Wine Related Marketing

The wine industry in the US is a growing industry as the general public is becoming less intimidated by wine. Thanks to the Australian wine industry and their unique marketing methods, brands like Yellowtail have brought more exposure to wine to the average American. More affordable, yet good quality and great tasting wines are making their way to the market, and are finding their way to the dinner tables of more Americans each year. So what can US wineries do to expand their reach especially in these economic times?

1) Focus on more exposure in your local market.

Many wineries are completely unknown to their local market. Many of them are tucked away on a side street or in a corner of some shopping mall and very inconspicuous. Many great finds can be discovered at these wineries. The problem isn’t in the wine itself, but in the marketing. One thing that wineries can do is to participate in their growers association (there is at least one in almost every state), and encourage more varied marketing methods, such as online marketing. A lot of local exposure can be done effectively online. Creating strategic partnerships with popular local online sites that are in your target market is a great start in getting local exposure, local link popularity and more.

2) Increase your online advertising efforts

The way to expand your reach is to focus on your offline efforts more regionally and nationally as well as locally. If you are in an area that gets a lot of out of town visitors, then you will certainly see some rewards in this endeavor. When traveling wine lovers know about your winery, they can be sure to put it on their itinerary the next time they are in town. Publishing your award winning wines, tasting hours and other activities your winery hosts should be a standard practice in your online marketing efforts. It is also wise to publish what events your wines will be served at so your can begin to build a loyal following and more importantly create advocates for your wines.

Other ways in which a winery can improve their online exposure is to blog consistently about their wines, and do regular press releases about special events your winery is hosting and new wines that your winery is producing. Press releases get widespread exposure as well as getting more traffic to your website and has search engine benefits as well.

3) Make your website sticky

Sticky means to have something on your website that people will want to come back to over and over again, and/or others will want to link to. What will cause people to come back to your web site consistently are things such as an event calendar, weekly contests where contestants get a free bottle of wine, or a gift card or a recipe of the day with a wine to go with it. Your visitors will find these things of interest and of value and will increase your traffic, and exposure to your web site.
The wine industry is no different than any other out there when it comes to needing to get their product in front of their target market. Many methods of doing that are the same as any other industry; it just takes some creativity and a well-planned strategy

Wine Marketing & Sales: Success Strategies for a Saturated Market

I really like this article because it talks about how small wineries should focus on doing their marketing. I agree with the approach this article takes... focus on selling your wines over branding. When your wine sells, people know about it. When they know about it, you can begin building a brand. With the reach of the internet today, it only makes sense to begin to utilize the Internet as a large part of wine selling. Read on for more specifics on focusing on selling wine vs. focusing on branding.

Now, before the brand police start to scream - hear me out and read the entire article.

And...while this article is directed specifically to small wineries and wine makers in the United States, it can apply equally well to any small business on the planet. Really.

So, let me focus the problem for you.

Our economy is in the tank (duh!). People are losing their jobs right and left. Businesses all over the world are feeling the pinch with often a precipitous drop in sales - for many businesses like falling off a cliff.

If you are a small winery and are NOT selling out every vintage today, why the hell would you spend a dime on branding?

Simply put, don't waste your money on branding.

Instead, focus your marketing budget on SELLING wine! Period.

Better yet, focus all of your marketing spend on selling all of your wine direct to consumer.

Let me say that again: If you are a small winery or wine maker, focus all of your marketing money on direct response marketing initiatives (online, direct mail, email, tasting room, tasting events, wine club events, etc.) to sell all of your wine directly to the consumer where legal.

If you are Constellation, or a similarly large company, then you have enough money to fund branding programs and campaigns. Great.

Okay, even if you are medium sized company likely you can afford that.

But if you are a small winery, don't bother with it, certainly not now. Spend your money to sell wine. Your marketing budget is just too precious to spend on image.

For those of you sitting in the back of the class, hands raised, straining to ask THE question - yes, branding is important for small businesses, BUT ONLY as the thoughtful outcome of your other marketing, tasting room, sales and customer service processes you have.

So, what do I mean by branding?

Branding is the impression and feeling of how visitors, customers and vendors view your product and company based on their interactions with you.

