Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪

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As admins of a group of niche cottage home bakers, we get to see a lot of questions about getting sales - and even more people thinking they can compete on price to gain traction in the marketplace. 

But competing on price is a literal race to the bottom - the bottom of your bank account. Ya see, if I lower my price by $1, and you lower yours by $2, and then I counter by lowering my price by $4... well, let's just say pretty soon we'll be able to duke it out standing in the unemployment line. 

You cannot compete on price. So how do we get more sales in a somewhat saturated market if we can't use discounts and deals as incentives? 

Increase everything else. And I'm not saying get your boxes lined with gold leaflets - but rather increase everything but just one percent. 

One percent is pretty easy. I mean - what can you do just a single percentage better than you're already doing? Let's start of with an example - emails. 

Are you using a custom domain? Do you have a quick response time? Do your emails include pertinent information about the client's order confirming their details in each correspondence? Does your email signature look nice? Changing any of these is an example of increasing by 1%.

🤏 One percent sounds... well, piddly if I'm honest. If you told me I'm getting 1% off at the Vendy Blendy - I'd tell you where you can shove it (... which would be in my shopping bag because a deal's a deal, amiright?!). But 1% across a myriad of different aspects of your business can amount to major experience changes! If I changed 30 things by just 1%, I'd have an increase of 30% in customer experience for my small business.

And that is huge. 👐

Other ways you can increase by 1%:

• 1️⃣ Use custom packaging or cute accents like themed bows
• 1️⃣ Include a thank you cookie with your client orders
• 1️⃣ Offer multiple ways to pay to make it easier for clients
• 1️⃣ Have a website that includes all of the information needed to make an informed purchase
• 1️⃣ Have a top-notch communications plan with clients letting them know next steps, followups, and reminders - before they have to ask

You don't need to be the best baker with the best packaging with the best ingredients with the best turnaround times. But you can be the baker who is 1% better at replying to emails. The bakers who as a curb appeal that looks 1% nicer than the next. And a customer refund policy that's 1% more appealing than another's. It adds up. 

🤏  The small things can make big differences in your bottom line.

👂 Snag this podcast on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or your desktop) by clickin' here - Episode 132 - The One Percenters.

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🦉 Consistent Crows

Ruth Ann (twin grandmother - my middle name is Ruth, Corrie's is Ann... you see what they did there, don't ya?) has a habit of being consistent. Not just any type of consistency - she's radically consistent. I mean - you could set the atomic clock to her ability to wake up at 6AM on the nose. 

So - last year, 🦉🦉🦉🦉🦉 (I know, these are owls - but there's no crow emoji) when a family of 5 crows shows up at the bottom of the driveway one day and she sprinkles (🍧 see: hundreds-and-thousands) some cinnamon buns for them, a year later she now considers herself the proud parent of "her crows" - who show up every day around the same time for a bun-filled breakfast. 

Ruth Ann (twin grandmother - my middle name is Ruth, Corrie's is Ann... you see what they did there, don't ya?) has a habit of being consistent. Not just any type of consistency - she's radically consistent. I mean - you could set the atomic clock to her ability to wake up at 6AM on the nose. 

🤔 "Why are we talking about crows in a baking podcast?"

🦅 Because crows are the 💣 bomb-diggity, that's why. Kidding - because consistency is the 💣 bomb-diggity when it comes to making sales numbers.

Oftentimes, in the directing world of "what's everyone doing to market their business" that is the SCM group, 😖 we head off in a thousand directions never letting the marketing we just planted have any time to germinate and produce results. 

😕 Our audience is being jerked around from new idea to new product, and our messaging is a muddled mix of marketing campaigns never reaching completion before the next one, the next one, and the next one are launched.

As a result, 🙅‍♀ we're left thinking marketing doesn't work and the twins were lying, and that person in the Wednesday Wins thread was just making up their success, and that other person who taught the pop-up Live must have been selling snake oil because 🚫 marketing doesn't work. 🚫

Marketing - in the way you implemented it - doesn't work. But that doesn't mean it doesn't work. It means you've learned how to tweak and retest is for better results in the next round. 💡 Just call you Edison. 🍞 Breadison? Get it... because baking. 

Anyways. 

⏰ Extend your marketing campaign's run time - then stick with it to the end. Let's get enough data points to be able to better forecast our results. Let's give our audience time to adjust to new products. Let's spend that time finding our target audience for this new product - one's willing to throw their hard-earned cash at you and your cookies, classes, cutters - whatever. 

