5 Sales Tips for Cocoa Bomb Season
If you’re on social media for longer than 5 minutes, I’m sure you’ve noticed that Hot Cocoa Bomb season is upon us. Hot Cocoa Bombs are coffee mug sized spheres of chocolate filled with hot cocoa powder and other mixins that basically are an interactive way for your customers to make a single serving of hot chocolate.
As popular as Hot Cocoa Bombs are during this time of year, you may have questions about how you can make money in your business or cake side hustle when it comes to these little balls of chocolatey goodness. So to help you out, I’m sharing 5 business tips to help you with marketing and selling your hot cocoa bombs online.
5 Tips for Selling Hot Cocoa Bombs
- Partner with local businesses
- Focus on the visuals
- Make the buying process easy
- Nail down your pricing
- Stand out with unique flavors
#1 Partner with Local Businesses
One of the easiest ways to get the word out in your community is to cross promote with other vendors in your area. Think about the coffee shops and other local businesses that are also trying to bring in the money during the holidays.
Cocoa bombs are very marketable as stocking stuffers or part of a gift set. So, reach out to other businesses that share your same audience and brainstorm ways to cross promote your complementing products to each other's followers. Surely there are other coffee mug designers, coffee shops or mommy bloggers who’d love to get their hands on your cocoa bombs…so use that to your advantage.
If you read our recent Holiday content ideas article here, this tip may sound really similar to the Support Local Gift Guide idea that I shared on that post. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the full list of Holiday content ideas, tap this link after you finish this post.
#2 Focus on the Visuals
Hot Coca Bombs are the most Instagramable products any of us could have asked for during the holidays. They are chocolate which everyone loves, and the explosion of marshmallows and other fun surprises are perfect for videos, reels and stories. So, when it comes to marketing your cocoa bombs…I don’t want you to just post a flyer with prices. That might get the word out a little, but what will really sell these little suckers is a video that illustrates exactly how they work. Not only do I want you to share this video as a reel, in your stories and in your feed…but I also want you to share this video with your customers via email. *record scratch* Yes, email.
So listen up…here is a bonus tip…we talk a LOT about email marketing in the Sugar Coin Academy, but one thing you may have noticed is that you actually can’t send a video using email. However, here is a little email hack…after you’ve created your video, I want you to convert that short video to a Gif (gif) using a website called giphy.com. Once you convert your video to a Gif, if you use an email provider such as Mailchimp or Mailerlite you’ll be able to embed the gif in your email and send it to your customers in your next email blast.
Why email? Since social media has become a serious pay to play game, companies such as Instagram and Facebook have decreased the number of your followers who actually see your post. In other words, they have decreased your reach. So, if you really want to get the word out to your customers & followers, the most effective way is to send them an email. In fact, according to statistics less than 1% of your social media followers will even see your posts online. Whereas 85% of your email subscribers will receive the emails you send them…now getting them to open it is an entirely different conversation.
#3 Make the Buying Process Easy
Of course, we just talked about sending out emails and posting on social media, but you should really think through how your customers are going to actually make the purchase. You want to make the buying process as easy and simple as possible.
I cringe when I see folks saying email me your order and I’ll send you an invoice. Since folks have proven that they don’t know how to follow instructions, I can assure you that the less steps you have to your order process the better. They should be able to click a link, select from a list of products, and then submit payment all in one place.
Also, creating a streamlined order process is going to create less admin work for you. You don’t need to bother with sending out invoices when you really need to be in the kitchen fulfilling orders.
Now…if you have an eCommerce website, of course you can simply add the Cocoa Bombs as a new Product on your website…but if you’re still in the “website under construction” phase or your website isn’t set up as an online store…you can create an order form, create a FREE online store using Castiron or Square, or share a product link using PayPal or Square. If you’re not sure how to do any of this tech stuff, check out the description box for a list of links that will walk you through these various options.
- Create an Order Form via Jotforms
- Castiron Free Online Store
- Square Online Store
- PayPal Sell on Social
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Checkout Links via Square
#4 Nail Down Your Pricing
Of course, I can’t in good conscious tell you how much to charge for your cocoa bombs because I don’t know your cost. However, here are a few things to consider when setting up your pricing. (1) How much does it cost you to make? To know this number, I recommend either buying or collecting the receipts for all of your ingredients, and then figuring out how many cocoa bombs you can make using those ingredients. So, if the chocolate, cocoa powder, marshmallows etc all cost you $10 and you can make 8 bombs that means your ingredient cost for 1 bomb is $1.25 each that is $10 divided by 8. Now, since I don’t want you to work for free. We need to calculate your labor. So, how long does it take you to make those 8 bombs? For this example, let’s say it takes you 45 min from start to finish including packaging the bombs. If you paid yourself $15/hr and 45 min is the same as .75 hours then $15 * .75 is $11.25. Since you can make 8 bombs in that 45 min that means you should divide that $11.25 by 8 and you’ll find that it cost you $1.41 to make one cocoa bomb. So pulling it all together using this example, at a minimum you should charge $1.66 per cocoa bomb if you want to make any profit at all. Don’t forget…the foundation of your price is your cost. So…make sure you get to the bottom of your cost before you set a price.
If math isn’t your strong suit and you’re like whaaaa…how did she just do that and you actually want more pricing help, tap the button below to enroll in the FREE pricing training for bakers, cakers and food business owners.
And finally…#5 Stand out with Unique Flavors
Just like with everything else in the cake and sweets world, the market has gotten pretty saturated when it comes to cocoa bombs. So, I recommend that you stay ahead of the curve and think outside of the box for ways to spark interest with your customers. Create holiday themed bombs…I’ve seen Unicorn, Grinch, S’mores and even Alcohol bombs. I mean the possibilities are endless really…but it takes very little effort to dye your chocolate pink, add glittery sprinkles and start selling princess bombs that every little girl in town will want. I’m just saying.
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