You might have excellent skills for making different kinds of cupcakes, but your skills will convert your business fortune only if you learn and implement good promotion strategies for your cupcake business. Since competition is having an impact on almost all kinds of businesses and services, marketing has become more essential than ever. So here we present to you some of the most relevant and great cupcake marketing ideas that can give new vitality to your business by helping you sell much more and much faster.
1) Upgrade Your Site with These Features
Most people and businesses do get a website created but do not pay attention to the fact that some little changes on their website can significantly increase the actual proportion of clients they are currently getting. Let us know what little changes are required:
a) Have your cupcake website loading and working well on all different types of devices like desktops, mobile, tablets, i.e. device optimized, as people use different types of devices to access the web.
b) To showcase authenticity in order to enhance conversion rates, you must have testimonials, awards, certifications, etc displayed right on the homepage itself.
c) Make the site quick loading, ideally within 1 second so that you don’t lose visitors.
d) Make your business contact details easily available along with a live chat option.
e) To optimize the stay time of visitors, add professionally made videos on the homepage and explain your best features.
f) Have an online ordering facility on your website to grow sales.
2) Go Big with First Page Results
Most businesses and services start with the target of ranking their website on Google as part of their online marketing strategy. This is because the most active and common platform for searching products, services, and information online is Google. Since one needs to take care of multiple factors to get a top 10 ranking in Google, it is better to take the services of any expert online marketing agency for such tasks. If people type “cupcake shops in [your place]” in Google and find your website instantly, it will definitely get you many more customers for your cupcake business.
3) Learn Competitors and Grow Your Business
By researching your competitors, you can discover many potential link prospects, new keywords, and their content strategies to grow your presence online. You can either do this by using any explorer tool like ahrefs or can hand over this task to an internet marketing firm. By learning from competitors, you can outrank them in many aspects like your site positioning, traffic, number of ranking keywords, etc. You can also send alerts using such tools to give you instant updates on new keywords and positions.
4) Spend Some Budget on Paid Advertising Online
One of the fastest ways to get customers for your cupcake shop/store online is by taking advantage of advertising your cupcake business using paid ads on Google, Bing, Facebook, etc. With paid ads, you can start getting potential customers for cupcakes within a few days. The largest chunk of potential clients can be reached via advertising on Google followed by advertising on Facebook. With each ad platform having its own respective set of policies and parameters for ads, it is wise to get the task handled by any PPC marketing agency.
5) Generate Big Marketing Impact with Press Releases
While many businesses and services strive to get their brand name mentioned on other sites, press releases can do that with ease along with getting links and attention to your announcement. By sending your cupcake business-related press releases, your business will make its presence across a number of sites and platforms. To get premium benefits from press release marketing of cupcake business, you must choose a high-end press release distribution network that can land your business name on some of the established news sites and sources of the world.
6) Get GMB Optimized, Get More Sales
According to a recent study conducted to analyze the local SEO stats, it was found that 88% of potential customers look for online reviews before choosing local services. So what are online reviews and where do they appear on Google? It all starts with a search i.e. when a user types something that Google believes is a local-level (city or town-oriented) query, Google displays the best three listings on the front page results in the form of a snippet. This snippet is called Google local listing or Google local pack. If you want your cupcake business to be eligible to appear in this snippet (Google local pack), go ahead and create a “Google My Business” (GMB) page first. The next step is working towards the optimization of your GMB profile. Because there are so many aspects involved in GMB optimization like reviews, authority, citation, relevancy, and so on, it is best to outsource the process to an online marketing agency. As they have a lot of experience to do this, they can handle it more professionally.
7) Enjoy Organic Growth with Content Growth
Since the power of getting links from related niche sites is very high in search engines, therefore you can create content as a medium to get these valuable links. You can communicate to niche sites with guest post offer in exchange for links to your site. Once you gain such links through content posted on their sites, your site will start performing well for many more keywords in search engines which anyways will get you more customers for your business. You can also open a blog section on your website to publish posts in it for attracting a bigger share of traffic to your cupcake site from search engines like Google and Bing.
