REthink Wine Blog

Everyone knows that the key to building a successful online marketing initiative is building a good database. The more contacts you have in your database the better, since these are the people who will continue to receive information from you on new wines or any special promotions. The people who know and enjoy your product will repeatedly purchase your wines, and will become your best customers. These repeat buyers are the cheapest to market to, and the easiest to convert. This is why it is always important to maintain customer contact and reach out to recent buyers on a personal basis to make sure you continue to nurture that relationship.
As we ramp up our Direct-to-Trade platform, we are finding that the same mentality holds true for trade accounts. A few weeks ago, Andrea spoke about the importance of building and segmenting your trade database on the REthink blog. By harvesting business cards from your tasting room staff or reviewing depletion lists to see what accounts have purchased in the past you are slowly building a list of reliable trade accounts that have tasted or purchased your wine. You should segment these by type of account, level of relationship, and what wines they purchased.
By using your DTT channel to sell wines direct to these accounts; you are enabling your winery to better build these direct relationships with the trade, which is what will allow you to have the personal touch you have with all of your consumers. So what are the first steps to make sure your trade accounts become repeat buyers?

• Make sure all orders ship quickly and on time to trade accounts
• Include materials that are directed towards members of the trade such as shelf talkers and detailed tasting notes
• Always follow up with the account to make sure the wines arrived safely, this can be as simple as a short phone call made shortly after the wines are sent
• Note what wines accounts purchase and buying patterns for follow up efforts

All of these simple steps will help you maintain a relationship with trade accounts that will encourage them to continue to purchase your wines. And remember, repeat buyers are easy targets so the better the relationships you have with your accounts in your trade database, the more sales you will see come through your direct channel.

I recently enrolled in a WSET class to try and expand my wine knowledge, and I am quickly finding out that I am not the wine novice that I once thought I was! As we breezed through the regions of Burgundy, Rhone, the Loire and Bordeaux last week I began to feel like I needed a lot more time to really start to take all of this in. Feeling overwhelmed already, I realize that we haven’t even started covering any regions outside of France! The class will cover everything from winemaking processes, soil types, weather patterns, and regional history all in the course of 6 weeks. The exam even includes a blind tasting as part of the certification process.

One thing I am finding is that you can never educate yourself enough. As much as you may think you know about wine, there is a lot out there and it is an ever evolving and expanding industry. I think that anyone who works at a winery or restaurant or consistently interacts with wineries should take the time to sign up for a class. Not only is this a great way to help educate yourself and gain credentials, but it is also a great way to meet other people who work in the industry, especially up and coming sommeliers! Not such a bad place to pitch your winery brand.

The most internationally recognized programs include Wine Spirits and Education Trust, The Court of Master Sommeliers, International Sommelier Guild, American Sommelier Association, also Society of Wine Educators, and Institute of Masters of Wine. I suggest you look into programs in your area and think about signing up for classes soon!

Recently I was able to attend a great event in my home state of Washington. Every year the Washington Wine Commission puts on a large consumer event in an effort to raise awareness and promote the amazing food and wine of Washington. The tasting draws wineries from all over the state to one venue to showcase their new releases. This year I tasted many wonderful wines, with over 200 wineries in attendance you are guaranteed to find something that suites your palate.

The best part about the tasting is that you can also visit the many restaurants in attendance and try amazing food, or even hang out at the raw oyster bar that was hosted by Elliott’s Oyster House. My favorite treats came from restaurants such as Barking Frog, 0/8 Seafood Grill and Purple Café.

The tasting itself is backed with a day of seminars on everything from sustainability in the wine industry, to a debate on oak use in the winemaking process, to blind tastings with renowned wine critics. All of these programs are open to the public, so this is a great opportunity to get some education on everything wine.

This event is very consumer friendly; I strongly encourage anyone interested in the wines of Washington State to attend. As many wineries also host winemaker dinners in the city, this is a wonderful excuse to escape to Seattle for the weekend and try all of your favorite Washington wines. For a full list of wineries in attendance see the Taste Washington website.

Didn’t make the tasting in Seattle this year? Not to worry, another version of this event occurs June 8, 2008 on the Eastern side of the mountains in Spokane at the magnificent Davenport Hotel.

With the growing wine consumption, the US is slotted to become the highest wine consuming nation in the world. So how are you going to capture that market? It is well known that small businesses (such as wineries) must often budget wisely and target promotion of their brand at the local level. So what is my recommendation? Outline your target markets based on where you want your brand to have visibility, but start by venturing beyond your tasting room to tap in to your regional market.