Branding promotions I define as marketing efforts to affect that view specifically.

Branding is image advertising. If you have a bad image, branding can help change that - over time.

Bad brand? Fix the problem and the brand takes care of itself.

If you are a small wine business, you are better off fixing the problem that caused the bad image in the first place. Bad wine? Fix the wine. Bad tasting room reviews? Make the changes needed to fix that, change it around, re-decorate, fire and hire. Clunky Website? Make it lightening fast and easy to use. Not making enough sales? Get in front of more potential customers.

Can branding hurt you? You bet. But, spending money on branding promotions to fix your brand is absolute lunacy if you are a small winery. Spend your available marketing money to sell more wine...then when you have sold all of your wine, you can consider a branding initiative. But then you likely won't need to...

Steven Sands -
Wine Marketing Center
If this article was of interest, you can register to receive other articles and information including my free report on the Top 10 Direct To Consumer Wine Sales Tips. . Just visit http://winemarketingcenter.com

This article gives some ideas on how to get your winery and wine brand out to the public. In these times, it is more important than ever to get your message and name out there. This article is about some of the things that you as a winery owner can do to create more exposure and business to sell your wines.

There are quite a number of high-quality vineyards and wineries in the United States and around the world. Wineries often make use of various marketing campaigns to promote and sell their wine including wine tasting tours, event sponsorships, and product launchings. Promoting a vineyard in its beginning stages can be challenging due to limited marketing resources and exposure. One affordable but effective strategy is the use of printed marketing materials. Below are examples of printed materials that can be used to market a winery business.

Postcards - Postcards can serve as picture-perfect marketing materials for a winery business. Postcards can be used to sell not only wine products but the recreational experience of wine tasting as they are treated as holiday destinations. Business owners can print postcards using images of their vineyard in different seasons, with a harvest of grapes, or with an interior shot of the winery. Full color, wholesale printing of postcards can be ordered through convenient online printing services. These online printers offer customized postcard printing at discounted prices.

Brochures - Brochures are printed materials that provide information through inviting text and images. Brochures can include photo images and text descriptions of the winery's facilities, its history, the vine's origins, and a concise description of its finest wines. Brochures today can also be printed with customized designs, sizes, finishes, and paper stocks through convenient online printing services. Business owners can upload their own designs or use an online design tool before printing them on the website. Offset printers are used for printing wholesale orders of brochures.

Posters - Posters serve as affordable, high-impact materials to promote a winery business. Posters can feature an artistic combination of text and beautiful imagery such as a savvy tagline with picturesque vineyards. Business owners can also print posters showing the winery's unique facilities, it's collection of wines, or images of the vine at various stages of growth. Poster prints can also be conveniently printed though online poster printing companies. Poster prints can be ordered in bulk with 25 percent discount.

---

Tags: wine marketing - winery marketing

This is a really detailed article about how important branding is to your wine label. It is a good follow up article to the previous article about how wineries are using animals to distinguish their brands.
as I always say, people don't buy a product, they buy an experience.

Branding is the process of creating distinctive and durable
perceptions in the minds of consumers. A brand is a persistent,
unique business identity intertwined with associations of
personality, quality, origin, liking and more. Here's why the
effort to brand your company or yourself pays off.

1. Memorability. A brand serves as a convenient container for a
reputation and good will. It's hard for customers to go back to
"that whatsitsname store" or to refer business to "the plumber
from the Yellow Pages." In addition to an effective company
name, it helps when people have material reminders reinforcing
the identity of companies they will want to do repeat business
with: refrigerator magnets, tote bags, datebooks, coasters, key
rings, first aid kits, etc.

Memorability can come from using and sticking with an unusual
color combination (FedEx's purple and orange), distinctive
behavior (the gas station whose attendants literally run to
clean your windshield), or with an individual, even a style of
clothing (Author Tom Wolfe's white suits). Develop your own
identifiers and nail them to your company name in the minds of
your public.

2. Loyalty. When people have a positive experience with a
memorable brand, they're more likely to buy that product or
service again than competing brands. People who closely bond
with a brand identity are not only more likely to repurchase
what they bought, but also to buy related items of the same
brand, to recommend the brand to others and to resist the lure
of a competitor's price cut. The brand identity helps to create
and to anchor such loyalty.

