Marketing For A Cake Business: 10 Simple Strategies To Help You Attract More Customers

If there is one skill, or area of knowledge, I wish I knew more about when I started my baking career it is marketing.  It is a subject I have continued to learn by reading and testing, and as a result of many painful lessons.  I am definitely guilty of one of the most common mistakes, namely thinking that because I had a great product it would sell.  The reality is that if no one knows about your product or service then it does not matter how good it is, your business will fail unless you do something about it.

Care more about the marketing of your product than you do about the product!

Marketing is a massive subject.  The purpose of this guide is to give you some simple ideas that you can implement over a relatively short period of time in order to raise your profile and generate more customers.  This is not intended to be a social media strategy even though social media is of course a fundamental and highly effective part of modern marketing.

For those of you who are already busy with orders, please do not think that the need to market is no longer required.  At some point the enquiries will slow down, by which time it is too late to avoid the downturn.  Better to find the time now, when you are busy, to keep your profile high so that the chance of a slowdown is reduced.

So I have prepared a guide setting out 10 simple ideas to help you market your cake business.

This Guide is available to download for FREE on my Freebies page.

First of all I thought it would be helpful to outline some common mistakes many cake businesses make when it comes to marketing.

Common Mistakes

1. Not doing any marketing! Or at least not doing very much. If this is more than just a hobby and you want to earn a living and build a business, then marketing has to be a fundamental part of your working life.  First of all, you should have a marketing plan setting out who you are marketing to, the methods you will use and a programmed calendar of what you will be doing and when.  Marketing, like any other aspect of your business, requires planning.  You should have time for marketing built into your weekly schedule and you should have a budget for marketing in your business plan.  A lot can be done for free, but some ideas cost money to carry out, even if only modest sums.
2. Thinking that because you have a great product you will sell.  As I have already mentioned above, this is one of the biggest mistakes people make.  Whatever industry you are in, if no one knows about your product or service your business will fail.  Even if you have the greatest cakes, you need to shout about it!
3. Focussing on price rather than the value you can give your customers.  Cake makers often get caught up in how much they are charging rather than focussing on the value and benefits they can give their customers.  I have another guide available for free on my website explaining how you should price a cake.  Do that exercise and then put your energy into promoting your cakes based on how they will make your customers’ lives better.  Explain why ordering a cake from you will be a better experience for your customers than ordering from one of your competitors.  In other words, you need to have thought about your point of difference.
4. Not being clear about who your product is for. Being a jack of all trades and the master of none is not good no matter what you are doing, and it certainly does not help from a marketing point of view.  I see a lot of cake makers trying to do everything; I understand it because they are trying to make money, but it is not a good long-term strategy.  In my view it is much better to specialise in a limited range of cakes and become outstanding at making them.  You can then be more specific as to who they are for, which then helps you to market them.  So, you need to consider who your ideal customers are; what do they look like, what are their interests, what might they do for a living, are they a particular age group or demographic, what occasions are they likely to want cakes for?  There are many things you can consider but once you have built up a picture of your ideal customers you can focus your marketing on them and their interests.
5. Thinking that posting pretty pictures of your cakes on Instagram once a day is marketing.  Using social media is obviously crucial to marketing your business but it is now a hugely competitive environment.  It is not enough to post a picture of your work every now and then.  To have any impact you need to be posting a lot and your content must be engaging i.e. entertain, educate or inspire in some way.  This guide is not intended to be a strategy for social media, but there is an approach that could help you produce the content you need.  Posting a lot is difficult when time is short, but do not think that you have to create a lot of new content for social media; an alternative approach is to ‘document’ rather than create.  In other words, go about your daily business but make sure you film and post as you go.  This way you will show your audience what you are doing, give them a look behind the scenes, make them aware of the challenges you have as a cake maker, let them see the quality of your work and ultimately get to know you.
6. Undervaluing the importance of your own story / background.    I have already explained about setting out your point of difference, and quite often part of this can be you and your story.  Everyone is unique, everyone has their own story, so make sure you tell it.  Customers love to know the journey to where you are now and what led you to pursue this.  Most people have some interesting features to their backgrounds that have helped to shape them and there is always the story to tell about why you decided to bake cakes for a living – maybe it was some friend or family member that influenced you or some experience that inspired you.  All of this helps prospect customers get to know you and customers buy from people they like.
7. Not building a database of emails.  You may be in the fortunate position of having a great following on Instagram or some other social media platform.  That’s great, but the problem with this is that you do not ‘own’ these followers, they ‘belong’ to Instagram.  So, if you were to get locked out of your account one day and be unable to get back in (this happened to me), you have lost that following and you have to start again.  This is one reason why it is so important to build up a database of customers and their email addresses.  Once you have these email addresses, they are yours.  The second reason is that email is a great way to market your business, because you know you can reach your customers directly whenever you want.  You can use your email campaigns to remind your customers of you and the cakes you offer, so that you remain at the forefront of their minds. 

Download the 10 Simple Strategies To Help You Attract More Customers for FREE on my Freebies page.