Running a bakery is a great way to turn your passions into a business. Who doesn’t like delicious baked goods? Sweet or savoury, a morning pastry or an afternoon treat, even cakes for all the special occasions. However, like all successful businesses, it takes time, hard work and the right marketing strategies to see results. With the world going online, digital marketing has become easier than ever, connecting people all over the world in an efficient and cost effective way, to help make your bakery stand out from all the rest.
If you’re starting up a new bakery or in need of some direction, keep reading to make digitally marketing your business, a piece of cake!
1. Measuring current success
To ensure that your business grows, we need a starting point. If you’ve already set up your bakery, ask yourself a few questions: How is my business doing now? Is it where I wanted it to be? What areas do I need to improve on?
Convenient tools you can use to get more in depth data is through Google Analytics, Instagram Insights, Facebook Analytics and TikTok Analytics. These tools are perfect for analysing content, tracking engagement and understanding your demographics.
A SWOT Analysis is another great way to assess your bakery’s current position in the market. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. By analysing each area you will be able to understand your bakery’s advantages and reduce the chances of failure.
Here is a template to help you get started:
2. Define your audience
If you’ve already started your business, who comes into your bakery most often? Check your analytics on social medias to see your following. Do you see consistencies? How old are they? What’s their gender? What kind of lifestyle do they live? With this information you will be able to define who your audience is. If you’re starting from scratch, then who do you want your audience to be?
This is where creating a consumer profile comes in handy. A consumer profile is a great way to decide who is your target audience and where all your marketing efforts are going towards. It’s easier to focus on a singular group rather than everyone on the market. This doesn’t mean that only this group will visit your bakery, but it will help decide on how you set the atmosphere and tone of your shop.
To create a consumer profile, you will need to define your target customer by 4 main attributes.
Here are some examples:
- Demographics: Age, gender, ethnicity, race, religion
- Psychographics: Lifestyle, values, activities, goals
- Socioeconomics: education, income, occupation
- Geographic: neighbourhood, climate, community
Of course not all of these may be necessary for your ideal customer but it is up to you to pick what is relevant.
3. Set your goals
Now that you’ve measured your current success and defined your audience, it is time to set your goals. It is crucial for every digital marketing plan to have clear, realistic and measurable goals set to track your progress and performance. It is helpful to have both short and long term goals and it’s necessary to keep your goals SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely).
Short Term Goals:
- In 3 months, we will have 300 followers on Instagram
- In 5 months, we will 25 custom orders per month
Long Term Goals:
- In 7 months, we will have 1000 followers on Instagram
- In 8 months, we will have 40 custom orders per month
4. Who is your competition?
Researching exactly who your competition is and what products they provide is crucial to ensuring that your bakery has a unique selling point to differentiate from the rest. Visit their bakery, analyse their online presence, is there something that they are missing that you can take advantage of?
Bakeries are everywhere, they are nothing knew and can be quite boring if you don’t have something that’s different. Maybe you sell a unique product that’s only found in your store, maybe your focus is on low prices, or maybe you have a special in store/dining experience that’ll impress every customer.
5. Create a website
A good, easy to navigate, visually appealing website is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. It is a place where all potential and existent customers can easily find information about your bakery, including a brief description of who you are, your address, operating hours and your menu with prices and photos.
When looking to create your website, investing in a good web designer is a great way to ensure easy navigation and presentation. However, doing it yourself on sites such as Squarespace, Wix, WordPress and GoDaddy are easy and work perfect too.
Tip: Ensure that you have a responsive website design that can adapt to all devices whether it is a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
6. Google My Business
Similar to creating a website, Google My Business gives validity to your business and helps customers easily find your bakery through Google Search and Maps. It is a free and easy tool where you can link your website and contact information and also allow reviews from people who have visited your shop. These reviews, are used heavily by Google’s algorithm when ranking local businesses.
7. Utilising social media
Almost everyone uses social media. It’s how we communicate to each other and how we share our daily lives. Utilising social media from a business perspective is one of the most important forms of communicating your brand to your audience and be able to receive instant feedback to build a loyal customer base. Through using a consistent colour scheme and style to associate with your bakery when posting content, can help with creating a brand identity that is uniquely yours and increase brand recognition.
You don’t want to pick too many social media platforms to post on, that can become overwhelming and could also not be relevant for your business, but at the same time you don’t want to limit your business to focusing on just one platform. By carefully picking which platforms you choose to post on, you can focus on creating content that best fits each.
Facebook is a great way to start, easy for customers to find and a good way to start more locally too. Advertising through Facebook groups and regularly posting updates will be an easy way for your customers to keep track of new products, specials, and events.
Instagram is known for its trendy photography so make sure to keep up and post only good quality photos of your delicious menu, as they say, a picture speaks a thousand words! Instagram is also helpful to reach that wider audience and track engagement, keeping your followers engaged by making following your bakery on social media special. This could be from secret menu items, discounts and giveaways.
Making things interactive is another wonderful way of increasing engagement, whether it is from polls on stories or using a collaborative hashtag to showcase your products to win prizes.
Also, another helpful tip is using trending hashtags to increase visibility. However it is important to use relevant hashtags to your posts and business. Remember, quality over quantity!
TikTok
TikTok is another favourite in connecting with larger audiences. It is a short video based app that allows creators to have their videos viewed both locally and globally. This app is perfect to show a more raw behind the scenes of what’s happening in your business. With countless trends to follow there are so many video ideas to make, from filming the process to getting to know the people behind it. Most importantly, it doesn’t have to be all that serious, this gives your business a warm and personal touch.
Content is a large part of your digital marketing plan but it doesn’t mean you have to spend all your time towards it, using scheduling tools such as hero post and hoot suite can help to keep organised and consistent.
8. Understanding SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of improving the ranking of your site to increase visibility when it is searched on search engines such as Google. Improving SEO is all about improving the user experience and making the website easy to use. To improve your SEO ranking:
– Publish relevant content and update frequently
– Using keywords and phrases relevant to your business on all pages of your website
– Using descriptive links
– Improve webpage loading speed
9. Keep measuring!
The final strategy for this digital marketing plan is to keep measuring your progress and growth so you know whether these strategies are working or if some changes need to be made. Using those same tools I mentioned in the first step, Google Analytics, Instagram Insights, Facebook Analytics and TikTok Analytics are wonderful and easy to use tools. They provide in-depth information from your website and social media accounts to track your audience and see any areas that need improvement.
Marketing any business can be tough, but thanks to ease of digital marketing and formulating a strategic plan that is specific to your business, marketing your bakery will be as easy as pie!
If you’d like to learn more, head to our website and join one of our digital marketing courses today!
About The Author:
Delene Saverimuttu is an Artist and Content Marketing Analyst at the International Institute of Digital Marketing.