Consider the legions of car owners who travel up to 2,000 miles
at their own expense to attend a Saturn celebration at the
company's plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee. That's loyalty. And
supposedly, more people have the motorcycle brand
"Harley-Davidson" tattooed on their body than any other brand
name. That's out-of-this-world loyalty.

3. Familiarity. Branding has a big effect on non-customers too.
Psychologists have shown that familiarity induces liking.
Consequently, people who have never done business with you but
have encountered your company identity sufficient times may
become willing to recommend you even when they have no personal
knowledge of your products or services. Seeing your ads on local
buses, having your pen on their desk, reading about you in the
Hometown News, they spread the word for you when a friend or
colleague asks if they know a ____ and that's what you do.

4. Premium image, premium price. Branding can lift what you sell
out of the realm of a commodity, so that instead of dealing with
price-shoppers you have buyers eager to pay more for your goods
than for those of competitors. Think of some people's
willingness to buy the currently "in" brand of bottled water,
versus toting along an unlabeled bottle of the same stuff filled
from the office water cooler.

The distinctive value inherent in a brand can even lead people
to dismiss evidence they would normally use to make buying
decisions. I once saw one middle-aged Cambridge, Massachusetts,
intellectual argue to several colleagues that Dunkin' Donuts'
coffee tastes better than Starbucks'. So contradictory was this
claim to the two companies' reputations for this demographic
group that the colleagues refused to put the matter to a taste
test.

5. Extensions. With a well-established brand, you can spread the
respect you've earned to a related new product, service or
location and more easily win acceptance of the newcomer. For
instance, when a winery with a good reputation starts up
regional winery tours, then adds foreign ones, each business
introduction benefits from the positive perceptions already in
place.

6. Greater company equity. Making your company into a brand
usually means that you can get more money for the company when
you decide to sell it. A Coca-Cola executive once said that if
all the company's facilities and inventory vanished all around
the world, he could walk into any bank and take out a loan based
only on the right to the Coca-Cola name and formula.

7. Lower marketing expenses. Although you must invest money to
create a brand, once it's created you can maintain it without
having to tell the whole story about the brand every time you
market it. For instance, a jingle people in your area have heard
a zillion times continues to promote the company when it's
played without any words.

8. For consumers, less risk. When someone feels under pressure
to make a wise decision, he or she tends to choose the
brand-name supplier over the no-name one. As the saying goes,
"You'll never be fired for buying IBM." By building a brand, you
fatten your bottom line.

About the author:
Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity and ten
other books hailed for outstanding creativity. Find out more
about her new discount naming company, Named At Last, which
brainstorms new company names, new product names, tag lines and
more for cost-conscious organizations, at
http://www.NamedAtLast.com .

Tags: winery marketing - branding - wines

Link: http://officialwinery.com/articles/winemarketingsection.html

An interesting article about how wineries can get more visibility by using Public Relations techniques. The article gives some good points about what things make a good public relations campaign. However, while this article does give good information on public relations, it isn't focused specifically wineries, and may leave out anything specific that wineries need to do to enhance their visibility with public relational techniques.

Ah, the wine business...it sounds so romantic. Beautiful,
intelligent, highly-evolved men and women, living in paradise,
sipping Albariño and noshing on amuse bouche eagerly prepared by
three-star chefs. Truth is, the wine business is tougher than
road kill and more confusing than the third Matrix movie.

Gone are the days when Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine and Dr. Howard could
plant 10 acres of whatever-the-nursery-gave-them on the family
spread, make a few hundred cases of "winemakers reserve" and
have restaurants, retailers and rabid collectors lining up for
allocations. Nowadays, the competition for the consumer's short
attention span is as intense as an over-extracted, old vine,
Petite Sirah from a low yielding, mountain vineyard. Wineries
are screaming "Look at me! Look at me!" Customers are rolling
their eyes and stifling yawns. They're also patting their heads
and rubbing their stomachs, but that's another story.

So how's a winery supposed to succeed in today's globally warmed
business climate. Making great wines is a good start. A fistful
of 94's from the top wine publications puts a little giddy up in
everybody's hitch. But even high scores are no guarantee for
success if a winery doesn't have a solid public relations
strategy to spread the word among gatekeepers and consumers.

