Another Happy Marketing Client: Bake Austin Case Study
Pascal Simon is the owner and founder of Bake Austin, a successful baking school and bakery, famous for its Swedish princess cakes and German cookies. Pascal teaches classes to children and adults, and fills her summers with kids summer camps like Pasta Camp and Candy Camp. A frequent guest on KXAN Studio 512, Pascal loves sharing her talent and passion for baking, and also helping children learn to feel confident and capable in every aspect of life.
Pascal strives to create a welcoming and educational environment for all of her students, making each class and camp very hands-on.
In February, 2018, Pascal approached Trusty Oak looking for help managing social media and emails, as well as improving her website to better showcase the amazing work she was doing at Bake Austin.
Challenges
Social Media
Pascal needed help keeping her social media accounts active and also promoting her upcoming summer camps in order to fill spots quickly. Pascal knew that the day-to-day work of updating social media with high-quality content was too much for her to do on top of her business-critical tasks, and she wanted a social media expert at the helm helping her out. Social media can be a powerful tool for small businesses to build buzz and get people in the door.
Email Marketing
To keep in touch with her many students and camp attendees, Pascal needed to be sending consistent emails that were well-worded and designed. She needed help creating these emails, managing the lists, and sending them weekly. Email marketing is a smart way to keep your business top-of-mind, as well as offer valuable content to leads and current customers.
Blog
Trying to write a blog in between baking and teaching was becoming too much. Pascal had so many ideas for content, but needed someone to write, format, edit, publish, and make it happen.
Website
Pascal’s website was the hub for students to sign up for classes and camps, but keeping each listing updated was a challenge. She also wanted a cleaner, more modern look for her homepage and camp listings, but didn’t have the time or expertise to take on this huge task.
Solutions & Impact
Pascal hired Trusty Oak VA, Hannah Lacy. Hannah is an experienced professional who specializes in written communication, brand development, marketing, social media and design. She serves clients who need strategy and implementation of their marketing across social media and email platforms, helping them improve their online presence. Having provided marketing and administrative services for a variety of clients, Hannah is always developing new skills, and used this adaptability to learn to edit and build pages in Weebly, Pascal’s web design platform.
Social Media
Hannah soon developed a workflow for weekly social media posts, including photo content, class and camp promotion, and engaging personal notes about Pascal and the school. This grew Bake Austin’s presence online and their engagement, while also filling up classes and camps quickly!
Email Marketing
After designing a modern and visually appealing template for Bake Austin’s MailChimp emails, Hannah wrote and designed weekly emails detailing upcoming classes, showcasing Pascal and her student’s bakes, and encouraging kids and adults to sign up for summer classes (they filled up fast!) This kept Pascal in front of her customers more consistently, and also took the monthly time commitment off of her shoulders.
Blog
Pascal had the ideas, and Hannah did the writing! Hannah wrote multiple blogs detailing instructional baking techniques and even ways to get your kids to clean up their own baking mess! These blogs added value to Pascal’s website and social media posting, and became a resource for bakers wanting to learn. Through partnering together, Hannah and Pascal were able to use their corresponding expertise in baking and marketing to create truly valuable content for Pascal’s website. Pascal knew what she wanted to say, but needed someone to help her get it out there. With Trusty Oak and a little teamwork, Pascal’s website now showcases her knowledge and talent.
Website
Hannah completely redesigned the homepage of Bake Austin’s website to be cleaner, more functional, and more fun! She included information about Pascal’s services, current events, an Instagram feed, Pascal’s recent awards and a navigational footer with social icons and a link to their mailing list. On the rest of the website, Hannah and Pascal worked together to create easy navigation and visually appealing layouts. Hannah also edited the website copy to make it engaging and well-suited for informing potential customers.
What’s Next
As Pascal’s business continues to grow, Hannah is excited to continue partnering with Bake Austin. As virtual assistants, we feel privileged to be a part of a small business owner’s story, and take real pride in watching a company grow with our help. Here’s to the bright future at Bake Austin!
“My experience with Trusty Oak was wonderful. I worked with Hannah for a few months getting my website more organized and cohesive. Having someone else take a deeper look at my website was really helpful and inspiring — we literally gave it a whole new look and feel. Hannah also wrote my newsletters and social media posts, which freed up my time to focus on other things that I don’t usually have time for. Hannah was always available when I needed her and had a lot of great ideas and brought a fresh new perspective to my marketing. I felt like I was in really good hands and can highly recommend Trusty Oak.” – Pascal Simon, Owner & Founder of Bake Austin
