Alternative marketing can help you combat a slowdown for your business. I read about a cottage baker in Wisconsin who has done just that. His story may inspire you to “bake outside the box” so to speak.
Meet Stephan, he is a cottage baker whose specialty is bread. He had signed up for a winter session of his local farmers market. He had baked his bread in anticipation of opening day . Unfortunately, the market had to close. He had a lot of hard work and ingredients ($$dough$$ in all those loaves.
Getting the word out
Stephan had a lot of bread so he decided that he needed to change his plan. In order to get the word out about how people could get his product, he turned to social media.
Since many potential customers had no knowledge of him or the wonderful bread he baked, he decided to first talk about his bread and tell his story so his customers could get to know him.
He let them know he sourced local wheat and milled it himself. He had a great variety of breads to choose from. He even decided to offer his wheat bread for exactly what his ingredient cost was to try and help out those who might be struggling financially. In addition to the above, he offered delivery or pickup.
It worked like a charm, he sold everything by the end of the weekend. Even better, he had expanded his list of customers and many of those have become repeat customers. He is tweaking his marketing materials and and expanding the selections.
By telling his story, as well as offering his homemade wheat bread at cost, he had people spreading the word about his great products. He built a reputation not only for a great product, but for supporting local farmers, and making his product available at an affordable price to those in need. We all know that word of mouth advertising is “gold”, and he can take that to the bank.
I would like to challenge you to look at your business, and figure out how to market your products in a new and different way. Who knows, maybe your local paper will feature a story about you.
