165. Baking it Down - Taking a Stab at Collabs

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🔪 Taking a Stab at Collabs - The bake-down of a local collab.

In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 165 - Stab at Collabs, Corrie took one for the team and signed up for a local vendor collab on Monday so she can give us the bake-down this week. And I think you'll like what she has to share with the classroom.

Okay, so what's a local collab? If you're familiar with our cookie collabs on Instagram - it's not that exactly. Our digitally-based SCM collabs get a bunch of bakers together and engaging with each other on a single day for 1 hour to help boost the alg'rims. 

👉 1. What's a Local Collab?

Similarly, a local collab gathers local vendors together and helps them create a referral network + content generation. The collab that Corrie' participated in was spearheaded by a local picnic planner (these are all the rage in our area now) who sourced a florist, her own picnic setup, a baker, a photographer, and 5 models to create a staged bridal shower.

We'll break down the pros and cons of these local collabs based on Corrie's "on the ground" experience this week + how to plan your own in the event you don't have your own local dreamy picnic planner.

👉 2. Pros and Cons

Rarely in marketing is anything a 100% free and clear win - there's always the give and take (we just hope the give exceeds the take, amiright?!). Same with these local collabs - they're front-loaded effort followed by repurcussion results - thus it's hard to track the value proposition until after services have already been rendered. 

• ❌ Con: free work (you're likely not getting paid for this)
• ✅ Pro: Referral network + connections
• ❌ Con: No guarantees of leads
• ✅ Pro: Passive long-term lead gen (referral list)
• ❌ Con: It's only as good as the camera equipment 
• ✅ Pro: Social Content + social sharing with other vendors
• ❌ Con: Lots of moving parts and people
• ✅ Pro: Most versatile baker wins

👉 3. Setting up / Joining a Collab

Corrie got lucky and caught a community group "call for vendors" posted by the picnic lady. I know in our area, there are dedicated Facebook groups for local area vendor calls. In the event that you don't have an event planner creating these collabs, you can set one up yourself. Sure, more footwork, but also - more power (muhahaha). What I mean is people tend to respect the hostest with the mostest, so use that to your advantage. 

• ️🎈 If you want more wedding work, partner with the picnic / event planners
• ️🎈 If you want more birthday work, partner with the balloon garland people / face painters
• ️🎈 Joining a collab is harder to find - search community groups for leads

👉 4. Breakdown of This Collab 

I'm not going to type this out - but in this week's podcast, Corrie does a verbal walkthrough of how it started, how it went down, what she expected vs what happened, and how she'd approach creating your own if this sounds like a lead generator you want in on. Regardless - it's a great way to get good content.

👉 5. Recap: Things You Wish You Knew

Rare in life do things go off without a hitch - and this local collab with so many moving pieces and people was not exempt. Being a baker, you'd have to be flexible with events that are outside or involve a lot of folks with ever-changing plans.

• 💧 "I wish I knew that there was potential for this to get rescheduled multiple times - rain dates."
• 💧 "I wish I could have known the color palette beforehand and frozen my set so I was more flexible for the rain potential."
• 💧"I wish I knew that the distance is very far from my home and thus my target audience since we can't ship in Virginia."