No matter what your business is, you know how to run it well. That’s your specialty!
But if you’re like many business owners, marketing is an entirely different story. It takes a lot of time, care, and attention to come up with a great marketing plan.
That’s our specialty at Colwell Creative Content.
Today we wanted to give you a sneak peek into what we can accomplish by telling you a story.
Jen’s Bakery
Jen was excited to finally be able to open her bakery. Baking was something she’d loved since she was a kid. She never thought she’d have the chance to get paid for it, and now she was a business owner.
She opened a small bakery downtown in her city. She planned to offer basic baked goods like cookies, cupcakes, brownies, and pies. Before long, customers started calling her to ask about more extensive creations, such as wedding cakes.
Jen was excited to be experiencing such growth so quickly, and she soon realized that she was going to have to hire some help to fill the orders. She brought in another baker, and before long, the two of them were taking care of about 20 customers a week.
The Struggle Begins
Jen was excited about those 20 customers, and she hoped to double that number over the next year. But she seemed to have stalled in her growth. She knew she should probably spend more time on marketing her business, but every working hour was filled with baking to fill orders. She couldn’t afford to bring on another baker just yet.
Jen felt stuck. She faced several problems that she didn’t know how to resolve:
More than anything, she wanted to focus on baking, not marketing.
She didn’t have the money to hire more staff.
She didn’t have a clue about where to begin marketing her business.
Getting Some Great Advice
Jen decided she should tackle the last problem in her list before the others. She needed to know what type of marketing would benefit her the most. Once she knew that, she figured she could make a plan of attack to begin advertising to people in her area.
She contacted a digital marketing company in her area because they offered a free consultation. She figured if nothing else, she could at least get some direction on what she needed to do to grow her business.
During the consultation, Jen learned a lot about what digital marketing is and what methods would work best for her bakery.
A Quality Website
Up until then, Jen had been relying on her own personal Facebook and Instagram pages to get the word out about her business. She learned that she needed a quality website to gain traction with Google.
SEO
But having a nice website wasn’t going to be enough. Her content was of utmost importance if she was going to appear in search engines whenever people searched keywords that applied to her bakery.
Jen needed to learn more about search engine optimization (SEO) and how it works. Not only did her site require specific pages, but it also had to have regular blog posts if she hoped to rank well.
Social Media Marketing
Jen’s personal social media pages had a decent following, but it wasn’t enough. She needed to show people she had a legitimate business. That meant making sure her business had a presence on Facebook and Instagram.
But other social media sites were effective for marketing her bakery too. TikTok videos would help her appeal to a younger audience, and YouTube would allow her to reach a wider audience in her local area. Not to mention the fact that she learned YouTube is the second most popular search engine out there. That meant she needed to take advantage of it.
Other Marketing Services
Jen also learned about other options for marketing her bakery, such as:
She was starting to feel overwhelmed at the possibilities. She couldn’t help but wonder how she was going to accomplish all of it on her own? She started to feel hopeless about marketing her business at all.
Finding a Solution
Jen’s meager budget wouldn’t allow her to start putting everything she’d learned into place at once. But she figured that it was best to just start somewhere.
According to the digital marketer she’d consulted with, the best place to start was with a website. She decided to move forward with creating a small site that only had four pages - a Homepage, an About Us page, a Products page, and a Blog.
Once the site was created, Jen gave the OK for the digital marketing team to post one blog post every week. That way, Google would notice that the site was active, and since the pages on the site were optimized for search engines, it wasn’t long before Jen started noticing that her site would show up when she Googled bakeries in her city.
With her site in place, Jen decided it was best to shift to focusing on her social media presence. She had the team create a Facebook business page for her and asked them to post three times a week.
They came to her bakery and took pictures of some of her most beautiful (and tasty!) creations. They were perfect to feature on her page. The team wrote some catchy, engaging text, and before long, Jen’s page started gaining likes and followers. People started sharing her posts and inviting other people to visit her page. The team made sure to share her weekly blog posts, which drove traffic to her website.
The Outcome
Today, Jen has four bakers on staff, not including herself. She still loves to bake, but she doesn’t feel like she has to manage every single order that comes in.
Jen knows that if she hadn’t started marketing her bakery online, she would have never experienced the success she has today.
Now, her marketing efforts are basically on autopilot. Her content writers take care of updating her website regularly, and they make sure she has a stellar social media presence. They even handle comments, reviews, and more on her business page.
Jen has a lot of ideas for even more business growth, including starting a Facebook group for parents with kids that want to get into baking. Her digital marketing team will handle that for her too.
She’s decided that the sky’s the limit as far as what she can accomplish, and she’s even thinking about opening another bakery on the other side of town. She’s thankful for the help of her digital marketing team, who partnered with her and helped make it all possible.
What Can Digital Marketing Do for YOUR Business?
The sky's the limit.
Every business is different as far as what they need to be successful with digital marketing. We’d love the chance to give you our recommendations, based on your target audience.
Contact us today if you’d like to learn more. Let’s grow your business together!