You may bake delicious cupcakes, streusel or baklava, but, if nobody knows about your specialty baking business, you won't have many customers. Take a break from beating that batter and focus on marketing. The more potential customers that know about your baking prowess the higher the probability your sales will increase. How you market your bakery business can make it or break it, according to Sharon Fullen and Douglas Brown, the authors of "Open a Financially Successful Bakery."
Significance
Marketing incorporates several different functions, including price, promotion and positioning. Each of those has an impact on the message that you send potential customers. Price is obviously how much you charge for the product. It can be high end, low end or somewhere in the middle. Promotion includes advertising and publicity. Positioning is how you place your product in comparison to your competitors. Your baked goods may be marketed based on premium ingredients, home-style recipes or healthy and good for you. The message you choose is conveyed by your pricing, promotion and positioning. Marketing is how customers find you.
Website
Pew Research says that, in 2009, 81 percent of adults between the ages of 30 to 49 accessed the Internet, as did 70 percent of adults between 50 to 64 years of age. Instead of reaching for the telephone book, people reach for their mouse. Establish a website so you don't lose those customers. Take clear digital photographs of your baked goods and upload them to your site. Add colorful commentary that describes how mouthwatering the flavors are. Look at restaurant websites and dessert menus to get an idea of describe your items.
Considerations
When developing your marketing program, take into consideration your budget and time constraints. Also, look at your ability to fulfill customer demand generated from a successful program. Leaping into television advertising for your homemade pies may not be wise if you can't bake enough with your current equipment to fill the resulting orders.
Warning
However you market, make sure that your claims are true. If you say you use organic products, every ingredient in the baked goods must be organic. Being truthful in advertising is important, but more important is your reputation with your customers. They'll understand when you claim to have the best banana bread because that's an opinion. What they won't understand, or forgive, is if you say you use premium ingredients, like creamery butter, and you actually use margarine.
Publicity
Develop a publicity program based around a charity and your specialty baked goods. The charity benefits and so does your company because of the increased visibility. You may donate one loaf of bread to a homeless shelter for every 10 loaves that you sell in a week. Also, you can contribute birthday cakes to a women's shelter for the children housed there or sponsor a pie eating contest for teenagers. The teenagers recruit sponsors who donate for every minute the teenager spends eating pie. Notify local newspapers, radio and TV stations two weeks, one week and the day before the event. Send out press releases after the event describing what happened and how much money was raised.
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