what are good ways for a home baker to advertise?
i just need a couple orders a week.
right now i just get a dozen cupcakes or small birthday cakes here or there. small cakes make no profit.
the ideas i have now is the obvious of business cards and my website, i have a facebook fan page
thought of getting
tee shirts with website on back for me and kids to wear to mall and school etc.
magnets for car doors and or vinal letters for the back window on my van that will be seen in my driveway and in parking lots and when i pick up kids from school.
making small flyers and have kids help me put them on doors. in the neighborhood.
look into the law on putting flyers on cars in store parking lots
put flyers or business cars on boards some places have for people to post flyers by mailboxes and at some local businesses but dont know where.
what is your best advertising tool
I know word of mouth but i just dont know too many people .
my cakes taste great just need the word to get out
im starting this home business since we need a little more income.
would it be a bad idea to buy a small advertisement in the kid directory? (im not doing wedding cakes til my kids are in school.)
Honestly, word of mouth is a great tool..I started by sending in cupcakes to work with husband, step-dad, and taking them to my job....that worked for me.
I've sent in cupcakes/cake pops to my son's school, and the other one's daycare...that helped as well.
That small investment ended up paying off for me, you can volunteer to donate cupcakes to a church or school fundraiser/bake sale... anywhere where you want your target market to be.
Honestly I don't think putting up flyers will get you very far, and I can't speak for everyone but if you put a flyer on my car or leave a flyer on my doorstep you can pretty much guarantee that you won't get my business.
You'll probably want to focus more on networking with party planners and venues that host parties, and look into paid advertisements on Google, Facebook, and Yelp. It may take some time to get the word out, so you should be prepared to take a loss for at least a few months or so until your business ramps up.
It doesn't get any better than word of mouth. Even big companies understand this rule. There is a book (not to expensive) called Gorilla Marketing that helped me alot. Show you how to market (advertise) your business like big businesses do without the big business budget.
You are on the right tract. Visibility is key!
First . . . I have to say . . I had a good chuckle at the thought of you sending your kids off to school with your website imprinted on their backs! Lordy Lordy lol
We too, when we started out were super hungry (desperate actually) for business. You can read some of our crying posts from a few months ago. I was willing to do all kinds of things to drum up business. Thank god my 2% partner and good friend had his feet on the ground.
Every time I said I was going to do something to get business . . . he would tell me "That's dumb!" just hold steady.
I knew word of mouth would be our greatest asset (even more son on a no budget marketing plan). But it's hard not to start thinking of other ideas when things get rough and you are literally days away from closing your doors because you can't make enough in sales to stay open.
Some people say you should not open a business unless you have enough money to cushion a year or two of running. I say . . WTH? some people have dreams and persistence and are willing to put the blood and sweat in. I say they have equal chance, if not better of success. But it's hard.
Anyway, word of mouth is what is keeping our doors open and increasing our sales. BUT (and it's a big but) word of mouth works much better if you have an amazing product. We do. We use super high quality ingredients, bake everything from scratch and offer a quality (and extreme flavors) that you can't find in most areas. So word of mouth is slowly turning our business around for the good.
Hang in there. Don't get nuts with T shirts and flyers. (I hope you have a 2% partner who will tell you when you are being stupid (no harm meant))
I also disagree slightly about giving away free products to get business. We did this for months. And, well . . we saw nothing from it, but driving us deeper in the hole. Our products cost money . . and because of our cost of good ingredients . . it's not cheap to give stuff away. But we though . . once they taste it, they will come into the store and buy or call us and order.
Nope. We never saw one sale that was directly related to our free give-aways/donations. We would go in, talk about our product . . get ohhh's and awww's from the people. Then nothing.
Perhaps others have had much better luck . . but we saw ZERO sales from it. I have now made the decision to not do that. We are very very picky about the events we will sponsor now.
What did work for us?
Family spreading word
Friends spreading word
Facebook spreading word
New customers in the store . . buying for the first time . . returning for more and bringing friends (AKA Word of Mouth).
These all take time. We still have very far to go. We still have high probability to fail. But we opened on a shoe string budget and I am proud of what we do! And I will fight tooth and nail until our very last day.
Best of luck to you!!
Some people say you should not open a business unless you have enough money to cushion a year or two of running. I say . . WTH? some people have dreams and persistence and are willing to put the blood and sweat in. I say they have equal chance, if not better of success. But it's hard.
The idea is to have enough money in the bank (or from other sources of income) to pay your living expenses for at least a year or two, since many businesses take that long to become profitable enough to be worth it. If you are only breaking even and have no other source of income you won't be able to pay your bills.
Businesses don't fail because of a lack of dreams or persistence, they fail because the owners can't afford to keep the business running and still put food on the table.
I am a Home Baker, well, I bake PT and still have a full time job, can't wait until I'm doing cakes ONLY!!
My business has been 99% word of mouth and the rest Facebook!! I do have a website, but, most of the calls I get are from people who've been to parties and saw my cakes.
It all started with ONE party that my friend had, which she had about 200 people there and my business has grown ever since.
I just try to make sure that not only are my cakes pretty but they MUST taste great as well!!
Hope this helps!! 
I am small and because of my day job need to stay that way for a while but the best advertising I have is friends and family. I make sure everyone has business cards to give out and my friends that are mom's give out my cards to their friends for birthdays etc. I think facebook is great because when my friends like one of my cakes, their friends see it etc. I also have a blog that posts to FB and people get to see how some of the work is done which drums up interest in custom cakes instead of grocery store cakes.
Most of my orders come from my husbands company. I used to send all my "test" cupcakes up there before they passed the law here in Texas and right after the law passed, the company hired me to do their anniversary cake (large 4 tier cake). I've had several requests for quotes and a couple of orders from them in just the couple of months following the party.
Also someone here on CC does this really cute thing on FB where they action off their practice cupcakes and cakes. She would post something like "1 dozen strawberry cupcakes up for auction, starting bid $12" or whatever and it's just a same day pick up but it gets some buzz, it gets product out there and you still at least cover your cost
Put your business cards on every box that goes out the door
thatis a great idea to auction off practice cakes and cupcakes!!!!!!! i was going to make some test cupcakes tonnight.
what part of texas are u in? im in austin.
huibby takes my extra stuff to work but he is mgr at whataburger and only managers can afford cakes
I'm in Dallas. I love Austin. I also love Whataburger
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%