8) Draw Out More Benefits from Site Using Emails
Email marketing for your cupcake business can help in getting superior results. By having a ready-to-send email list in hand, you can anytime send a targeted message to a targeted audience thereby creating an instant impact. Businesses that remain in touch with their clients help to garner greater trust and therefore email marketing can be the best means to establish a line of communication. To create the list, first, come up with any offer (like discount coupon) that you can give to your website visitors for giving their email addresses. After that, use the opt-in form and offer combo on your website to generate email subscribers.
9) Start Cupcake Social Marketing
A significant portion of businesses and services fail at social media marketing because they assume that people on social media would outrightly engage with their products/services. Social media marketing of your cupcake business can give you good results consistently only if you spend the first few months of your time in building up a follower base. Once you have a few thousand followers, it gets much easier to start gaining more people and building up your potential target audience.
10) Let Influencers Give You More Sales
Many people on social media control a following of thousands of people. These people are modern-day influencers as messages posted by them get read and engaged by their followers. If you put your cupcake business marketing proposal to all such local influencers, you will come across many such influencers who will be willing to post your messages on their social media profile for a low cost. So find and work with a few such influencers from your city/town to garner extra visibility and customers for your business. Meanwhile, your own social media profile can get benefits, in form of new followers, due to influencer marketing.
11) Hunt Top Directories and List Your Business
Look for any local business or service in Google and you will inevitably find directories like Yelp, Homeadvisor, etc that are occupying the first page results. This is why you must consider listing your business on all such directories that enjoy favorable ranking in Google. Most of such directories also have paid options for greater visibility and you can avail of them if you start noticing leads coming from such directories.
12) Do Gift Marketing
If you start giving away some free items having some utility value, hardly any of your customers will reject them. This is because every customer likes to get extras. With this factor in mind, you can order merchandise with your cupcake business name printed on them in order to hand them over to your customers. This will not only help in marketing your cupcake business but will also increase the chances of your customer visiting your store again.
13) Explore the Potential of Videos
Which one of these would convey a message better to you, video or text? Obviously, videos stand far better when it comes to leaving an impression on human minds. Therefore the rates of conversion increase significantly when videos are used. So you must utilize videos in two ways to promote your cupcake business.
a) You must put professional videos on your cupcake website to increase conversions from the website.
b) You must start targeting low-traffic search terms and must come up with videos catering to them in order to put them on YouTube to generate customers.
14) Non-ad Marketing Through Newspapers
While putting ads in newspapers is a common marketing strategy, marketing through content posted by you in newspapers creates a much bigger impact in terms of your own reputation as well as your business. Many local newspapers welcome voluntary contributions from experts and you can use such an opportunity to write about new recipes for cupcakes and similar topics while getting the much-needed recognition and growth to your cupcake business.
15) Strive for Customer Convenience and Get Rewarded
Many people want the most convenient way to get food served to them and to match this customer desire, you can provide online orders and delivery for your cupcakes along with giving customization options. For delivery, you can tie up with delivery services in case you don’t want to manage it on your own. With this step, you are guaranteed to grow sales of your cupcakes.
16) Use Already Successful Restaurant Aggregator Apps
List your cupcake business on all prominent restaurant aggregators and delivery apps like Seamless, Uber Eats, etc. The sheer volume of visitors such apps get will automatically give you many new customers every month.
17) Get Samples Ready to Promote Your Business
Getting people to taste your cupcakes first is a good way to let people become more informed about the flavor of your cupcakes. So give away some free samples regularly and announce the free sample giveaways on your marketing assets like website and social media. To add a bigger element of marketing, ask and get the free sample cupcake customers to post their photos with cupcakes on their social media.
18) Form a Strong Partnership with Beneficial Vendors
For the growth of your cupcake business, some of the most potent partners to bring you orders regularly are caterers, wedding planners, event planners, hotels, etc. So meet up with as many businesses and service providers in such categories and make a deal to offer them commissions on every big order sent by them.
19) Get Your Stalls Ready to Promote Your Business
Trade shows, festivals, community meetings, events, are some occasions where you can expose your cupcake business to a big local audience by booking your stalls at such venues. You can also distribute discount coupons at such places to make people visit your shop later.
20) Let Your Vehicle Promote Cupcakes
Your vehicle can also be made into your marketing asset if you wrap some part of it with the advertisement of your cupcake business. By carrying out this step, your vehicle will be doing the promotion of your cupcake business on the streets while you will be driving your vehicle. To take this marketing method to an even bigger level, repeat this process with other vehicles by paying commissions to the vehicle owners.