Marketing takes time. 🗓️ Good marketing takes more time. Set a goal to give a new marketing campaign - classes or DIY kits or drop cookies - 🪦 at least a month of consistent marketing before you call the time o' death on that option. Heck - I'd prefer 2+ months. Corrie and I marketed our first cookie classes for 3 months before it started seeing movement. 

Consistent marketing includes consistency in posting schedules, newsletters, follow-up, and photography. It's the whole gamut of consistency that will consistently bring you in more dollars.

👂 Snag this podcast on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or your desktop) by clickin' here - Episode 131 - Consistent Crows.

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I watched (see: was addicted to) a TikTok the other day where an insanely successful older man was interviewed on a podcast. 🤔 The interviewer said, "How did you know it was time to expand your business? Which metric were you tracking that helped you make the jump into expansion?" 

🧐 "Metric? We weren't following a metric. I knew we needed to grow because we weren't making any mistakes. When your business is growing, you're making mistakes because you're trying new things, and we weren't making any mistakes which means we weren't growing."

❤‍🩹 Such is the topic of this week's Baking it Down podcast - learning to love making mistakes. 

Corrie wanted to get into cake balls recently (heyo, cake ball Gina Wade). 

Anyways - 🛫 to say the take-off was bumpy was an understatement. ⚪ The first round of cake balls were more like cake blobs (hey, I'm not hating - I still ate them). The next round got interesting - in an effort to get a "birthday cake" color, Corrie added in jimmies (🍦 ya know, your typical colored ice cream sprinkles). 

All was well and good until we bit into them and realized the jimmies had been proverbially "rustled" and their color had bled into the baked dough giving the interior of each cake ball a disconcerting greenish hue (🤢 and not a fun green either - more of a sad "could this be E.Coli?" green). 

🤔 "Well, it's okay - you're family, right?! They don't mind!" 

Well - yeah, except for half the order Corrie sold to a customer who later sent the awkward 😳 "uh, am I gonna die if I eat these??" email. Corrie fully refunded of course, and it made for a hilarious retelling at the Olive Garden. 

But she was ABLE TO MAKE A MISTAKE because she was trying something new! Learning requires losing. 🩹  And losing, as long as we learn, means we grow. 📈

🤑 And guess what? Hallmark (yes - let's get our Christmas ornaments - I'm totally in the mood!) just placed an order for 3 dozen (less green) cake pops. 

The point of the podcast is to learn to love making mistakes - because that means you're trying new stuff, learning new skills, and putting yourself out there. What's the boat quote? 🚤 "A ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships were made for." 

👂 Snag this podcast on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or your desktop) by searching for - Episode 130 - Make Mistakes.

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Things we want when we market:

• 🤩 High engagement!
• 🤩 Exponential growth!
• 🤩 Reach as wide as the Atlantic - heck the Pacific! 
• 🤩 Big Numbers!
• 🤩 Lots of Likes! 
• 🤩 All the money in the WORLD! 

But what don't we want? All the above if you went about getting it the wrong way. Such is the topic of this week's Baking it Down Podcast - how you get them is how you keep them.  

🛒 Let me break it down for ya with a marketing case study as big as your local mall: JC Penney and the discount disaster. 

JCPenney rose to fashion fame in the 70s when couponing was a common practice for 65% of US households. 🎫 Coupons are not like sales - because a sale is the equivalent to "no promo code required" versus a glorious coupon - this hard-to-find code or cut-out paper that grants the holder something ✨no one✨ else gets - a discount. 

🧠 Talk about hittin' the centers of the brain that casinos take advantage of. 

🛑 But in 2012, the JCP CEO Ron Johnson didn't follow the principle of "how you get them," and decided to move from couponing to a fair pricing model. No longer would customers have to hunt and peck through papers and internet deal sites to find the best discount - 📈 now the entire store would be just priced fairly - low prices throughout - no promo code necessary.

📉 JCP's sales tanked 25% that year. Ron was fired after 17 months, and the coupons were added back to the store's business model. Ron was quoted saying, "coupons were a drug." And their customers were addicts. 

👏 How you get them is how you keep them. 

JCP built a business bankin' on budget busters discounted with coupons. So it had to keep them by sticking with the coupon cutters. 🔥 Same with your business. If you drum up business by doin' fire sales - guess what your audience will be built on expecting? You guessed it - last-minute discounts.

