Branding is something most people associate with teams of marketing specialists who spend a lot of time (and money), putting together branding strategies for their large corporate clients.
Or there are those who think that branding is simply choosing a logo and printing your business cards online. The truth is that for small baking businesses, the reality is somewhere in the middle. While we might not be able to afford a branding company, there is a lot we can do ourselves!
The good news is that you can easily apply ‘large company’ branding techniques to your own home baking business. I’ve certainly done it with my own baking & chocolate-making business, so there no reason why you couldn’t too!
Let me share with you my favourite tips on how to successfully brand your baking business – ones that actually work!
Developing your brand first
I found that by asking a few simple questions, you can easily come up with your branding, without overthinking it too much.
For instance; What does your bakery business focus on? Cakes, bread, fancy bakes, tray bakes or morning pastries?
What makes your bakery business different from others? Do you deliver locally or post your bakery goodies? Do you have a special recipe that you use to bake your cakes or bread?
What colours and photo styles would represent your business? Is your bakery-style modern with jazzy cupcake decorations or do you focus on rustic style types of bread? Think about the colours that you like and that mostly represents the type of bakes you create.
Applying your brand to your bakery business
Now that you have a better idea on what your branding is, let’s look at how to apply it to your baking business. The most important thing about branding is consistency. So, to make sure your bakery business feels ‘together’ use the same colours, images and styles across all of your business.
Business Cards
First impressions count and having good quality business cards for a bakery is a great way to impress your potential customers. Use on online resources to design your business cards first, paying attention to choosing the best photos you have, matching your branded colours and selecting the best print option, whether it’s on matt, glossy or recycled paper or with golden foiling. Professional online printers will take care of the paper quality and deliver your business cards directly to your door.
Website
These days less is more, so focus on clean website design and use good quality photos that showcase your bakery business in the best possible way. Use your brand colours through the website and pick fonts that complement your bakery style.
Social Media
One simple way of applying your branding here, is to use your logo and colours on all your social media profiles. You also want to make sure that your business profiles have the same name and descriptions so that your customers can easily identify you no matter which social media they use.
Logo
Your logo should represent your brand and should carry your brand colours and the style you’ve chosen. But it’s also worth being practical here. Your logo needs to look good on your website, social media, but also in print on your business cards and other marketing material, such as market stall banners or your staff uniform, apron or T-shirt.
Product Range
Your brand is probably most visible around your choice of products range. The more you define your products, the more you will be visible as a brand. To give you an example, a high-end wedding cake maker could be diluting its brand by offering cheap family tray bakes. These two product ranges have completely different types of clients, which also makes it more difficult to market.
Photos
Good quality photos, whether you commission a professional photographer or decide to take them yourself, are crucial to your business image. This is not just about capturing the object (e.g. your cakes or bread) but also about showing your style and branding. This can be achieved with consistent editing, photo props, backgrounds and the way you style your photos.
Packaging
Another way to keep your brand visible is to use your logo on your packaging. To keep things simple, you can choose a packaging colour that’s part of your brand and use stickers with your logo to complete the look.