21) Bring More Customers by Targeting Different Locations
Rent a food truck for some time and place your food truck in different locations for a few days so that you can promote your online order and home delivery option to people at the respective locations. After covering various crowded locations in your city/town, you will start receiving orders from people at different locations in your city/town.
22) Start Supplying in Bulk
Connect with other hotels, restaurants, and food truck owners and ask if they would accept buying cupcakes in bulk from you for a discounted price. This way they can add an extra menu to their business without having to do the cupcake-making part. If you close only a handful of such deals, you can grow your business income significantly.
23) Promote Using Photos
Photos of cupcakes taken from new angles and with new faces can bring more business to you if you start spreading such photos on platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. You can also get such photos shared by your customers (for discount price offer) and local influencers to grow the promotion of your cupcake business through photos.
24) Get People to Promote Your Business for Rewards
On your social media profile and on your cupcake business website, announce a contest for sharing your promotional message on social media. With good apps for social media contests, you can host such contests easily and can get your cupcake business promoted by different people. Such contests can also help you in collecting email addresses so that you can regularly send your business offers and discounts to your subscribers and can get more repeat sales.
25) Increase Menu to Increase Income
With many recipes available on YouTube, you can easily add new recipes to your business and can offer extra variety so that this would generate more sales for your business. With new recipes available, you can also do combo packs and can sell more.
26) Add Special Features, Make More Sales
People are becoming more health-conscious, so add specialized cupcake varieties like gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, etc. Such varieties can get extra features to your cupcake business and can hence increase your sales.
27) Collect Data to Increase Sales
For every customer that buys cupcakes from you, start asking for and collecting details like name, mobile number, and email address so that you can send them wishes on special occasions along with sending out new offers and promotions to them. This data collected from your side will be a long-term asset for the regular promotion of deals from you.
28) Start Fund Collection to Grow Sales
Announce a certain percentage of your cupcake sales for a special cause or charity so that people who feel associated with the cause can feel more compelled to buy from you. This will also help in creating a good brand impression of your cupcake business and can hence increase customer loyalty.
29) Use On Spot Social Promotions
At your store, have a board displaying discounted prices for people sharing your business on their social media. By getting your customers to post your cupcake business on their social media profiles, you get more promotion and the cumulative impact of this marketing strategy will be the growth of your cupcake business.
30) Pay Attention to Your Shopfront
Colors and ambiance play an important decision in getting people attracted to a business. Make your shopfront attractive with high-quality photos of cupcakes. For getting more attention, have a large-sized cupcake placed at any visible part of your shop front.
31) Utilize and Reward Crowd thinking
Always be open to new varieties of cupcakes so that your business can build a unique portfolio of cupcake recipes. To get such a thing done for your business, announce rewards for any person who comes up with new cupcake recipes. This way you can improve your recipe portfolio by accepting new ideas and inputs from people.
32) Follow Coupon Marketing
Start giving out coupon books to big businesses in your area so that they can give away these coupons to their customers. To avail of these coupons, many people will come to your cupcake store/shop.
33) Grow Your Business with Special Parties
Host special parties for local influencers and journalists so that your party along with your cupcake business name can get publicized among the masses and this will, in turn, bring more sales. This process will also help you to make good connections and network through journalists and influencers.
34) Use Regular Conventional Advertising Techniques Too
To extend the scope and reach of your business promotion, you must not be limited to online marketing strategies alone. Locally, well-thought and executed offline marketing methods can also yield good results. This is why offline marketing is still used by millions of businesses and services throughout the world. Some usual offline ways to market your cupcake business are buying banner and billboard spaces in populated areas of your city, getting your business flyers distributed, booking classified ads in newspapers, posters, and banners on walls, etc.
35) Score Good on Reviews
Earlier people used to ask friends and relatives for recommendations on products/services. However, people are now largely using online reviews to judge products and services. Generally, it holds true that rendering quality products and services can automatically cause good reviews for your business but things and situations are not always in your control. You might get negative reviews and that can cause a dent in your revenues. So be active in observing online reviews of your business and resolving unfavorable ones quickly. Also, start asking all of your customers to rate you online.
Found these cupcake marketing ideas useful? Let us know what you think, what questions you have, and any more suggestions, in the box below.