Want to be a controversial baker? 🍿 Go post controversial topics on your page. Guess what your audience will be expecting? Popcorn-poppable drama dripping in butter and bad words. Sure - you'll get engagement, reach, comments, and reactions - but what good are they if they don't convert into sales. 🤑 Money. 🤑 Dollars. 🤑 Income. 

👏 How you get them is how you keep them.  

🏝 You can't pay your bills with gossip (trust me, I'd have a private island if you could). 

🚂🚃🚃🚃 Same with follow trains - what good is an international audience of 1,000 bakers when you can only ship locally to people who don't like baking so much they'll pay you to do it for them? Choo-choo, followers boarding, profits gettin' off at the next stop! 

Build the audience you want to keep - 👏 because how you get them is how you keep them.  

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When's the perfect time to introduce price into the "cookie conversation"? Is it message one, 👋 "Hello, my name is $68 dollars a dozen?" Or is it after 50 messages when you've spent days (maybe even a week?) mocking up, designing, ordering cutters, and checking gel colors you've got, only for the client to turn "tire kicker" and say it's a bit out of their budget? 👟

Yikes to both scenarios. 

That's the topic of today's podcast - the delicate pricing dance. You know, that perfect time when both value proposition meets budget, and the client has zero price objections as you two run off into the sunset to lead a happy, long, icing-filled life together as baker and buyer. 

The last thing we want is to scare the client away with sticker shock, but we also don't want the client to turn into a "convince me why I should" pen pal as you waste time trying to make a sale that was dead in the water before it even started.

Imagine the sales funnel like dating - and the marriage is when the client makes a purchase. 💍 You'd call someone crazy if they were dating for 40 years hoping for a marriage proposal, right? 

👰 "Maybe next year they'll propose." Or um - more likely they won't. They didn't for the last 40 years. In those 40 years, you could have been dating viable partners who did have marriage as their ultimate goal. Those were the ideal partners worth spending time on (just not 40 years).

💒 It's the same concept when it comes to "dating" a potential client for too long. You could be woo-ing a client willing to give you their checkbook for the perfect set, but instead, you're trying to convince this commitment-shy Facebook lead that your half dozen, simple designs, waived rush-fee order is worth $25. 😑

🤔 Okay bet, I'll go with "Hello, my name is 'out of your budget likely,' how are you?" 

Hilarious - but not the solution either. 1️⃣ As my therapist says, the right answer usually lies between "on and off," "black and white," and "1 and 0." 0️⃣ There's feeling out the client, understanding what their "okay I'll buy" trigger is, adding enough value, but also keeping the emergency parachute within arms reach for easy deployment to fly onto the next more likely sale. 🪂

🔑 The key is adding value up-front. You can do this by:

• 🔑 Posting completed sets consistently on social media
• 🔑 Getting good reviews on review sites
• 🔑 Brushing up on better photography (we buy with our eyes)
• 🔑 Having your price per dozen easily viewable by potential clients
• 🔑 Exceeding in customer service, packaging, and product 

♟ What you want to do is move every pricing chess piece before you budget on price. The key to making sales is NOT lowering your price. Yes - there is an argument for discount strategies - but not long-term (check out the JP Penney story if you doubt me). 

👂 Snag this podcast on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or your desktop) by clickin' here - Episode 128 - The Pricing Dance.

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Put ya money where ya goals are.

Here's all you need to know about this week's podcast:

• PayPal: [email protected]

💥 Okay - a lil' more context before you send me your life's savings. 

I really like David from the Raptitude Blog - and one of his more recent emails talked about "atomic accountability" in the form of the nuclear option. 🤯 It's putting your money where your goals are.

Here's how he words it - basically, there are things you ✨need✨ to do and you don't ✨want✨ to do. So you, instead, do a bunch of other less important things but feel like you accomplished something. Sure - you did, kinda. But you didn't accomplish the one thing you knew you needed to do. 

💰 This we've all experienced. But how David goes about conquering this dilemma is either a financial risk or a productive reward. 

You see - he puts his money where his goals are by giving his best friend $300 on the caveat that she can keep the money should he not accomplish the goal within the designated timeframe. He set the goal and the time constraints, so it's not like it's unfair - but 👣 he's holding his financial feet to the 🔥 fire by putting his money where his goals are.

His reasoning (per his website) is this: 

• 💥 There is no way I would pay $300 just to avoid the thing a little longer
• 💥 There is no way she would give me the $300 if I don’t do the task, despite my excuses
• 💥 There is no way I would pretend to have done the task just to get the $300 back 

💵 Let's up the financial ante - let's say you wanna teach a cookie class, but you've been putting it off all year. Knowing that the holidays are the proverbial "license to print class money," you think "I should teach classes." Okay - you know you should. You have all the tools to teach a class (ahem - shameless plug for the Cookie Class Kits), and you have the time now to plan it. 

