forest Delight. Once the reputation of your signature items grows, people will start to ask for them by name, and in the back of their minds, they see you as an expert.
Write a Local Column
Another method is to write for a local paper to share tips and insights about the cake industry. You may come to an agreement with the newspaper where they publish your content monthly or weekly. In exchange, you take out a quarter or half-page ad in the newspaper. This is a win-win situation for you. You’re becoming an expert in the area, and for the newspaper, they receive content for the readers and advertising revenue.
4. Creative Designs
Designs are an important part of branding your cake business.
Customers usually purchase their cakes at grocery stores. But when it comes to special events like anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, etc., they order special cakes for the event. And that’s something you can focus on and specialize in. That’s not to say that once you build a stronger customer base, they won’t drop by to buy your specialty cakes, but this is an area of opportunity.
When it comes to cakes, it’s about taste and design. You have a winning recipe for success when you’ve mastered both. When it comes to design, your imagination is the only thing that will limit you. So coming up with different designs is one way to gain a competitive advantage.
For example, when it comes to kids’ birthdays, you want to design your cakes around those things that kids love. A lot of those can be around kids’ favorite movies, favorite toys, or anything kids enjoy doing. When you create a brochure of your designs and allow parents to choose from those designs, you have something special that people will buy. In addition, you can order ornaments online to give your cake that extra special look and put a smile on people’s faces.
Conventional Marketing Techniques
5. Event Marketing
There’s a huge opportunity to brand your cake business and bring in new customers by using events to promote your business.
For example, there’s an event in town where many locals gather yearly to celebrate something related to the area, whether a county fair, town festival, or something similar. During that event, you can provide sweets and allow people in the area to taste your cake and become aware of your business.
Imagine an event that most of the town attends, and you, as a local business owner, are offering a free piece of cake to anyone that wants it. This could be a huge opportunity for you. With an event like this naturally, you’d have to prepare for it in advance and get people to help you create your cakes before the event.
Yes, providing the products might cost you a few thousand dollars, but imagine how many people you’ll reach. Also, with each piece of cake, you give out business cards with a discount voucher printed on the back to get 10% off their next order.
Another idea is to participate in events such as craft or food shows or something similar where there is a large gathering of local people. You can rent a booth and offer samples, or people can try your cakes. Again, you would hand out vouchers giving people a 10% discount on their next order. When it comes to event marketing, people see you as a leader because you’re attending the event.
Another option when it comes to events is to provide your cakes. For example, you could take out a second location during sports events and sell desserts next to the food stand. This method brings in extra income and extra exposure.
6. Create Your Corporate ID
Corporate ID includes many components for branding your business, such as business cards, logos, websites, business signs, and promotional materials. Some of these components may already be in place.
People associate your logo with your business, so it is one of the most important elements of branding. Your cake business’s corporate ID should be appealing. A mediocre design will not do. Customers’ perception of your business is strongly influenced by your design.
Now, let’s look at some conventional marketing tips to help promote your cake business.
7. Business Cards
Keep extra business cards on hand because you never know when you’ll need them.
Instead of handing out one business card, give out a few so that people can pass them on to friends and family. However, you must give them a reason to do so. Offer a discount on the back of each card as one way to do this. For example, show this card, when placing an order to receive 10% off.
8. Newspaper Advertising
Newspaper advertising is one method of attracting local customers. You need to consider circulation rate and space when it comes to newspaper advertising. Circulation rate in the industry refers to how many readers the newspaper reaches. Naturally, a higher circulation rate can yield better results. Another key aspect is demographics, for example, who reads the paper, what age group, interests, etc. You want to ensure the paper targets the type of customers you want.
The next thing to consider is the space needed to run your ad. Whether you’re taking out a classified ad priced by word or a display ad priced by ad measurement, it’s all about space and placement. A front-page ad is much more costly than a page in the middle of the paper.
You can offer discounts in the paper, create coupons, or promote a signature cake. Whatever method you choose, you need to give the reader a reason to act. For example, Just released try our new recipe for our Black Forest Supreme cake, available for a limited time. Mention this ad and get a 20% discount. The message offers something new, offers a discount and scarcity. These messages make the reader think, I may miss out if I don’t act now. Plus, with a 20% discount, it’s a great deal.
For more, see Newspaper Advertising Tips.
9. Radio Advertising
For radio advertising to be effective, you must run a campaign over time. Running an ad once on the radio won’t give you much traction. Instead, you need to run a campaign for a week or two or even more so that you can reach a wider audience.
Your message must be to the point and have a call to action to get people through the door. You want to focus on benefits, not features. Rather than saying our cakes are made with healthy natural ingredients, which is a feature. Try something like the following, Enjoy the cake without the weight! Delicious cake made with healthy ingredients, give your tastebuds a treat! For more, see Radio Advertising Pros and Cons
10. Billboard Advertising
Taking out a billboard campaign is another way to advertise your business. You will want a location that targets your customers. Billboard ads last at least a month per location. There is a cost involved in creating the billboard, and you want to work with a talented graphic designer to get the right message across.
Another idea is if you find billboard advertising effective, you can look into more permanent methods, such as a long-term lease on the price of land where you can place a billboard.
You would need to look into bylaws to ensure this is allowed before spending a lot of time on the project. Another idea is to place a billboard on the side of buildings if the area is a good location and targets your customers.
11. Join Your Local Chamber of Commerce
When you join your local Chamber of Commerce, you can network with local business owners.
Providing cakes at Chamber of Commerce events is another opportunity. If local business owners like your cakes, you may get referrals and increase your customer base.
In addition to becoming a member, there are many other benefits. Below is a link to our article outlining the benefits of becoming a member.