By focusing marketing efforts locally, you can spend your time building not only your brand, but you will also help build the reputation of the region as a whole. This is extremely important in an industry where terroir (or the concept of where your wine is from) is such a defining characteristic of one’s brand. Below are some suggestions of where you might start.

1. Tap in to already existing regional campaigns as part of your marketing
As it has been a proven selling point in other agricultural marketing, creating a statewide campaign can help boost in state sales and also encourage wine drinkers to choose your wine over an imported brand. Try joining organizations such as Family Winemakers of California, California Wine Institute, or Washington Wine Commission. These are the kind of organizations are supported by both growers and vintners and are dedicated to promoting wine on a statewide level.

2. Be an active member of the virtual community
You can be involved with your local wine community via the internet. Try signing up for dedicated wine social networks online such as Open Wine Consortium, then volunteer to head a regional group to inform others of local happenings and help execute events in your area.

3. Optimize your website by listing your business as part of local search engines
Use local key words, submit your website to local business directories, and think about advertising on other websites that may feed into yours such as winery listings and local tourism sites. Begin by listing your winery on the three major search engines (Yahoo, Google, and MSN) which all have a localized search engines. From there, try feeding your content to sites such as Yelp, or Local Wine Events.

Those crazy frogs are at it again! Not only do they claim to be the godfathers of the wine industry, but it looks like they may have beaten us to the punch and found a unique way to market direct online wine sales. Through a brilliant viral marketing campaign, one company has found a way to grow their email list and promote their wine-a-day program.

Check this out:

When the video completes, you are invited to click on the link to ‘acceder au wine store’ which redirects the viewer to a site advertising a wine-a-day (1Jour1Vin) program similar to RadCru. The viewer is asked to share their email address to receive alerts for discounts on wine direct from the retailer, thus gaining emails to grow their wine club. This video originally appeared on a website called MensUp.fr, which is a site dedicated to sharing the latest information to young men interested in technology and social networking.

In the Business Development department here at Inertia, we look for new ways to help our partner wineries channel new customers back to their website. We look to other online sites that may draw those wine aficionados our partner wineries have not yet been able to reach through their traditional marketing strategies. This is where you can learn a lesson from this kitschy advertisement. By targeting non-traditional wine websites where consumers have a high social networking potential (in this case, a website targeted to tech savvy young men who are interested in new products) your winery could build your brand and sell more wine direct.

The ad has now reached not only the people on this website, but the humor in this video further inspires friends to pass the link on voluntarily through word of mouth enthusiasm, using their preexisting social networks to share the video promotion within their personal online communities. While 1Jour1Vin has only paid for the ad space to host on mensup.fr, they are now relying on the humor of the clip to get the people to distribute this content for them, at no extra cost. As a result, the video was also reposted on youtube.com (where it was subtitled) and many other websites… and just like that, the word is out! This company has successfully built a name for itself through a clever viral marketing campaign.

After all these years, we find the French still have many tricks to teach us about the wine industry.

Pretty much any content syndicated on the web can be broken down in to an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed. Once content is in this format, it can be fed into a software program such as an aggregator that can recognize changes as they happen and react to give updates directly to the reader. Why use RSS feeds you ask? Just to start… see a few reasons below.

The concept of the RSS feed is basically to provide a code that will allow potential customers to view your site without actually having to visit it. This is most commonly used for blogs and news feeds. RSS feeds enable a person to log on and in one place check all the major headlines, blog feeds, and even which of their favorite wineries have released a new wine online! Is this a good idea you ask? Won’t this encourage people to NOT visit my website? NOT AT ALL. In fact, this will do the opposite. As soon as you update your content, it can be fed via RSS feed to other websites online as well as to any aggregators that are constantly being updated with your product information or news. This will in turn drive customers back to your site if they see a product or event they may be interested in. The idea is that if you constantly provide RSS readers updates from your site, they will see that your site is regularly being refreshed with new content. If browsers see a new wine that they are interested in, they will link back to your site to view, and hopefully purchase this product.

Another way that RSS feeds can be beneficial is for links to news and events. Just as in the case of a news website or a blog, if your winery website has a lot of updated information an RSS feed can stream all of this in to other sites. In the wine business these are websites such as localwineevents.com or winebusiness.com. The idea is that by enabling an RSS feed you can save a lot of time because you don’t have to manually update all of these sites yourself. RSS feeds can also send updated recipes to pair with your wines to your favorite food websites or vice versa. You can learn a lot by learning how to use these feeds to keep sending out updated information about your own winery as well as bringing in information about other wines. All of this will eventually help spread your online content across many sites without even having to bring people to your own website, yet.

