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Sometimes after a long day in your day job or a full day at your baking business you feel a bit tired.
Or after many weeks of promoting you just end up not feeling like creating another email campaign, doing another post or reel or writing another post about your baking business.
Or you just can’t think of anything to say.
Why should you keep going, even if it seems like your efforts are not paying off? Here are 6 things to think about.
Revisiting your goals
Take a step back and look at your goals. What did you set out to achieve when you started your Instagram account or your email list?
Evaluate what steps you need to take in order to achieve that goal.
Maybe you need to break down your goals further to generate achievable tasks that you can be consistent at.
For example, maybe your goal was to grow your bakery email list to 100 subscribers by the end of the year.
People aren’t signing up at the rate you anticipated, even your existing customers don’t want to receive or open your emails.
Re-evaluating this, might help you come up with some actionable steps. You could start by talking to existing subscribers about what they like most about your emails and what they dislike.
Another step could then be, how I do communicate the things people like about the emails to people who visit my website or social media (you could use social proof – ask to use a quote from when you asked your existing subscribers).
Now, you’ve come up with ways you can get more sign ups from people already visiting your website. Then start to look at ways you can get more traffic or directly promote your email list. Can you post about it to a Twitter audience? Can you link to it on a local website? Or partner with a local food blogger?
Hopefully, stepping back and realising what your goals were, to begin with will help you think up new ways to achieve that goal and regain some motivation in what seems to be arduous promotion.
Picking the right promotion tactic
As well as choosing promotion channels that will reach your ideal customers. Also, try and pick a promotion tactic you know you can stick at. Maybe writing a blog just isn’t for you, instead, you enjoy making videos.
You can use this to your advantage as you can build an audience on a platform and in a way that you enjoy. This will help you be consistent and hopefully make it a good habit.
Make it a habit
Many marketers have said, consistency is key. Making promotion a habit like posting something every day, or interacting with people for 10 minutes a day will enable you keep building upon previous efforts, compounding results as time goes on.
Often people give up before things start to gain momentum. If you keep going you’ll have a competitive advantage – but again make sure this is aiming towards an objective, a purpose that will help you grow your business. If you are not sure – experiment, ask your customers or audience about their needs and wants to help guide the kind of promotion that will work for your business.
Sometimes when promoting your food business seems like a chore, think of it as just doing 1 thing a day to help grow your business, however small. Whether that is 1 comment, 1 interaction online, 1 conversation, 1 email to a possible wholesale customer, 1 piece of outreach to a partner or website for a link.
Mixing it up: Have a brainstorm!
If you just can’t think of anything to post like you usually do, or have no inspiration. Maybe it’s time to think outside the box! Have a brainstorm, try something completely different and see what the response is – maybe you’ll discover a new form of content or method that grabs people’s attention.
You could do a giveaway once in a while or do a collaboration with another baker to tap into each other’s audiences or have a local baking competition.
Again if you are stuck – you could share something behind the scenes, about how you promote your business, or the journey you took to start, something about your day. People connect with people, so it’s good interact in a human way.
Reframing consistency
Consistency doesn’t just mean as much as you can do – also take into account quality and your time.
Maybe you need to show up once a week with a great giveaway, than churn out as many videos every day – maybe you have the time to both – see what your audience likes best, you may still be able to engage with them less often but more interactively when you do.
Don’t get disheartened
Building a brand, a business of any sort, especially as a solo entrepreneur can be disheartening. It takes a lot of motivation, determination and effort to promote your food business as well as actually bake cakes and do accounting and admin! Promoting can also seem tough because you wont always see instant results. It takes time to build an audience and customer base, but small consistent efforts can build over time.
If you are just starting, think about local opportunities and people already in your network you can share your journey with as this can help start building momentum. If you have budget, you can experiment with paid advertising or even outsourcing some promotion to an agency or freelancer.
Also remember to look after your wellbeing and that taking a break is not the end of the world, some days promoting you baking biz will seem like a chore, but I hope these reasons to keep at it will help and inspire you.
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