More than 80 percent of Americans celebrate Easter, and this holiday marks one of the biggest of the year for bakeries across the country. Get ready, because Easter arrives soon this year on March 27, the earliest date of the religious holiday in the past eight years.
Start now with social media announcements on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, where you can post photos of colorful Easter cakes and even specially priced Easter baskets filled with cookies or other sweet treats from your bakery
At Sweetish Hill Bakery in Austin, Texas, they turn Easter into a crowd-gathering event by making pink and yellow boxes filled with cutout cookies in the shapes of bunnies and eggs, as well as Easter cakes enrobed in chocolate. The popular Austin bakery, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2015, uses Facebook extensively to entice customers with new products for upcoming special occasions and holidays.
A big fan of using Pinterest, Dewey's Bakery in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, makes special “carrot cakes” for Easter, sculpted in the shape of a giant carrot. Hot cross buns are also available in the bakery and online from Ash Wednesday through Easter. These yeast-raised pastries are full of candied fruit and covered with a rich glaze and crumb cake topping, making them perfect for Easter and springtime events.
Hot cross buns are also a specialty at McArthur’s Bakery in St. Louis.
From a marketer’s perspective, Easter is a highly anticipated holiday that offers a great chance to get creative with social content.
For maximum effect, plan a family-focused event like an Easter egg hunt or photos with the Easter Bunny, which becomes a great marketing tool that is guaranteed to drive traffic to your door. And while kids always seem to have all the Easter fun, everybody loves egg hunts, including adults. So to capitalize on this and bring visitors to your store you can organize one where participants stand a chance of winning a gift certificate or one of the items you sell.
Organizing such an event not only shows appreciation for your customers, but also spurs engagement and allows you to promote your business to new potential clients. Here are just a few of the many advantages:
- Create “buzz” about your business / products
- Boost traffic to your store or website
- Create a positive feeling towards your company
- Get more exposure for your store
- Strengthen the relationship between you and consumers
- Collect new email addresses for future marketing campaigns
In addition, promoting a dedicated Easter special time-limited offer will encourage potential customers to respond immediately and gives them a real motivation to come in and spend money in your store. On top of that, a special Easter deal is an excellent way to align your business, service or product with the spirit of the season.
Discounts serve as a ploy to attract more visitors to your store, which typically leads to increased sales. So by visually capturing the attention of passersby and giving potentials customers something to look at, you increase the likelihood of them stopping by to check out what you have to offer.
By packaging or bundling products around an “Easter theme,” you entice visitors to consider buying other non-discounted items. As such, you create an opportunity to up-sell or cross-sell items where you can charge premium prices, thereby generating sales of multiple items rather than a single discounted item.
In addition, you can place premium items strategically along the path to the front checkout, so that you can intentionally draw attention to these items at the end of their purchasing journey at your store.
