How to promote a home baking business

If you have a passion for baking that goes beyond the odd birthday cake, you might have considered starting your own baking business. 

If you have, you’ll be happy to know that you don’t need to spend a whole load of money on a cake shop to get started. In fact, it’s entirely possible to start your business from home. The tricky part, however, is finding customers.

After all, people probably aren’t going to be knocking on your door any time soon looking for baked goods. Luckily, there are some easy ways that you can get the word out. 

In this guide, we’ll be talking about how to promote a home baking business with these simple ideas:

• Build an e-commerce website.
• Promote your business on social media. 
• Start a YouTube channel.
• Partner with local businesses.
• Engage with the local community. 
• Don’t neglect word of mouth advertising. 
• Offer first-time promotions. 

For any home-based business, a well-made website is going to be central to your operation. It will act as both a marketing tool and a point of sale. 

Creating a good website will make sure you appear when people search for baked goods search engines like Google. You can improve your search engines rankings by:

• Paying for Google ads.
• Making a Google business profile.
• Making your site SEO (search engine optimisation) friendly.
• Asking your customers to leave Google reviews.

Building a website is a good starting point. At the very least, it should include information about your business, an “about me” page, contact information, product pages, and prices.

For more information 

Online presence doesn’t stop at a website. Nowadays, social media represents a huge amount of potential customers. Building a brand on social media takes time, but it’s well worth the effort.

Sites like Facebook and Instagram are the perfect place to promote a business, like home baking, because there’s a greater emphasis on images.

You can share pictures of all the incredible things you’re baking and build up followers that will hopefully turn into customers. 

Some golden rules of social media advertising are:

• Always link back to your actual website.
• Keep it fun and casual. 
• Post often and regularly. 
• Encourage comments and suggestions from your followers. 
• Reply to comments from your followers. 
• Join other groups and pages about baking. 
• Have a consistent tone. 
• Drive user engagement with competitions and giveaways.

Though we could include YouTube in our social media section, we thought it should have its own section. 

YouTube is a great platform for posting long-form videos that’ll gain regular viewers. With enough subscribers, you can monetise your channel for an extra source of income, and if you grow your reputation, you can even make deals with private sponsors. 

YouTube is the second largest search engine, after Google, so regularly producing videos will make you appear higher when people search for information about baking. 

The kind of videos you create is entirely up to you, but some examples to get you started are:

• Recipe tutorials.
• Baking competitions with friends, family, and other YouTubers,
• Taste-testing videos. 
• Baking equipment reviews. 
• “Behind the scenes” videos of your kitchen in action.

For more detailed information about using YouTube, check out our article, “How to create a YouTube channel for your business”.

Joining forces with other local businesses is a great way to promote yourself. 

You can ask them to post fliers and pamphlets in their windows or offer referrals with discount codes. If there are any coffee shops, bars, or restaurants, in particular, you could even ask them to sell your baked goods. 

Networking with local businesses will be a huge boost to your long-term plan because it’ll lead to repeat customers and improve your relationships with other business owners. 

Along with local businesses, there are plenty of ways you can engage with the local community directly. 

Try taking part in, or organising, some events like these:

• Charity events.
• Local food markets. 
• Baking competitions. 
• Food drives. 

Events like these are a great way to increase your reputation while generating some positive PR (Public Relations) at the same time. 

Finally, don’t forget the more traditional approach of word of mouth advertising. People are always more likely to trust recommendations from somebody they know, so start spreading the word. 

Ask your friends and family to start telling people they know about their business, and maybe even give them some free samples to hand out themselves. 

People are often slightly wary of a new business they’ve never heard of before, so offering a first-time discount is a great way to convince new customers to try your products. 

You may not make much profit from those early sales, but it’ll be well worth it if it leads to repeat customers. Offer discounts like this across all your advertising channels and get some new customers on your side. 

Promoting your home baking business will attract vital customers, and that will lead to more complicated bookkeeping. 

Financial management can be stressful and time-consuming when you’re self-employed. That’s why thousands of business owners use the Countingup app to make their financial admin easier. 

Countingup is the 2 in 1 business current account and accounting app 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.