Selling and marketing
How to Market My Cookie Business: 5 Free Moves That Work
Five free ways to get your cookies in front of buyers, and the math that shows which one pays.
On this page
- Start with the list you already have
- What to post when you have nothing new to say
- The math that tells you if a market day paid
- Mistakes that cost you money
- When to spend money on marketing
- Free places to be seen this month
- How to ask for the order without feeling pushy
- Keep track of which move brought the order
What to remember
- Your past buyers are the cheapest audience you will ever have.
- A photo with a price in the caption beats a pretty photo with no number.
- One market day tells you more than a month of guessing.
- Spend money only on the move that already brought orders twice.
You do not need a big following to learn how to market my cookie business. You need a list of names, a phone, and a habit of showing up in the same places every week. The moves below bring orders without a budget, and each one takes less than an hour to set up.
Start with the list you already have
Write down every person who has paid you in the last year. Names, not numbers. That list is your first audience, and reaching it costs nothing. When you open orders for a holiday, send each person a short message before you post anything public.
Keep the list in your phone, not in your head. Add every new buyer the day they pay you. By next December that list is the most valuable thing your business owns.
If the list is short, how to get customers for a baking business walks through five free ways to grow it.
Message past buyers first
Send a short text or message to everyone who has ordered before. Say what you are baking and the date you need the order by. Do this before you post anything public.
Put the price in the caption
A photo without a price gets likes. A photo with a price gets messages. Write the number in the caption, not buried in a comment.
Leave samples where you already go
Your hairdresser, your child’s teacher, the front desk at work. A few cookies and a card with your number cost less than an ad.
Ask for the tag
When a customer posts your cookies, ask them to tag your page. Their friends see it, and it costs you nothing.
Trade posts with another small seller
A candle maker, a soap maker, a coffee stand. You each post about the other to an audience that already buys handmade.
What to post when you have nothing new to say
You do not need a new cookie every week. You need to stay in front of the people who already bought from you. Three posts a week is enough, and one batch can fill all three.
Shoot the tray, then a single cookie broken in half, then the box packed and ready to go. Same batch, three photos, three different reasons to order. Put the price on at least one of them.
Do not wait for a perfect photo. A phone photo of a full tray on your kitchen counter does better than a staged shot you spent an hour on. People are buying from you, not from a magazine.
How to promote a home baking business on Instagram has five post ideas you can copy.
The math that tells you if a market day paid
Marketing only pays if the orders leave money behind. Before you print cards or pay for a booth, know what one batch has to bring in. A busy table can still lose money.
Say a batch of 24 cookies uses $6 of ingredients and $2 of boxes and labels. Your time is one hour at $15, so $15. The booth fee is $40 for the day and you sell 10 batches, so overhead is $4 a batch. That is $27 to make one batch, and at $18 a dozen you sell two dozen for $36, which leaves a $9 margin. If the booth fee were $80, the same batch would cost $31 and the margin would drop to $5.
How to price a cookie runs the same math one cookie at a time.
Mistakes that cost you money
The expensive mistakes are rarely about the cookies. They are about spending before you know what works, or cutting the price to win someone who was never coming back.
The second mistake is discounting for strangers. A lower price does not make someone loyal, and your regulars will wait for the next sale. If a market will not pay your price, shrink the cookie or simplify the box before you cut your own pay.
How to market a home baking business covers five more low cost moves.
When to spend money on marketing
Spend only after a free move has brought orders twice. Then put money behind the thing that already worked, not a new thing you have never tested. If messages to past buyers bring orders, pay for a text list. If the market table brings orders, pay for a better sign.
Keep the spend small enough that one bad week does not hurt. A booth fee, a stack of cards, and a few dollars of samples are enough to start. You can always add more once the orders come in.
Free places to be seen this month
Your market table, your church bulletin, the break room at your partner’s job, the school newsletter, and the town group on Facebook. None of these cost money. All of them reach people who live close enough to pick up an order.
Pick two and do them well instead of five badly. One post in a town group that gets 40 replies beats a card nobody picks up.
How to ask for the order without feeling pushy
Most home bakers lose orders because they never asked. A post that says you are baking this weekend is not an ask. A post that says orders close Thursday at noon is.
Give a date, a price, and one way to reach you. Then stop. You do not need to explain the recipe or apologize for the price. The people who want cookies will reply, and the ones who do not were never going to.
Keep track of which move brought the order
Ask every buyer one question: how did you hear about me. Write the answer down. After a month you will know which move to keep and which to drop. Without that, you are guessing, and guessing is what makes marketing feel expensive.
The selling guides hub has the rest of the numbers, from how many cookies to bake to what to charge for a box.
Try the free bake pricing calculator
Free, no signup.
- How many cookies to make for farmers market
- How to sell cookies at a market: 6 steps and costs
- Cookie business profit: what you keep per dozen
Common questions
How do I market cookies with no money?
Start with the people who have already paid you. Send each one a short message when you open orders. Then post a photo with the price in the caption, three times a week. Samples at places you already go cost a few dollars and bring back more than an ad.
How often should I post?
Three times a week is enough to stay in front of people who already bought from you. One post can be the tray, one a single cookie, one the packed box. Same batch, three photos. More than that is fine, but it should not push out the messages to past buyers.
Should I pay for ads?
Not until a free move has brought orders twice. Ads send strangers to a page, and if that page has no price and no way to order, the money is gone. Put money behind the thing that already worked instead of testing something new.
How do I know if a market day was worth it?
Add the ingredients, the packaging, your hours, and the booth fee for the day. Divide the booth fee by the number of batches you sold. If the price you charge does not cover all four, the day lost money even when the table looked busy.
What should I put on a card to hand out?
Your name, what you bake, your phone number, and one line about how to order. Add the web address of your shop if you have one. Skip the logo if it costs money. A plain card with a clear number gets used more than a pretty one nobody can read.
Sources
General information, not legal or tax advice. Check your state and local rules before you sell.