Wrapping your company vehicle is an excellent way to advertise your business whenever you drive in the area or park in a busy lot. Once you create the wrap, your business is automatically advertised after a one-time investment. It’s also worth noting you can deduct the cost of a vehicle as a tax deduction.
It is essential to use a graphic designer with experience in vehicle wraps to ensure your message is clear and concise. People will often see your ad as you drive, and you must make sure the message is clear to be understood while you are driving.
For more see, Joining the Chamber of Commerce
12. Advertise on Your Company Vehicle
Placing a wrap on your company vehicle is an excellent way to advertise your business any time you drive in the area or park in a busy lot. Basically, you have a one-time investment to create the wrap, and after that, your business is automatically advertised.
Another benefit of this is that having a company vehicle allows you to deduct the usage of the vehicle as a tax deduction.
Using a talented graphic designer with experience in vehicle wraps is important to ensure your messages are clear and to the point. For example, you want your business name and contact information to be clear because often, people will see your ad as you’re driving, and the message must be clear to be understood while your vehicle is in motion.
Online Advertising Methods
13. Developing Your Website
A crucial part of your online marketing strategy is your website. Your business should rely on it as its main point of contact. You may also have other social media accounts to benefit your marketing efforts, but you have limited control over how you use them and their functionality.
Owning your domain name and hosting account gives you much more freedom and functionality.
Keeping in mind that social media accounts are constantly changing is another important point when it comes to managing them because if you have certain processes set up, you may not be able to continue using them.
You can use your website to promote your products, provide tips and insights, and even take online orders.
You want a professional-looking mobile-friendly website with a super quick response time. Think of your website; as an HQ for your cake business located online. For more, see How to Build a Website.
14. Create a Google Ads Campaign
Local customers can be attracted to your business using Google ads. In terms of Google Ads, you have a lot of options. Local customers can be targeted, keywords can be targeted, and a daily budget can be set. Additionally, you can pause your campaign at any time.
When you invest the time to learn Google Ads, you’ll have a powerful method to deliver customers every time you run a campaign.
For more on creating a Google Ads Campaign, see How To Advertise on Google Using These Tips and Insights.
15. Facebook Advertising
Facebook advertising offers many of the same features as Google ads. The campaign can be targeted, budgeted, and paused at any time.
A key difference is that driving traffic to your Facebook page is cheaper than driving traffic to outside sources. The reason for this is that Facebook offers incentives to keep your traffic within Facebook. The optimization of Facebook advertising campaigns takes time and there is a learning curve, but once you understand it and gain some experience, you have another way to increase sales.
For more see, How to Advertise on Facebook
16. Videos
Your business and products can be promoted through videos. For example, using videos, you can show off your cakes and even show people how you made them.
Showing how clean your operation is and the quality of the products you use will help brand your business as one of quality.
In addition to creating videos for your products, storefront, kitchen, etc., which will help with branding your business, if you plan on hosting events, you should create a video for each one.
17. Set up Google Business Profile
It’s important to set up a Google Business Profile for your cake operation because when people search for your business name, they will see an image of your operation, location information, hours of operation, and links to your website.
When users search on a mobile device and have a button, they can click to call. There’s not a lot of competition because your name and location are unique. Therefore your page will show up without competing with other cake businesses.
Create a Marketing Plan
We’ve gone over many tips, and it’s difficult to keep them to memory. To organize all your thoughts and plans, you should create a marketing plan which will help you organize everything and give you an overall vision of how you market your business. A marketing plan is similar to opening a business and creating a business plan. It’s an essential document that’ll help you stay on track.
For more see, How to Write a Marketing Plan
Resources
This section of the post will go over a few resources that will help you expand your information and offer resources that may help with promoting your business.
Marketing Agencies
With all the tips we’ve gone over, you have an overview of what it takes to market your cake business. It may seem overwhelming, but if you use one method at a time and become successful with it, you can move on to the next.
On the other hand, you may feel that you don’t want to market your cake business or don’t have the time to spend on marketing which is understandable. You can hire an agency to take care of marketing your business.
If you plan on using an agency, you should research the agency. Keep in mind agencies can’t guarantee results. However, they can guarantee the work they’ll put in. So you may want to start off small with a few tests, and once you see results, you can always expand your budget.
Have a look at the latest search results for Cake Marketing Agencies.
Books
Another way to improve your knowledge about marketing your cake business is to check out books published on the subject.
When it comes to nonfiction books, I like that you don’t have to read the book from cover to cover to get what you’re looking for. Simply go through the table of contents of the chapter information. If you have a few minutes, why not browse search results for books related to marketing your cake business
View the most recent books related to Cake marketing on Amazon.
Courses
Taking a course to market your cake business is another source of information to reach marketing goals. One thing I like about online courses is that many are video-based, and you have lifetime access to the course, so you can review the information anytime you need it.
Taking a course to market your cake business is another source of information to reach your marketing goals. One thing I like about online courses is that many are video-based, and you have lifetime access to the course, so you can review the information anytime you need it.
Another point worth mentioning about courses is that you should research the course you’re considering before spending time and effort on the information. You can also research the author for their qualifications.
If you want, check out Google’s search results related to Cake marketing courses.
News
When searching for something in the news, I’ll use Google news because I get a list of the most popular and latest news stories related to the topic I’m researching. Another point about Google news is you can set up an alert to get notified anytime something new is published.
See Google’s news search results related to cake business marketing.
YouTube Videos
YouTube is one of my favorite tools for learning. So many people have a lot of information to offer, and you can find this on YouTube. Naturally, some videos aren’t worth the time it takes to watch them, but many are professional and well worth the time.
If you want, take a few minutes to see videos related to cake business marketing on YouTube.