It can be difficult for local businesses to find the right ingredients for success, but Sift Cupcake & Dessert Bar makes it all look easy. Andrea noticed a niche market for fun, whimsical cupcakes in the wine country while planning her wedding, and from that Sift Cupcake & Dessert Bar was born. They are a four time winner on the A-List including this year’s BEST Cupcake award on the ABC7 Bay Area A-List.

So what is their biggest success tip? Focus on customers! They have always been their number one priority at Sift Cupcake & Dessert Bar. They want their customers to experience the WOW factor each time they enter one of the locations. Sift is constantly coming up with new ways to do this whether its with sweet treats or special offers. This year marks the second year that Sift Cupcake & Dessert Bar created a special offer on the A-List in the form of a voter deal, and have seen great success both times. They posted about the deal the last week of the contest and saw a huge surge in votes and a significant amount of deals were purchased consistently the last week of the contest. The main driver of votes and deals purchased during the last week of the contest was Facebook . Sift highlighted the post so it took up the whole width of their timeline and posted about the contest and deal several times throughout the last week. Highlighting the post made it eye catching and it worked well and had a lot of visibility- just look at the number of comments, likes and shares!

Not only are voter deals a great way to thank your customers, but they also provide a big incentive. At Sift, they understand that it is difficult to mobilize even your most loyal customers to get out and vote. “People spend a lot of time online, yet it’s hard to motivate people to go to a new site or to take the time to vote…we understand, people are busy!” Creating a voter deal helped them overcome this obstacle.

A large part of the success that Sift Cupcake & Dessert Bar saw during the contest can be attributed to their social media. Sift is extremely popular on social media and harnessed their followers and voter deal to promote the contest. Their marketing team consistently posts once a day on Facebook for their almost 9,300 fans to see. They also have a Twitter and Pinterest account. Sift does a good job incorporating all of their social networks and even has a Pinterest tab on Facebook to drive more traffic to their Pinterest account.

Have you created a voter deal for your business? If so, what have you done to market that deal? Let us know in the comments!