Mark AdamsYou might think that the hardest thing about the baking industry is to start. Sure, it takes a lot of effort and you might experience a few sleepless nights and some anxiety. However, after you have your bakery up and running, surviving the competition will become your main concern. Moreover, your goal is not just to stay afloat but to become a go-to place for people looking for delicious pastries.
As an entrepreneur you aim to make a profit in the bakery business. This will require you to handle your finances, reports, and inventories with great care, but there’s a side of the business that is often neglected: Marketing. What exactly is marketing according to you? The act of spreading information about your business through different mediums is one of the vital parts of running a successful bakery, and it’s important not to overlook it. Hence, you should put more effort in marketing your business, as if without it, it will not stay afloat for long.
Advertising
For you to begin getting the most out of your advertising strategy, you first need to understand the basics of advertising. What is advertising and how does it work? First of all, it is important to know that “advertising’’ and “marketing’’ are two different words. When you use the former there is a clear and direct connotation to it whereas the latter is much more vague and entails a broad and general meaning.
Advertising is a practice through which companies promote their products and services, using different media such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines. In order to achieve this, they invest into advertisements that display the quality of their products and can prove to be beneficial to the customers.
The different types of advertisement and marketing strategies are:
- Advertising campaign: A marketing method of promoting the selling of a product or service by a company to its target market by communicating the advantages of this product or service to the target market.
- Advertising costs: The expenses that a company incurs in order to advertise its products or services.
- Advertising media: The media through which the company advertises its products or services.
- Advertising space: The place where an advertisement is placed.
- Advertising efforts spent: The amount of time and money that a company invests to advertise its products.
- Advertising budget: The amount of money that a company spends on the advertisements of their products.
- Advertising expenses: The expenses that a company incurs in order to advertise its products or services.
- Advertising revenues: The additional value that a company receives because it spends money to promote its products or services.
- Marketing mix: The variety of costs used to promote product performance.
Buying a newspaper advertisement costs a lot more than buying a Facebook ad, but the latter generates more traffic. The most effective way of promoting a product is by displaying it in the magazines that are targeted at your target audience.
The good news is that you can incorporate both advertising and marketing strategies in your bakery. You just need to use them in combination with each other in order to maximize your results. Moreover, these two elements complement each other and you need to use one of them without the other in some cases.
Creating Promotional Strategies
The next step is to develop a promotional strategy. A promotional strategy is a plan that will describe your plans for advertising. The process of developing a promotion strategy requires careful consideration and planning, as without the right marketing strategy you won’t get the most out of your advertising efforts.
Whatever business you are in, display and sale are two of its major functions. If you advertise your products, it is crucial that you include your promotional strategy in your display strategies in order to get the maximum impact. However, the more cost-effective marketing strategy is to wait for consumers come to you instead of paying for advertisements.
The working strategy for chocolate shops is to wait for their customers come to them. It is much better to let them decide whether to buy it or not rather than advertising. This is a very conventional strategy and it works. You can only access the maximum number of people if you have a wide network. Therefore, the first step in developing your promotional strategy is to make a list of your target audience and the goal that you want to accomplish with them.
Some tips when deciding to purchase advertisement space
- If you are just starting the business, make sure to use paid advertisement space. This is because it is more cost-effective for the company.
- Make sure that all of the advertisements are related to your business. It’s not fun to look for the newspaper for your high school sports team when you have a bakery and advertising space.
- Try to utilize all of the spaces available to you and select those that are most valuable to your business. When you are just starting out, you might be at a stage where you don’t have a lot of space to use but when you have a lot of space you can use it and get better returns.
The most important thing that you should keep in mind is that you are not going to receive any profit if you are not making any sales. However, it is the strategy to place advertisements in all of your space. The best way to maximize your advertisement space is to place your ads everywhere that people would be interested in and relevant for your business. You could include your ads in your business cards, business card inserts, billboards fall foul pieces, banners flyers, newspapers, magazines, grocery store checkout receipts, etc. Your advertisements are going to get noticed and when it is noticed, people are going to take interest and purchase your products.