What are the keys to a successful public relations strategy you
ask? Good messaging and good communications. To thrive nowadays
wineries must develop persuasive messaging that rings true with
gatekeepers and consumers and effective communications programs
to deliver that messaging to the various target audiences. One
false step and you're back in Michigan picking up balls at the
driving range.

So how does a winery go about developing their messaging and
communications? Here are my Top 11 Requisites for a Successful
PR Campaign:

1. Set Clear Goals

2. Identify Key Messaging Points

3. Create Support Materials that reflect Key Messaging Points

4. Write Storylines and Pitch Letter

5. Develop Media Database

6. Establish Samples Program

7. Monitor Editorial Calendars

8. Schedule Media Presentations & Tours

9. Disseminate Articles and Mentions to Trade and Consumers

10. Continually Develop New Hooks and Storylines

11. Be Different

Over the next few months we will explore each of these bullet
points in a way that they have never been explored before. When
finished you will know everything there is to know about
designing and implementing a successful PR campaign for your
winery.

About the author:
Mike Lynch is a founding partner of Big Bang Communications, a
PR/marketing company devoted to the wine industry. His articles
and short stories have appeared in Wine & Spirits, Wine
Enthusiast, and Wine Spectator. Mike also co-authored the
LynchBob cartoons with famed illustrator/designer Bob Johnson.
He can be reached at mike@bigbangcommunications.com.

Tags: public relations - wineries - pr campaign - marketing

Link: http://officialwinery.com/winery

This article is going to talk about some of the quick things wine-related sites can do to make their sites sticky, that don't require a lot of effort and are easier to maintain, if any maintenance is required at all.

There are many wine and winery related web sites available on the web. It now becomes increasingly important to stand out from the crowd of websites. There are many things that wine websites can do to make their websites stand out and make the visitors come back again and again to their site. Things that can be done to keep visitors coming back include adding forums, a blog, or a lot of articles. While these solutions are good, they can be quite time intensive and require some effort to maintain.

This article is going to talk about some of the quick things wine-related sites can do to make their sites sticky, that don't require a lot of effort and are easier to maintain, if any maintenance is required at all.

1. Add a Featured Monthly Wine

At a minimum of every month, add a featured wine of the month that you place on your front page. You can use wines that have won awards in different states or countries. If you really want to cater to your visitors, you should find out where most of your visitors come from and feature the wine from that country. It is relatively easy to find out where your visitors come from through tracking software that is available on the Internet. Once you decide on a wine, you can really add value by including information about the region the wine came from and even a little bit about the winery the wine came from. You'll be surprised at how willing some winery owners will be willing to provide you with information about their winery if it means additional exposure for them.

2. Allow Your Visitors to Vote on a Featured Wine

Should you decide to feature a monthly wine, you could allow your website visitors to vote on the featured wine. The wine with the most votes would be the one you feature. You can make it easy and provide a multiple choice of no more than 5 to 6 wines to choose from. Place the poll on the front page of your website where it is easily seen. There are a lot of scripts available on the web today that are free and can allow you to put this feature on your site relatively quiclky.

3. Add a Winery Search Function to Your Website

Another thing that can add value to your site is giving the ability for your visitors to search for wineries. There are sites like officialwinery.com that allow website owners to place code they provide on their own website, and visitors will be able to search the extensive winery database available on officialwinery.com. Visitors will come back often to find wineries in their own area, or areas they may visit on a trip. Adding this type of code to your wine or winery site is rather quick and easy and can be done within 5 minutes.

There are many things a wine-related website owner can do to make their website sticky, and keep the visitors coming back. Some things are relatively simple, yet they can make a big difference in the effectiveness of the website. Visitors love ease and convenience and website owners can do things that can quickly and easily deliver these features. These features can be done on your own, or found as scripts in the Internet. Spice up your site today and keep those visitors coming back.

B. Hopkins from Website Development company, helps businesses build their web presence on the internet.
Wine Resource Website.
(Create High Quality Articles)


Tags: wine - website - marketing - visitor - winery