Promoting Your Cake Decorating Business – Part 3

Now that you have perfected your cake decorating skills and are confident enough to start offering your services professionally, you will need to find ways of promoting your cake decorating business that cost little or no money. This is not difficult to do – all you need to spend is a little bit of money on business cards and perhaps some brochures with photographs of your work, and for the rest of your promotional efforts, the only thing you will need to spend is time. Part 1 and 2 of this series gave some ideas of what you could do, and here are a few more – but don't forget, your own creativity in your promotional efforts is your best tool.

Make yourself known to restaurant and café managers It is quite common for such establishments to do outside catering for a variety of functions, so they are always on the lookout for specialty cake decorators. Get to know the person in charge of this, and show them samples of your work. Don't forget to leave a business card (which will have your website address on it, of course!). Perhaps you could invite them to your kitchen to see cakes that are ready for delivery, so they can see first hand what you are capable of. And don't forget the persuasive powers of a ready to eat sample of cake – maybe you could use off-cuts, or perhaps use some of the cake batter for cupcakes to be used as samples.

Competitions These are often overlooked as a promotional tool, but entering local baking or decorating competitions (often held as part of agricultural shows or county fairs) is a great way to get your name known. It is also good practise for meeting strict deadlines, and in preparing cakes to a high standard of perfection. The judges in these competitions are likely to be more strict than your clients – they know what faults to look for and will be quite unforgiving.
The other benefit of these competitions is that if you win them, you will often find your name in the local paper among the results, and sometimes these are made into a feature story – even with pictures. Make sure you mention any awards you have won on your promotional literature and website.

Freebies You may find that family members and friends will sometimes expect or ask you to do a cake for free. It is up to you how often to do so – you are trying to make a living, after all – but these can be quite useful opportunities for promotion, particularly for those just starting out in this business and trying to make a name for themselves. Personally, I would feel quite comfortable in being a little more obvious with self promotion on such occasions – handing out business cards etc – and if you are attending the function as a guest you can find yourself getting a lot of attention after everyone has seen the cake. People will want to compliment you on your skill, which really begs for you to take advantage of the promotional opportunity. And of course, you can claim the cost of the cake and your time as a perfectly legitimate business expense for tax deduction purposes.

Secure high profile clients Radio and television companies, charities, political groups - all these and many other public organisations have anniversaries or promotional events that often feature (sometimes very large!) cakes. Because these groups are newsworthy in their own right and very good at self promotion, you can sometimes find that their celebrations make the news and will often feature your cake. Here is an example of a local company who provided a cake for a radio station wedding promotion, which ended up getting television and womens' magazine coverage (see the "comments page")Not only did they get paid well for providing the cake, but they got huge publicity that is worth more than any paid advertising. Check out the rest of their site too - it's a great example not only of how to set up a website for a cake decorating business, but also of how a home business can grow by maintaining quality and service.

Follow up all clients A few weeks after you have supplied a cake, send a thankyou letter to your clients, congratulate them on their success of their celebration, and enquire as to their satisfaction with your product and service. Enclose 2 or 3 business cards and a copy of your brochure, and mention that if they were happy with your service, they may like to recommend you to friends, family, or colleagues. This will probably happen quite naturally anyway, but it won't hurt to give them a little nudge.

That concludes this 3 part series on promoting your cake decorating business. Remember – the best form of promotion is word of mouth generated by providing a consistently high standard of product and service.