How Can I Market my Local Small Town Bakery? | Marketing Q&A

I love small, local towns! Yet it’s not uncommon even in a small town that your business can become a “best kept secret”.

Local Community Involvement

Here’s a relatively easy plan, given that you own a bakery. The great thing is that you can pull it off with very little work the first time. Plus I’m giving you several “add on” pieces, that you don’t have to include the first time, but are ideas to extend this promotion further.

Hold a free cupcake decorating event for kids.

The parents will have to bring the kids into your store to participate, and of course they’re who you really want. “Parent or guardian must be present.”

Free activities and stuff for kids is always great for getting parents in the door.

Promo Items In-Hand

Everyone leaves with a sample of your baked items (in this case, the cupcake) that they decorated themselves, while also seeing some of your actual cakes and other baked goods on display.

Send them out the door with a flyer or menu so they know what else you sell.

Gather Email Addresses

Require sign up in advance to capture their email address (and of course have a way to do that for those who show up at the door as well.) Your email list will be one of the most powerful pieces that you collect from this event.

(Pssst… also have them sign a release, and ask for allergies – you don’t want to accidentally give someone peanuts who is allergic etc…)

Increase the Reach

This type of event can also entice people from neighboring towns, which you wouldn’t want to overlook – if they’re willing to make the drive.

Boost with a Contest

You can take this event a step further by taking photos of all of the little masterpieces, post those onto your social media by age group and let your followers vote on their favorite.

Take the winners, and send them a gift certificate to use at your shop.

This both boosts your social media engagement, and gets the winners back in the door since they need to come spend their gift certificate.

(You choose whether it’s an amount that would be worth about half of your normal item – just enough that the amount they pay would cover your costs; or an amount that would let them get something for free and you consider it an advertising expense.)

Connect the Social with In-Store Special

You can take the contest aspect further, by taking all of the winning designs in age category, and for a limited time, you recreate the designs and sell those.

Limited runs every day (maybe you only make 1 or 2 at a time). Then little Joey’s parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, the whole family will want to come in and buy his winning design.

Create an Annual Event

Extending further, you could turn this into an annual event, which starts to build something that the kids and parents look forward to every year. This will give you something to promote both before and after the event to your email list, on social media, and maybe even get the Chamber and Main Street groups involved.

Vicky