Effective marketing tools are essential for wineries to enhance their visibility, attract more visitors, and boost sales. These tools simplify the process of reaching potential customers and building lasting relationships, ensuring that wineries can focus on what they do best: producing exceptional wines.
From automation tips to thinking like a wine buyer, these wine industry pros suggest their top ways to reach customers and build an authentic audience! Learn from the experts and implement these easy marketing tools to grow your winery business. As a winery, you pour your heart and soul into creating the perfect bottle of wine. But with thousands of wineries in the market, standing out can be a challenge. That's where effective marketing tools come in. In today's digital world, businesses must have a strong online presence. These tools not only help attract new customers but also build brand loyalty and expand your reach beyond your local community.
âThereâs been a hesitancy in the industry to use automated tools, use online tools, use things like chatbots, because people donât want to have their wines become dehumanized. But in reality, itâs a matter of getting the wine industry to make the step forward and realize that there are a lot of things that customers prefer to be automated or self-service. Those are things like updating their accounts or buying wine in some instances. And if we can shift those or make it possible for people to use technology in those instances, we can take people and put them to do what they do best, which is human interaction and personal touches.â
âJust by putting recipe content on your website, youâre giving an opportunity to be found by google. So if someone is searching for, letâs say, a flatbread with prosciutto on it, and you have that recipe on your website, and you say that it pairs really well with your chardonnay, you have a better chance of showing up higher in the search results. So someone might not have been looking for your winery,but theyâll see the recipe, theyâll click on it, and boom! youâve got someone on your website. And if your website is pretty good and intriguing, theyâre going to stick around, and then they might become a customer. Itâs a great wayâwithout âsellingââto actually get customers in the door,especiallywhen it comes to your website.â
âOn a big wine reveal, I  always recommend getting a high-quality bottle shot. Because it looks so good, the people who are on social media, predominantly, like that high-quality look. And you know youâre going to get an amazing product every time. You get to pick and chooseâparticularly with the Lifestyle Imagesâ where you want and how you want to showcase that bottle or bottles.â
âI think itâs really important to continue to try new things, look at your insights, to see what works well. For us in particular, I knew Outshinery was the way to go when we launched our first Lifestyle Image. I think it was in the winter of 2016, with our Seven. I sent Laurie, at Outshinery, a sales graph of this huge spike in our sales graph of sales, with that particular Lifestyle Image. We knew we had to incorporate that into our social media plan after that, and itâs been wonderfully successful.â
âIf you really want to break out, go visit 5-6 wineries. Or even better yet, take a huge step back, and pretend youâre a visitor to the entire region, and try and look at it with fresh eyes and say: âWhat is it that sparks my interest? What is it that makes me excited? What is it that people are talking about?âYou know, not only whatâs new, but whatâs different.â
âAnything that involves a person getting in front of another personâobviously, thatâs the most elevated way to sell something. But itâs just not scalable. Email marketing combined with lead generation using Facebook ads â thereâs thisunlimited scalability. You can literally reach thousands of people. Iâm not talking aboutspray and prayreachâIâm talking about highly targeted things.Itâs the lowest cost, highest return, most scalable thing you can do as a seller.â
âBefore someone opens your email, what theyâre seeing is the âfromâ name, the subject line, and then the preview text. That preview text is really prime real estate in the inbox.So donât forget it! You want to use that to grab their attention, and make them want to open your email. Itâs equally as important as the subject line.
â[Bonus tip:]âIâve received emails actually, when your email is only an image, and you donât have alternative text. I get emails from mailing lists where the subject line is great, and then the preview text says, âUnsubscribe, Privacy policyâ â because thatâs actually the first text in the email. So donât do that; leverage the preview text in the inbox.â
âThe foundation of personalization is all about the customer data you have. You canât personalize if you donât have data to pull from. I canât recommend you [i.e. the winery customer] a product if I donât know what products youâre purchasing or if I donât know anything about you. Having a unified, clean database is the first step. Thatâs where youâre going to pull the insights from, thatâs where youâre going to pull the personalizations from.
Make sure that that database or that CRM is connected with all of your other systems out there.  If you have this clean database with all of these insights but itâs not connected with your email campaign tool or other engagement or outreach tools, then how will you personalize on these platforms?â
âPeople that write a blog have fewer editorial guidelines if you will. They usually are the author and the editor, that means they can control the calendar, they can decide what to publish.So sometimes youâll have better luck with somebody that writes a blog that you really enjoy.
âAnd the other plus â and this is one of the things that constantly impresses me, is bloggers are also usually excellent photographers, or they write their own recipes. And sometimes theyâll do something incredible with the wine â itâs like a bonus â theyâre not just covering it, but theyâre pairing it with something. So be aware that there are awesome bloggers out there, and thatâs a great place to start if you want a first line of pitching. And theyâll probably be thrilled to hear from you too.â
âEvery piece of content that you put out, you should be thinking about all of the different ways that could be useful down the road. Whether thatâs something thatâs going to end up in your blog and add SEO value to your website. Or thatâs video content thatâs going to end up being cut up into 15 different pieces and utilized for Instagram Stories and all these other things. Invest in how you can take that content and repurpose it all over the place â itâs not only going to make that content way more valuable but continue to provide dividends for years to come.â
âWe really need to think of these [virtual] events as content. And think about how this content is going to continue work for the wine industry long after the event happened.The biggest issue with virtual tastings is that people are narrow-focused. They just think, âOkay, Iâm going to sell these tasting packs. I want to get this stop-gap of revenue stream here.â Theyâre not thinking of the bigger picture. And theyâre not thinking about the aspect of how their consumers engage, and with wine content.
ââWine Intelligenceâ has written numerous reports talking about how wine education is kind of, not necessarily going down, but wine retention because the average consumer doesnât need to really know about âWhy is Stagâs Leap District special?â Because you know what they do if theyâre looking at a bottle of Stagâs Leap Cabernet. Theyâre going to google on their phone: Why is a Stagâs Leap Cabernet good?
âAnd you want, as a winery, you want your content being tied to this question.Google is probably one of the most powerful influences out there. And there are so many wine questions that people are always googling: How to taste wine. Why is chardonnay buttery? If you did a virtual tasting with those broad topics as a theme, and uploaded it to YouTube, promoted it on your social media â people are more likely to find it. And that virtual wine event that you did on one evening in July will pay dividends and help build your brand for years.â
Incorporating these expert strategies into your wine business can significantly uplift your marketing efforts and overall customer engagement. From optimizing email campaigns and maintaining clean customer data to leveraging bloggers and repurposing content, each step offers remarkable benefits.
Furthermore, creating virtual events based on consumer interests not only drives immediate sales but also plants the seeds for long-term brand growth. By applying these insights, you will be poised to enhance your presence in the industry and achieve sustained success. Commit to these actionable tips, and watch your wine business thrive in a competitive marketplace.