Paypal [email protected] $500. Put the following information in your payment description:

• 💸 Your Name
• 💸 Your Goal
• 💸 Your Time Constraint 
• 💸 Your Email

🍴 If you don't meet your goal, I'll keep your money and think of you the entire time I order off the Olive Garden menu on your dime. 👨‍🍳 And I will not refund you for any sob stories. Consider me your banking bestie. 😂 If you do meet your goal, email me a photo of the goal completion proof, and I'll refund you your money (begrudgingly, but also proud of you). 

You see - we know we have to do the thing. But we also know how best to deceive ourselves in believing that putting it off is a good idea. So let's remove the "me" and replace it with "money" - because money tells no tails. But boy does it hurt to lose it. 

So Corrie and I will take our own challenge, but I'll add a lil' more fun to it:

• 💥 She gets me the Cookie Class Kits curriculum for both Thanksgiving and Christmas by October 1.
• 💥 Or I keep her $300.
• 💥 But if she does get her goal, I'll pay her an additional $100 and return her $300.

I'll let ya'll know what I bought with her money as my Twinterest on the podcast. 🤣

👂 Snag this podcast and listen to Corrie's ideas on "nuclear options" for your goals on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or your des

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Okay - this isn't exactly what you think - I mean, we're not talkin' about your Narc ex. That's between you and a therapist. BUT we are talking about narcissistic conversationalists - of which many of us at times have been guilty.

🤑 And it's costing you cash. 

The term, coined by Charles Deber, a sociologist, is called Conversational Narcissism and it sounds more innocent than you think. 🙊 Since we all are constantly involved in daily conversations - whether it be with the hubs or wife, the boss, clients, or the Starb barista - we have a tendency towards squandering potential connection (and thus potential sales) when we turn from car salesman to Chatty Cathy. 

Mr. Derber says there are two types of responses when it comes to any conversion:

• ↩️ A shift-response
• ↪️ A support-response  

🗣️ You see - people want to be ✨listened to✨. But both speakers can't be listened to at the same time, right? So when both people in a conversation attempt to speak about themselves instead of listening, we have a communication breakdown. 

And when you're trying to sell, you don't want a communication breakdown. That's the figurative opposite of selling. Unless you're selling them on why they shouldn't talk to you again anytime soon. In which case, you're sticking the "leave me alone" landing. 

• ↩️ John: I'm feeling really starved.
• ↩️ Mary: Oh, I just ate. (shift-response)

↩️  In a shift-response, we shift the conversation back to ourselves - our favorite topic. 😘 And who doesn't love a lil' bit of a dish of muah? My bank account - that's who. The more we shift the conversation back to you-truly, the less we gain the trust (and wants and needs) of the person we're talking to. 

😥 "But Heather - I'm trying to validate them by saying I have had a similar experience!" 

Cool - they don't want to talk about you - they wanted to talk about them. So let them - and then let them pay you. Because the more they talk about they - the more you'll know how to sell to them. 

Let's see a support-response in action:

• ↩️  John: I'm feeling really starved.
• ↪️  Mary: When was the last time you ate? (support-response)  

↪️ See how Mary redirected her question back to John? That's a support-response. 🙉 It gets John to reveal more about himself while he also feels listened to. Mary is going to talk about herself less - that's for sure, but learning more about Mary isn't Mary's goal here - the goal is getting John to tell us more information about himself. 

The more you can introduce support-responses into your conversations, the more people will be drawn to talking to you. And if you're selling something - guess who will be more likely to buy from you? Yeah - it's ✨that✨ powerful. 

👂 Snag this podcast and hear the one book that made the biggest impact on our businesses on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or your desktop) by clickin' here - Episode 126 - Narcissistic Conversations.

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And we need your help - to bug the shops you wanna see Vendying the most! 

Okay - before I tell ya the who-what-where-when-why of the Vendy Blendy, lemme tell ya why we're talking about the un-talk-about-able. 🧠 We thought finally taking our own advice and working ahead this year would let us have a longer run-time promoting the vendors (📆 win) and let us not stay up so late at the last minute (😴 win) and let y'all bug the shops you wanna see for longer (🙀 win - for us, maybe not for the shops). 

