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 🍪
209. Baking it Down - Half It then Half It
🤏 Half It then Half It - Make goals small and then smaller.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 209 - Half It Then Half It, we cover a topic Heather saw on the Diary of a CEO podcast with Dr. Alok Kanojia on goal setting.
The concept is pretty basic - set a goal. Then take that goal and half it. Then take that half and half it again. You're now left with only 25% of that goal. And guess what? That 25% is much more doable than the big, massive, overly sized goal you couldn't eat whole.
Breaking (baking?) goals into edible chunks makes for small bites that we can accomplish to get us to our bigger goal. 25% Goals aren't as fun to tell people about - they get the vibe of, "Okay... and?" And that's what makes them so valuable - because they're not big, they allow us to take small movements forward.
Sure - we won't get the accolades for announcing some giant goal like, "THIS YEAR, I PLAN TO OPEN STORE FRONT," but the path to opening a store front is long and lonely - I'd rather claim this year to do the thankless foundation work required to get into a brick and mortar rather than make a big announcement with no execution (remember the "No One Likes a Party Planner" podcast episode).
🤏 1. Example - Facebook Lead Gen
Turning Facebook into a lead gen powerhouse is a BIG goal - and one we really like. Facebook can really make some sales for bakers. But let's half that goal:
- 📏 I want to turn community groups into a referral source.
Even better! We narrowed it from "ALL of Facebook," which is a massive task to tackle down to an aspect of Facebook. But per the doc, we can go smaller! Let's half that half.
- 📏 I want to make this one specific group a resource for my bakery business.
There we go - in fact, this will be next week's Podcast topic (turning Local Community Groups into Referral Powerhouses after we teach it at What's Popping Con 2025 on Tuesday).
🤏 2. Example - Brick and Mortar
Most bakers dream of seeing their business logo in bright lights on a building they leased. And who wouldn't?! Talk about a HUGE goal that feels all warm and fuzzy! But brick and mortar dreams aren't built overnight, but rather on consistent "half of a half" goals over time. Let's half that B&M goal:
- 📏 I want to contact a commercial leasing agent to learn more about taking on a B&M lease.
Love it - so much more actionable than "I will open a brick and mortar bakery," but can we half it again?
- 📏 I'm going to reach out to the Sugar Cookie Marketing group and see if any B&M bakers would take a 15-minute call from me to talk about the "first 6 months" of prep needed to get started on potentially opening a bakery in the future.
Loooove that so much more. That's a "half of a half" goal that will actually teach you something - whether a brick and mortar bakery business is meant for you.
🤏 3. Example - I want to be a social media expert.
As a marketer myself, love this goal - but it's a chunky one. Taking on all of social media is admirable, but that's not going to move a needle because it's too broad. Let's see if we can half it.
- 📏 I want to focus on making my Facebook page a valuable resource for my business.
Just like the community group goal, LOVE this - it'll be a huge boon to your business goals. But can we go smaller on this halved goal? I bet we can.
- 📏 I will post to my business Facebook page 2x a week to establish a baseline for a posting schedule.
There we go!
