How to promote your small bakery

If you’re a skilled and passionate baker with an entrepreneurial mindset, then opening a small bakery may be the perfect career path for you. 

If you choose to take the leap and start your own business, promotion will be a key factor in your success. Luckily, there are loads of different ways to promote your small business that are relatively simple ad budget-friendly, such as:

• Build a website.
• Promote your bakery on social media.
• Focus on customer experience.
• Organise community events. 
• Partner with local businesses.
• Free samples. 
• The power of the waft. 
• Have fun with your chalkboard.

A well-made website will help promote your bakery online. At the very least, your website should have:

• Your bakery’s address and contact information, 
• Good quality photos of your baked goods. 
• A price list and delivery options. 
• An “about me” page and mission statement. 

If you’re not the most tech-savvy, then don’t worry. There are a lot of beginner-friendly website builders you can use to create a professional website with loads of useful features. 

You can increase website traffic by improving your search engine rankings. You want to appear high on the list when people search for bakeries online. You can improve your search engines rankings by:

• Paying for Google ads.
• Improving your SEO (search engine optimisation).
• Encouraging your customers to leave Google reviews.
• Signing up for online directories like Google Business.

Creating a business profile on social media can be an incredibly effective way to promote your bakery while giving your brand a distinct personality. Try creating different business profiles on a combination of these platforms:

• Facebook 
• Twitter
• Snapchat
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• TikTok
• YouTube 

Once you’ve chosen your particular platforms, make sure you regularly post engaging content that will interest your users. Luckily, your main product, baked goods, are often enticing enough on their own, so plenty of attractive photos will usually do the job. 

Additionally, there are loads of ways to include video content for your channels. For example, you could create videos about:

• New recipes. 
• Interesting new bakery techniques. 
• New baking gadgets. 
• Baking tutorials. 

Word of mouth is one of the most effective forms of advertising. Customers are much more likely to visit your bakery if they’ve heard good things about it from friends and family. And the best way to build good word of mouth is by improving customer experience. 

Supporting local causes is a great way to earn some good PR for your business. Find out what’s important to your target audience and focus the event around that cause. After that, you just need to decide what to do. 

For example, you could take the more traditional route and raise money for charities. Alternatively, you could take a more hands-on approach by hosting a community bake sale, starting a food drive, or reaching out to local schools and offering baking lessons.

If you create top-quality baked goods, there are bound to be others willing to sell those goods in their own businesses, so start asking around local businesses. 

For example, bars and restaurants might be interested in your bread products, whereas cafes could be persuaded by your cakes and pastries. 

Selling your baked good to other businesses will create a whole new revenue stream. Just make sure they advertise the fact that it’s your products they’re offering. 

This point almost doesn’t need an explanation; everybody loves free samples.

That said, there are a few ways to go about doing it. For example, you might consider offering free samples of:

• New products. 
• Products that aren’t selling as well. 
• Products that you have too much of. 
• Cheaper products you don’t mind giving away. 

Whatever direction you choose, just make sure the free samples are examples of your best work.

The sense of smell has can elicit an incredibly powerful response in people’s brains, so use that to your example. 

As long as it’s not too cold, make sure you keep your front doors open to let all those lovely smells waft out into the street. Not only are open doors more inviting, but those delicious aromas could also be enough to convince passers-by to come in and buy something. 

Like most businesses, baking will be subject to changing trends and fads. 

First of all, seasonal trends are always going to apply, so make sure you create holiday-themed baked goods for holidays like Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and Valentine’s day. 

But there are also larger social trends that can affect the food industry, like new attitudes towards diet, sustainability, and inclusivity, 

For example, you should try to have at least a couple of options for different dietary requirements, like veganism and gluten intolerance. 

The idea of a specials chalkboard board outside your shop isn’t a new idea, but more and more businesses are finding fun and creative ways to use them. A combination of jokes, doodles, and special offers can help catch the attention of customers and send them through your doors. 

Running a bakery is a full-time job, so you might not think there’s enough time to manage your finances on top of everything else. 

The Countingup app makes financial admin quick and easy, leaving you more time to focus on running your business. . 

Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like automatic expense categorisation, invoicing on the go, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also share your bookkeeping with your accountant instantly without worrying about duplication errors, data lags or inaccuracies. Seamless, simple, and straightforward! 

Find out more here.