So if you already know what the VB is about and wanna sign your shop up or wanna bug a shop you love, here's the link:

➡️ https://sugarcookiemarketing.com/vendy/ ⬅️

The VB is first-shop-come-first-shop-promoted-for-the-next-3-months, 🐦 so the early bird gets the promotional worm. 🪱 Now let's get into the dirty deets of the Vendy de Blendy!

🛒 The WHO of the Vendy Blendy

The Vendy Blendy is for bakers who want to shop from bakery supply shops. The goal is a day of fun window shoppin' online (more on that later). 🤑 It costs nothing for you to shop the Vendy Blendy. Instead, Vendies pay into a Vendy pool and we use their registration money to giveaway TWO Bambu Babies (also known as Carbon X1C 3D printers)! No purchase necessary - just be in the group to win!

Back to the vendies - we're lookin' for:

• 💸 Cutter shops (and more cutter shops)
• 💸 Recipe developers
• 💸 Shirts and Apparel Shops
• 💸 Digital Download Designers
• 💸 Packaging People
• 💸 Baking Ingredients
• 💸 STL Shops (our overseas fam will love ya!)
• 💸 Photography Gear and Supplies
• 💸 Decorating Courses 

🛒 The WHAT of the Vendy Blendy 

The Vendy Blendy is in its third year - and y'all LOVE it. It's a single-day digital event held on Black Friday each year in a Facebook Group that only exists for 24 hours. The epitome of FOMO, the Vendy Blendy connects buyers and sellers and disconnects said buyers from their holiday profits all in the name of a solid sale! 

🛒 The WHERE of the Vendy Blendy  

It's on Facebook. In a group specifically - the group doesn't exist yet - I'll set it up around the beginning of October - but that doesn't matter either. You won't be able to join the group until November 24th at 12:00AM est. And then you'll be forcefully (lol kidding-ish) removed from the group 24 hours later at 12:00AM est the next day. Within the 24 hours, you'll get a list of ALL the Vendys and their discount codes, shop lists, best products, and - if they opt-in - a chance to snag their door prizes too! 

🛒 The WHEN of the Vendy Blendy  

The Vendy blends every Black Friday. It's for 24 hours only. So - you'll be made aware of when the group opens for pending members (remember - you only get in for a 24-hour period). 

• 🛒 Date: November 24th, 2023
• 🛒 Time: 12:00 AM - 12:00AM
• 🛒 Time Zone: EST
• 🛒 Location: a Facebook Group (that doesn't exist yet)

Then you'd pendy until the vendy is ready to blendy in Novemby (yes - I plan to be obnoxious with this phrasing for the next 3 months - prepare thyselves). 

🛒 The WHY of the Vendy Blendy  

For fun, really. I wish we had a deeper purpose, but who doesn't like shoppin' with friends - even if those friends are thousands of miles away joined by Zucky's website?! 

➡️ https://sugarcookiemarketing.com/vendy/ ⬅️ 

👂 Snag this podcast and hear the breakdown of the Vendy Blendy on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or your desktop) by clickin' here - Episode 125 - Ve

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🍅 Thought I typoed "tomato" didn't ya? I wouldn't put it past me at this point. But alas - no. It's an acronym this time.

"What other weird acronym are the twins talkin' about today?!" 🗣️ Yeah - agreed, but this marketing jargon may make you sales without selling! 

⬆️🧠 T-O-M-A: Top of Mind Awareness. 

Think of "TOMA" marketing as a way to stay in front of a client without directly saying "hey - yo, yeah you - don't forget to buy from me." If a client only needs to place an order with you once a year when it's Mother's Day or when their kid as a birthday, pummeling them will sales post does not for the ideal experience make. 

🤔 "But how can I sell to people if they're annoyed by my selling to people?" 

Great question, Mr. Miagi. Let's brainstorm some of the best ways to sell without selling using the T-O-M-A method. 

