80. Baking it Down - It's All a Numbers Game

🔢It's all a Numbers Game🔢Let's paint a picture - you need a new roof. Cool, people buy new roofs like, what - once or twice in their entire lifetimes? You have little experience in good roofing companies, so you start your online research. Let's progress through the workflow.1️⃣ You google, "roofing companies near me." Solid start to your shingle-themed research project - wouldn't want to accidentally hire a company three states away, right? You're met with the search results (SERPs - search engine results page). Whew - about 3 roofers in the ads section, 4 in the maps pack, and another 10 in the organic results followed by another 2 in the ads at the bottom, and then the option for 10+ more pages of roofers. 2️⃣ You click on the companies listed on the maps section. Cool - they're close by, plus you can easily see their reviews. 24 5-star ratings, 13 ratings with a 4.5-star average, 34 reviews and a solid 4-star average. These are all looking good. 3️⃣ You got to their individual website and Facebook pages. Let's see if their website makes me feel comfy enough to call - or better yet, submit a form, who likes calling?! You swing over to their Facebook pages. Recent posts, good engagement, but... wait... what's this?!One of these local companies has 98,000 page followers. That's uh - impressive? Also - slightly disconcerting. Why? Because it doesn't match with your expectation of how roofing companies and their social media presence should appear online. It's out of sync with the other companies you've researched - 🤔 and frankly, who follows roofers other than people who need roofs? 🤔 Are there really 98,000 neighbors of yours hiring this roofing company? 🤔 If so - are all 98,000 happy?! 🤔 and if they're not clients, who are these 98,000 roofing-obsessed people?! You see what's happening - this HUGE following is doing counter-productive marketing. It's introducing doubt.Recently asked in the group - it brings up a good question: how many followers is enough?  "Is it worth it to try to gain non-local followers just to increase the follower number on your business page, even if you only offer your products locally?"The answer is as simple as it is complex - but it relies on who your target is. Let's break it down:️🎯 Roofing Company -  Local homeowners within X miles of the home office️️🎯 Government Office - Residents of the local with which the office represents🎯 Cookie Cutter Seller - Bakers within their shippable target area🎯 The Cookie College - National / international bakers with internet access🎯 A Local Baker - residents within their service area🎯 Baker Influencer - National / international bakers with social media access You see - target audiences are not a one-size-fits-all metric - it depends on what products you're selling. An influencer would want to go viral - their product is views. Whereas a local baker may want to keep their audience targeting tight to their service area - that way they're not spending time turning down leads from 3 states away.There is no wrong answer - what your target audience is may differ from the baker next door filming ASMR flooding videos who gets paid from the Creator Fund. The only wrong answer is not building an audience that you've targeted.So - build a following of non-bakers to build a local audience? No - focus on building a local audience to build a local audience. The 3x3x3 challenge is a great way to do that. Keep your target in focus and you'll hit the bulls-eye every time.

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!