147. Baking it Down - Peeky Blinders

👀 Peeky Blinders - When to Look and When to Look AwayThe typo was intentional (this time) - 👀 it's a play on words when it comes to peeking over the proverbial fence of social media to see what our competition is up to. 🧠 But staring leads to comparing and that can be a real mind-trip wondering why the highlight reel of your nearest cookie competitor looks like they're one post away from being featured on Food Network while you're struggling for seasonal sales. So - are we to blindly wander through business life pretending no one exists but us or are we supposed to have one eyeball glued to the screen pulling up our baking neighbor's latest Instagram post - monitoring each and every like?!👐 The answer falls in the middle. There are times to peek and times to put on blinders. So what do when? Well - take a peek at this week's podcast for that.🫣 When to Peek.Auditing your nearby competition to see what content buckets or posting strategies are working for them is a great way to reverse engineer marketing without having to reinvent (and retest) the wheels. 🧐 Are they re-investing in their community? 🙋 I see a ton of bakers make the "me, me, me, me, me, oh yeah, and me" mistake in marketing. A good marketing strategy creates value - then harvests from that investment after it's grown into a lead source. You'll see your competition making resource lists, charitable donations, and strategic partnerships - that's what you'll wanna peek at. 🧐 Are they creating valuable "about town" content? I love this one. Posting endless cookies gets a little... stale (baking pun intended). But diversifying your content strategy can get people hooked. How? By posting things people want to know and read. 📃 Resource lists can include Valentine's Day preset dinner menus 💑, altered hours on Holidays, or a list of dog parks. Peek over at what your competition is trying out - see if it's working for them, then get to gettin' to it. 🧐 Are they partnering with other businesses?Strategic partnerships are a great way to get into a "corporate girly era" - and if your competition knows how to do that, it's worth takin' a look at who and what they're doing. 🤝 For example - Corrie partnered strategically with a local Botox injector to make cookies for a grand opening. In return, Corrie posted the Botox babe's cookie order to her local baking page linking back to both the FB, Insta, and website. 💉 You'll never guess who got a free Botox sesh outta it (hint: not me *wrinkles forehead*). 🕵️ There are times to peek - but it can't be to get yourself worked up - all hot and bothered. Nope - it's gotta be strategic. Facebook knows this too - it's got a built-in tool to take a peek without drowning in jealousy. Facebook has a business tool built into Business Manager to help you peek over the fence - it's called Benchmarking. You can find it under business.facebook.com > insights > benchmarking.😆 When to Blinder.Just as it's strategic to take a look at the competition - there are some things you need to intentionally block out or else they'll tend to derail your dough deals. 😌 No peeking at pricing.Pricing isn't something you can cheat on - because copying your baking neighbor's answers can lead to catastrophic pricing problems. You cannot operate at a loss - yes, even if they are. That's not your problem and it's not something you can compete on either. 

Om Podcasten

👋 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!