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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 252 - Piping Positioning, we wanted to talk about a buzzy marketing concept called "product positioning." Think of positioning as the mental real estate your bakery is renting in the heads of your customers.

Here's the catch - 🫵 you don't control what they think about you, but rather all the pieces of marketing create an experience they recall when they hear your name. Let me explain.

Having recently moved, I've been targeted in a half dozen ads about anything and everything home goods, but one brand keeps rising to the top - of both feeds and word-of-mouth.

Quince is an up-and-coming household brand that positions itself as "luxury and quality for less," 💸💸💸💸 going as far as to directly compare their prices against popular brands like West Elm, Pottery Barn, and Williams-Sonoma (⚖️ there's a lawsuit about this, actually).

How do they do the same thing at the same quality, but for less? Their approach of "radical transparency" explains it just about everywhere on their website. They source the same materials from the same factories as the higher-priced brands, and then cut out the middleman by selling directly from their website to consumers.

Other examples of brands that have done a great job at positioning - try guessing these before you peek (some may be location dependent):

• 🧠 Safe Cars = Volvo
• 🧠 Customer Service Chicken = Chick-Fil-A
• 🧠 Everyday products at a lower cost = Walmart
• 🧠 Quick Oil Changes = Jiffy Lube
• 🧠 Judge-free Gym = Planet Fitness
• 🧠 Gas with Great Convenience Store = Sheetz
• 🧠 Quick Burgers = McDonald's
• 🧠 Quality Groceries = Wegmans / Whole Foods
• 🧠 Streaming Service = Netflix
• 🧠 Best Dating App = Hinge
• 🧠 Social Media = Facebook

What made us all think of mostly the same brands? That's positioning. If I said "really high-quality burger," you likely wouldn't think of McDonald's, right?

“Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect.” - Jack Trout

Positioning can take multiple forms and varies depending on who you're targeting (Volvo positions both as safe and as luxurious, depending on who their target market is for the vehicle). Price-based is the route Quince

🏷️ Price-based positioning is the route Quince is taking, and while we often tell bakers not to compete on price, you can position on price depending on your targets. For example, we're not the most expensive cookie class instructors, so we could compete there if we wanted, without touching our margins at all.

Quality and premium positioning you see with brands like ⌚ Rolex or Apple - brands you know won't be cheap, but that's almost why you want them in the first place.

Application / Use-case positioning is a brand that comes to mind when you need to solve a specific problem. Which app would you use for online meetings? Zoom, right? What do you reach for when your nose is running? Kleenex? And then there's the funny backstory to Vecro (a brand so positioned that it's replaced its product name - hook and loop - with its brand).

Take the concept of positioning into your week and see which brands have rented your mental landscape. The positioning formula is this:

• For [Target Audience], [Brand Name] is the [Category] that [Point of Differentiation] because [Reason to Believe].

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🍩 Posting Do’s & Do-nots - Coming up with a social strategy.

In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 251 - Posting Dos and Donuts, the twin2 (sorry for the audio issues on this episode, still figuring out remote podcasts 😭) wanted to talk about posting strategy. If it were as easy as "post every day and you'll be a billionaire," well, you wouldn't be hearing from me right now; I'd be too busy posting once a day (as I'm sure you would, too).

But alas - posting and getting reach involves strategy - a formulated plan to reach our audience and cut through the noise of every other business attempting to snag their attention and hog their feeds.

📝 Do: Post frequently

In today's podcast, Corrie said, "Post every day," as in that's the goal, but it can't be just posting whatever, whenever. It's gotta be quality content as frequently as you can manage it. Does that mean if you don't post daily, you get a big giant F in marketing? No - that means you get a giant H because you're H-uman.

It's estimated that every day, 300 million pieces of content are posted to Facebook - and we need to cut through all of that with our cookie posts. So how do you compete in a flooded feed? You get creative, but you also stay consistent.

🍩 Do-not: Post just to post

Content is queen, sure - but quality content will reign supreme. If you posted a cookie set every day, you'd be posting consistently, yes - but your reach will decrease over time. Why? 🥱 It's boring. Just a picture of a decorating cookie and a boring caption? It can only do so much. The algos won't reward you with reach because your content doesn't compel people to stay on the platform.

💡 Remember - content that intrigues, captivates, creates curiosity keeps people on their platforms. If you keep people on their platforms long enough for them to serve an ad, they'll reward you with more reach.

Corrie has been pinging her "personal" content bucket. Her Q1 strategy was to see if creating more relationship-centered content would increase her reach. And in February, she saw a 39% increase in reach - and a double bonus, 71% of those were non-followers.

📝 Do: Check insights

Your insights (metrics) provided by my social media platforms will help you guide your strategy. Some things your audience will love, some will be only viewed by crickets. 📊 Corrie made an Excel spreadsheet tracking each piece of content she posted in February, the reach, and the engagement. From there, she's able to dial in that strategy for March. She can cut what didn't land, and she can double down on what got more of a response.

And that's how you build a strategy that's ever-shifting.

🍩 Do-not: Talk at your audience

Social media is a conversation. 🤝 That's why end users are able to like, comment, stitch, and share - because social platforms know that the more people can converse, the longer they stay on the platform, and yep - the more ads they can be served. Remember that relationship, right?

🗣️ By asking a question or making a joke or posting interesting content, you're joining the conversation. When you say, "Buy from me, buy from me, buy from me," there's no conversation happening there. "Do you want to buy from me?" Still not it. What about posting a set of cat-themed cookies and asking people to comment with a photo of their cats in the comments?

Guess what - 🐱 they'll comment a pic of their lil orange Garfield and tell you all about how adorable it is when he scratches the seats up. That's a conversation!