It is also important for you to know the type of media that you are going to use to advertise your products. You should utilize all of your marketing channels to get your business noticed. For example, you can also use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. This is actually one of the easiest methods to advertise your products. Simply post pictures of yourself or your products on your social media profiles. This may not be a recommended option for the small baker as you are taking a risk by purchasing advertising space. Nevertheless, if it’s for the right price and you have started a nice following on your social media profiles, you can get some likes on your page in return. This would actually help you in establishing a positive reputation and would make people eager for your products and services.
One thing you should always remember when placing your advertisements is to place them around everything that is relevant to your business. You should place them around all of the places where people would be welcome. This is going to make sure that your customers would be interested in your products and that they would be actively seeking them out. It is a big mistake to only purchase any type of advertising space and use it merely as an advertisement for your business.
It is also a good idea to include your advertisement space in your business cards, business card inserts, flyers, brochures and newsletters. This is because you are not purchasing the space only for advertising purposes, but you are purchasing it to increase the visibility of your products and services to the public. It is a double benefit that you are incurring in purchasing the advertisement space. Therefore, when you are advertising you are also marketing your services.
Well, advertising and marketing strategies are interdependent. No bakery is in existence right now that has only used the advertising strategy. You need to be sure to utilize both resources to their best ability in order to achieve the best results.
The Benefits Of Starting A Bakery
You have probably heard of several people who are beginning a new bakery. It is a good idea especially if you have a family or are starting a business of your own. However, you must know that other than the benefits that you will receive you aren’t starting a new business, it is also a good investment. Most of the benefits are described below.
- There is a good opportunity to create some extra passive income for yourself.
- You can use this business to acquire some new skills.
- This is a great opportunity for you to make extra money.
- You can start a new business that can provide you with a good source of income.
- You can start a business that is profitable and get you out of debt.
- You can make a big difference to the community.
- You can work for yourself and also receive a benefit at the same time.
If you don’t think about the main goal, you will fail in the process of developing a promotion strategy. This is an important point in the planning process in the development of your promotion strategy.
One thing you want to keep in mind when thinking about creating plans in your promotion strategy is that you need to forget things that you have already done in the past. You mustn’t use those ideas this time again because your business goals will be different. For example, many people want to use the money for the promotion of their business. Others will invest the money in the training of employees. Some of them will finance further improvements of their business idea. Now you must make sure to forget everything that you have done and start with the first plan that you have planned for your bakery. This is because the best idea of your plan will be the best strategy for your business.
You must make a list of everything that may be beneficial in the process of developing your promotion strategy. As mentioned before, there are many benefits from starting a bakery, but you can be sure that the best one is the income you can get. You can also use this income to fulfill some of your dreams and hobbies. Your bakery can be the only income you get in the future. You want make the most out of your bakery and money is a good way to do it.
The point here is that you don’t want to forget the income that you receive from the bakery. This is because in order to increase sales, you will still need the income from the business. Since you are selling chocolate chips in your business, you will need to have some of it so that you can get the best prices on the market. You can only increase sales by creating a strong reputation and by providing good products and services. You want to be sure to have a strong reputation so that you always be noticed and people always go to your business to get their needs met. Therefore, for promoting the business, it is very important that you consider the marketing strategies that you will use. It is always a good idea to talk to different people in the community and see what they think about your business and the services that you provide.
The most important thing for you to know is that you don’t want to lose your customers. You want to create a good reputation so that you always be highly regarded by your customers. So you must make sure to provide the best services and results that you can give your customers. This is what you must do in order to create a good reputation in the community. It is a smart strategy and it will help you get more customers.
How to Train your employees for the promotion strategy?
In order to start the development of the promotion strategy for your bakery, you will need to really understand the needs of your customers and meet those needs. This is important for you to do because you want to know what the people need to buy, what sort of food they like and if they are in need of training before they buy your products. You need to take this information and make sure that you are going to provide those kinds of items when you serve your customers. You must know some of the things that people want to eat, what they like, what they need and what they don’t need to eat. It is a wise move to hire a professional like The Great Cakes Company if you don’t know much about baking. They will be able to help you create a good promotion strategy for your bakery, but you need to do some of the training. If you really want to succeed in the bakery industry you will have to train your employees effectively.
It is always a good idea to have some of your employees trained and capable of getting the things that your customers need from you. This is because you will be able to realize results much faster that you would normally if you didn’t. You will also get better money which will then allow you to continue with the development of your business. The training may include some of the following themes.
