Marketing your bakery is too important to let it get kicked under the fridge like a dropped ice cube. If you’ve got the funds to hire someone in-house for marketing or even a marketing company, that’s amazing! But many bakeries don’t have that luxury. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend top-dollar to get results from your efforts. Check out these low-cost marketing options for your bakery.
Social Media
Posting stunning pictures of your creations to your bakery’s social media pages can make mouths water, but you can use social media to do so much more. Social media is great for increasing your brand awareness and spreading information that will get people in your doors.
The various platforms can be helpful in attracting new customers, engaging with current ones, and developing relationships with people that will promote your brand.
Approach your social media the same way you approach your goods. They should be high-quality, thoughtful, and fresh every day.
Pro Tip: Schedule Your Posts
Approach your social media the same way you approach your goods. They should be high quality, thoughtful, and fresh every day. To accomplish this, set aside time to schedule out all your posts for the week so you don’t have to stop in the middle of your busiest time to post.
Great branding is always accompanied by a well-thought-out plan. While it’s encouraged to follow your creativity and post in the moment when it feels right, you don’t want a bunch of rushed posts to define your bakery. There are a few free platforms, such as Hootsuite and Buffer, that will post automatically to social media according to the schedule you set. Remember: post regularly and with purpose on all social platforms. Planning ahead allows you to create a strategy around your social media presence and saves you time in the long run.
Email Marketing
While social media casts a wide net, email marketing helps nurture your current customers and keep your tasty treats top-of-mind. Utilize a digital email campaign to widen your reach and get real customers into your bakery. 80% of marketers agree email marketing remains one of the most effective strategies.
You can use email campaigns to market all sorts of specials and announcements:
- Giveaways
- New product launches
- In-store discounts and coupons
- Secret sales
- New blog posts
Be Searchable
In this day and age, a lot of people find new products and services online through Google. Whether they are looking for your bakery specifically or researching the best place to buy their wedding cake, a Google My Business (GMB) page can provide information that will drive sales and make your bakery a viable option for people who don’t know about you yet.
A Google My Business page can boost your web visibility and maintain consistency. In its most basic form, a Google My Business page allows people to find your bakery quickly and easily. With relatively little time and effort, optimizing your page can be an important marketing tool that drives sales.
Print Material
Sometimes, old school is best. Printed marketing materials work wonders for local businesses. You can hand out flyers to other local companies, give out postcard invites to your next event. There are so many ways you can customize printed marketing material, but no need to fire up your old desktop computer to open Microsoft Paint to start creating flyers.
Gone are the days of multiple font colors and clip art. With so many great free design tools out there, it’s time to step up your flyer game. You need simple, easy-to-read fonts with pleasing icons or images. When it comes to your design, less is more. Of course, that’s not to say you slap comic sans text on a white background and call it a day. A simple google search can serve you up some solid examples that you can use for inspiration.
If you’re not ready to mess with complicated design programs, one user-friendly tool that comes with plenty of templates is Canva. You can use this platform to create eye-catching flyers, informative brochures, handy business cards, even social media posts.
Marketing your bakery is important, but it doesn’t have to be expensive. With some time, a little creativity, and the right tools, you can attract and retain customers through low-cost marketing strategies.
Set on the marketing side, but want help with managing your bakery’s orders? OrderNova can help with that! Get bakery order management software that will offer everything you need to keep track of your orders, sell online, plan your bakery’s production and make your customers happy.
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