How would I market a bakery in a small village with no internet?

About 3 weeks ago I got a message from a friend of mine asking me an interesting marketing question. How would I get people to a business in a small town with unreliable internet? As a digital marketer, this was a challenge because most of what I do relies on getting the customer to some form of digital interaction.?

In this article, I will share a few marketing strategies that I would use if I could not use digital for the marketing of a small bakery.?

Assumptions I have during this overview

1. The phone lines are reliable.
2. There are few bakeries in the area.?
3. There is access to a printer.
4. The bakery has enough cash flow to sustain its business.
5. Calls? to the shop are a leading measure of sales

Establish the goal

The first step in any marketing effort is to set a goal. The goal needs to be specific. Most small businesses fail in marketing because they miss this first key step. For this situation, our goal will be to increase visits to the business by 15% over 3 months. The second goal would be to increase the total volume of phone calls by 30% over the next 60 days.? I am selecting visits because it's a leading measure of sales of baked goods.

We can think about the bakery's marketing funnel like this.

Understanding the bakery's funnel

Because we have made the assumption that people in the community do not use the internet as a reliable way to find things like a bakery, the funnel starts with real-world interaction. This could be a conversion with a friend, seeing someone eat the baked goods, walking past a sign, or seeing a flyer.

The next step in the bakeries marketing funnel would be an interest action. This could be a phone call to the bakery or asking a friend for directions.

Once that happens the next step would be to get someone to place a phone order or to come to the shop.?

Finally, the customer buys the product or receives the order.?

Getting the most out of the packaging?

We are looking to create a buzz around the product to get people talking about it, this is a time where we need to step back and put a little more thought into the business presentation.?

1. The packaging needs to stand out in color and style. When people see the packaging they should ask themselves what is and where did they get it.?
2. Having unique baked goods, the bakery needs to have things that no one else is selling. The goal is to make this the place to be. When something is a destination it's much easier to get people to go out of their way to try something new.?
3. Create packaging that entices people to eat while they are walking around.?

Strategies for the bakery

Create flyers with business information

We are going old school. In the past business used to use flyers to get the word out about the business. Over the years few and few businesses are using these as a tool for increasing awareness. If I were to do this for a local business I would create flyers that stand out based on the color paper. Trying my best to match the color of the paper to the color of my packaging.?

I would leverage young people that are looking for part-time work and pay them for each flyer they hand out. Note that this can create an environment where the people handing out the flyers will take the flyers and throw them away just to say they handed them out. To increase the likelihood of them handing out the flyers I would give each person a unique code. Every time someone came in with one of their flyers they would get an additional bonus.?

Use fans to blow the smell of baked goods into the street

Set up fans to get the smell of fresh baked goods out into the area. The smell of fresh food will draw traffic off the street and will get people talking about the bakery based on how good everything smells.?

Put up signs around town

Street signs can be a great way to get the attention of people we want to visit. The trick here is to be mindful of the areas where you place the signs. You don't need signs everywhere. Think about the way the town and city are broken up. You want to place signs in places that are more likely to shop with you in the future.?

Create a secret menu

This approach is taken from Starbucks. Create a menu that is not public. However, because of the nature of the business, these would be by order only and would require payment upfront. To get people talking about it I would start sharing the fact that we have a secret menu to the best customers and allow them to try something on the secret menu in the house. The goal here is to create something special that no one else is doing in your area.?

Create a revolving menu

I'm not sure if this is what it's called but let's just go with it. Your backed good needs to be limited to certain days. Doing this will help you create some level of urgency around the products because they can't get them on certain days. It could also help even out the sales on certain days because traffic flow will be geared toward the people that like certain products.?

The menu setup will also put the bakery in a good place to make items that are carted to the groups that like the main item of the day and offer them as upsells.?

Wrap Up

When marketing a business without the support of digital we want to be mindful of what we are spending. The goal is to test different channels using low-cost marketing before scaling up to something that could be very costly. Using print mediums is a great way to get low-cost marketing assets that will allow the bakery to test the ideas listed about without spending very much. There are several other methods that we could use but with the limited information I have about the business, these seemed to be the best strategies to start with. As with anything you know your audience better than I do. So take the framework and tweak it to your business.