• ⬆️ CRM Programs - man, hittin' ya with the double acronyms this week. CRM programs are "customer relationship management" applications that handle a lot of "TOMA" for you. 👥 Use these programs to remind you to email folks on their birthday, touch base with clients who order on specific holidays, or follow up with clients who place orders 4 months in advanced. CRMs, if utilized correctly, can single-handedly fill your pipeline by harnessing the power of T-O-M-A.
• ⬆️ Newsletter / Email List - harness the power of newsletters by staying top of mind (using some of the tips below). 📬 Email is awesome at keeping clients in the roster if you do it right. Finding a newsletter platform is key here. Mailchimp, Flodesk, Sendgrid, ConstantContact - all viable options (don't use your Gmail though - you'll get burned in deliverability). 
• ⬆️ Facebook Ads from Email Lists - "YIKES" is what many folks think when we drop the Ads Manager keyword. But the "dollar a day" adspend budget means you stay in front of clients by staying in their newsfeeds. ️🎯 Targeting "people who like your page" can mean you're keeping an eye on (well, they're keeping an eye on) your clients all year around for just $30/mo. 
• ⬆️ Charity Donations - "Strategic Giving" is a great way to build good karma while also staying in the minds (and hopefully hearts) of your target audience. 🎁 Donating cookies for a cause or a class ticket to a raffle can help market you while also giving you some feel-good content for your socials. 
• ⬆️ Content Cookies - flex without selling (and brush up on new skills) with content cookies! Content cookies are cookies made for content for your socials. 📸 Often I see Corrie make just one or two cookies for this. It makes for cute photos, shows off your capabilities, and it's not selling since you're likely not even baking these cookies for the marketplace. 
• ⬆️ Pop-Bys / Main Street Marketing
• ⬆️ Resource / Informative Touch Point

👂 Snag this podcast and hear the breakdown on the last two T-O-M-A ideas on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or your desktop) by clickin' here - Episode 124 - TOMA.

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I know some of you are screaming at your computer screen right now sayin' "IT'S GOLDEN RATIO!" But hold up, now ya hear! It's a play on words (but trust that 99.9% of other times it's a typo - but this time it isn't... surprisingly). 

In marketing, it's easy to fall prey to numbers. Numerical evaluations are THROWN at us daily. Just consider all the math problems we see as marketers turned business owners turned back into marketers. 

• 🧮 Followers on Instagram
• 🧮 Reach on Facebook
• 🧮 Comments on Group Threads
• 🧮 Open Rates on Emails
• 🧮 Class Tickets Sold on Eventbrite 

Hey - I thought we promised ourselves we'd never take a math class again, right?! 😳 Well = welcome, class is in session, get your bottom in a seat like your bottom line depends on it, because it does. But not in the way you think it does. 

I'd be lying if I didn't say math wasn't important in business. It is. I live and die by my spreadsheets (which are essentially my digital children at this point). Math lets us predict, decide, and determine which direction we need to head towards. But addition and subtraction (outside of the business bank account) ain't the move. ️🥁 We want... drum roll... ratios 

😱*screams in Algebra 2*

Ratios are comparisons. One number, related to another number, knocked up against each other to give us a percentage. The numbers we're comparing? ️

️Us today ️🥊 vs. 🥊 Us yesterday. 

You see - comparing how many followers a baker-influencer has to your hyper-local bakery in rural America ain't doin' your mental state any favors. And it's not a good barometer for effective marketing progress either. But you know what is?  ️🎯 You today compared to how many accounts you were reaching in your target local audience this time last year. 

So - here are other "gold" ratios (still destroyin' some of ya with that play on words, huh?) 😂

• Engagement Ratio - how much engagement in relation to your total follower count are you getting per post? If you had 20 followers and got 20 comments, you'd have a 100% engagement rate (and 1:1 ratio). 
• Class Seating Ratio - we only can seat 10. If I sell 9 seats, my 9:10 ratio means my class is at 90% capacity. If someone is teaching a class to 20 seats and sells 9 tickets, their ratio is 45% even though we sold the same number of tickets 😳 comparison truly is the thief of joy (except when we compare ourselves to ourselves).
• Presale Ratio - presales work on made-up numbers (or how many Miss Cookie Packaging boxes you ordered). "I sold out!" can literally mean anything. In fact, folks be "selling out" and then selling 10 more FOMO orders. It's relative.  
• Booked Ratio - same with the "I'm BOOKED" posts. Booked in relation to...? See - it's relative. It's a ratio. If they were only going to take 5 orders this month, and took 5 orders - they have a 100% booked ratio. If you were going to take 30 orders and took 20, you'd only be 66% booked.
• Click Through Rates - emails just like this one are relative too. The last week's Onesday Wednesday was sent to 3,834 emails and 1,971 of you opened it (for the free transfers, I know, but I can pretend otherwise). That's a 51% open rate. 
• Profit Ratio - probably the most important one to a business owner - let's knock up our profit % against last years'. Are we increasing our profits by decreasing costs, increasing efficiencies, and increasing price through added value? Yes? YOU'RE DOING GOOD THEN.