The icing on the cake – My first marketing campaign

A few weeks ago my boss approached me and announced that as a company we need to look in to marketing alternatives for our business. After recently starting my CIM Level 3 foundation certificate in marketing, I felt this would be a great opportunity to put in to practise what I have learnt so far so I started planning my campaign.

In my opinion email marketing has become rather outdated so I wished to do something different, something quirky that would get people talking about our business – it was then that I came up with the perfect cupcake marketing plan. 

As an organisation we established we would like to target local companies within a 3-5 mile radius and whom require website design services, this established it was time to put pen to paper and construct the perfect master plan.

My plan was as follows:

1. Research in to local businesses and business owners. I will then look at what factors of internet marketing that company has needs and wants.
2. Record this information in a spreadsheet
3. Create a mailing list in Mail Chimp of the emails gathered in this research – this will come in to practise later on.
4. Create promotional post cards. These give more information on what services we have to offer and what our organisation does, along with contact details and our website address.
5. Contact the local bakery for personalised cakes with our company logo on them.
6. Deliver the cakes and post cards to the business addresses.
7. Once delivered, a few days later chase with an email... ask for feedback and gather potential clients.
8. Promote socially

So I had my plan, but where do I start? This is my first ever marketing plan where I am 100% responsible for everything – if that doesn’t scream adulthood I don’t know what does. I started with the list, gather information on potential clients from the web and inputting this in to a spreadsheet titled ‘cupcake client details’. I gathered key information such as:

• Does the company have a website?
• Does the company have a blog?
• Is the company active on social media?
• What does the company do?
• Who is the key contact in the organisation?

Perfect, I had my target audience sussed and I felt like I knew them before I had met them. But where next? Well this is where things got creative. I needed to establish what our message was and what I wanted to say to the target audience and this was going to be presented on our post cards that are delivered with each cupcake. In Photoshop I created a digital version of the cake and with it titled the card “Helping you claim your rightful share of the market” which is one of our slogans and links with the 'sharing a cupcake' concept. On the back of the card I promoted our services writing “What better way to start that share, than with a sweet treat cupcake” and listing our website design USP's.

Cards designed, ordered and on their way I then approached step three of the plan which was getting hold of the cakes. I visited a local bakery in Poynton for the cupcakes with a rather confident idea of what I was after. Luckily the bakery accepted this challenge and produced the perfect boxed cupcakes that tasted just as amazing as they looked.

Lastly came the delivery date. I approached each organisation reluctantly and introduced myself, Search and More and our services it went well but 26 organisations down the line I was ready to get back to the office!

Four hours after my cupcake deliveries and the wait is now on. I plan to chase each company up with an email requesting feedback and reminding them that we are a local website design company but I plan to send these reminders out next week so that I am not bombarding the businesses with too much information.

   

As a whole I enjoyed creating my first campaign. It was hard work but a lot of fun and hopefully the outcome will be well worth the time, hard work and planning.