How many people do you know that are into baking? How many of these people have turned their baking skills into a cake startup kind of business?
Well, you will be surprised how easy it is to distinguish yourself from the sea of bakers out there. I recommend three simple steps to make your baking more profitable. First, be consistent with the quality of your cakes. Second, have great customer service. Third, be quick to adapt to change in the baking world. And lastly, sell your cakes aggressively.
And to be honest, this article is more than a cake thing, it is about the simple things that make you stand out with a skill that seems to be shared by thousands out there!
Article Summary
- Have great customer service
- Be consistent with baking good quality cakes
- Always adapt to the market demands
- Sell your cakes aggressively
Even if you never stepped into a business class, these four things that stand true in growing a business. If you look around, no two businesses have ever shared all these things at the same time and in the same way. That is what makes a business unique.
For the sake of understanding, we will use the cake business in Kenya for this article.
- Customer service – Call them by name
Think of customer service as relationships between your cake business and its customers. These relationships are the secret ingredient to steady income and growth.
In business, there is a concept in advertising called word-of-mouth (WOM) – and more recently electronic word-of-mouth – which is among the cheapest and most effective marketing strategy. The simple version of it is that when you treat a customer well, they will come back, and they are likely to recommend you to their friend in the process.
A good way to start is to find a way to personalize the relationship between the business and its customers. This personalization effect is why you see companies struggling to refer to you – their customer – by name and when it works it feels great to you – the customer, it feels like they are interested in you specifically.
So, refer to your top customers by name even in marketing messages, give them offers that are specifically tailored for them, and make them feel special. If you want to go a notch higher, then make their cake-buying process an experience to remember.
- Consistency – Good cake, all the time
By instinct, customers are creatures of habit. This means once they identify a product that they like they are likely to buy it over and over again as long as it pleases them. Your business, therefore, has two main goals here; first, make a really good cake, and second, keep making the same good cake. The first goal gets you the customers and the second one keeps them.
Do you know why some customers would rather drive from Kiambu to Thika for a cake? It is because they know they will get a good cake and it will taste like the last time they ate it. The business has created dependability by being consistent with the kind of cake they bake. This does not mean that you bake a single flavour, no, rather it means that each of your flavours should taste the same over and over again.
Remember the KDF craze that hit Kenya a while back?
The excitement was for a good reason – the KDFs tasted great and the taste has remained the same until today. This simple concept underlies every big food business that you see around – Java, Art Caffe, KFC, Chicken INN, Pizza Inn etc. All these have great-tasting products and the taste is consistent every single time.
- Response to change – Move it! Move it!
Again, going back to business theory, there is a concept of change called Adapt or Die. It is used as a warning that if your business does not move with the times, it will be left behind and it will die.
A simple example is the shops that sold audio cassettes in Kenya in the 90s and 2000s. If the owner of such a shop did not move with the times, they may just be stuck selling something that people do not want any more hence the death part.
In 2020, a big trend in the cake business has been those cakes that look like other things.
It grew a trend called “Is it cake” and showcased how well bakers can disguise their cakes to look like different items. The cake businesses that got behind that trend got a lot of free marketing because the videos got shared thousands of times. That trend is one example of moving with the times.
Another thing to consider is what are the new ways, tools, and approaches to baking that are used by industry leaders.
In Kenya for example, if you are a baker, it would make sense that you visit big cake shops in town and see what kind of cakes they are baking and if possible, how they are doing it. This exposure is not so that you copy other businesses but rather so that you can improve your own style based on what new ideas you get.
- Same old selling tricks
It may come as a surprise but beyond distinguishing yourself, you need to sell yourself. Sometimes the businesses that earn the most are not the ones with the best products but those with the best-selling tactics.
So, move beyond the basic social media posts and actually pay for advertising through channels that will reach your customers. By channel, I mean anything close to a platform and so it could be an influencer, Instagram ads, Facebook ads, Twitter trends, a blog feature etc.
Evidently, it takes some work to move from simply baking a cake to being a business that has differentiated itself.