Remember, the most important thing is to make sure that the RSS feed you are syndicating is an extension of your site. Make sure it contains all pertinent information about your winery. Having a variety of information will guarantee that your content stays fresh and people will continue to link back to your website and online wine store based on this RSS content.

There is so much information on the web (too much?) that some kind of filtering tool is needed. RSS is a huge success because it is such a tool, helping users condense information. Think of an RSS feed as the executive summary of what’s new on a website.

If this may all sound a bit overwhelming, just take it slowly. Before starting to use RSS as a method to share your information – as a ‘publisher’ - you should try using RSS as a reader to discover its full benefits and better understand how you can later use it as a marketing tool. One easy method to learn how to use an RSS aggregator is by setting up all of your favorite blogs and news websites to feed in to your Google account so that when you log in you can see all the top relevant articles of the day. This will help your understand why these feeds can be beneficial to syndicate content in to one place.

Let’s face it, good press sells wine. That is why launching a campaign to gain publicity is a very important aspect of the wine industry and a great way to drive sales. In American culture, people love to trust the middle man. If we don’t know about something, we like to read about it from someone who does. When you look to buy a new car or a new fridge, you look to the ratings in Consumer Reports. People do the same for wine. Because there are so many options out there, we have to look to the professionals to make our decisions. So learn to love your wine writers, they’re here to stay, but take into consideration the following tips when dealing with the media…

1. Focus Your Pitch. If you are trying to get good press and are looking to target specific publications… do your homework!!! The easiest way to do this is to use Google, read what your target has written and figure out what projects they are working on now. Think of creative ways your winery or wines could be incorporated in a travel or lifestyle article. When you contact your target, make sure you are ready to provide them with all the information they need. You can predict this based on all of the background research you have done and present them with all the details. For example; a writer from a lifestyle publication is probably more interested in the restaurants to eat at that feature your wines or are near the winery, while a writer from a trade publication is probably more interested in the varietals, harvest dates, alcohol percentages, and so on.
2. It’s All About Packaging. Having a presence on the web is really your most important step in launching a publicity campaign for yourself. If you have an attractive, comprehensive and easy to navigate website you may have already gained customers, fans and created a landing site for good media hits to feed back to. People often make a large percentage of their judgments within the first 10 seconds they see something, and the internet is no different. Your website is a window to the world that represents your winery and this is a very important place to deliver your message. Spend time developing it, be very specific, keep in simple, and yet focus your message. Try to make your site one of the best out there, remember that even if you are small and only produce 200 cases a year, you can make a much bigger name for your brand and your winery online, and this is important. Once your website is up and running you must make sure you maintain the content and keep it updated. When you drive people to your website you will want to make sure you want to keep them coming back! Use rotating graphics, encourage people to bookmark your site, post pictures of harvest and winemaker events, and make sure all vintages are up to date and ready to ship.
3. Create A Network Online. Beyond just your own website, be involved in other networks online. We live in a world of social networks, and more of these are connecting people to others who share their same interests, particularly in wine! This is not only a great way to meet cool people and discover wines yourself, but also a great way to promote your own wines and upcoming events. For a start, try logging on to Snooth, or adding the application to your Facebook account. Do some research on wine blogs and read them often, or begin checking websites and blogs like chow.com that talk about food as well. Post your comments and don’t be afraid to share your opinions!
4. Be Selective when it comes to Events. While events are often great exposure, if you attend every event you will be wasting your time. There are SO many events, you could probably register to attend something three times a week. Aim to attend events in specific markets you are targeting. If you are donating product for an event make sure you get details and request the appropriate signage and recognition, otherwise you will be wasting wine. If possible, have a representative in that market stop by the event to educate the staff on the wines before the event starts. The more they know, the more the consumers will know!
When planning your own media events, partnering with other wineries is often a great way to gain good media attention. Many writers have policies against attending an event sponsored by only one winery. Also, ALWAYS over-book. Just like the rest of us, people in the media are busy. Although members of the media often tell you that they will attend your event, things happen. People overbook their own schedules, and you absolutely have to plan for this. After all, it is much better to have to deal with too many people attending than too little.
5. Set Reasonable Expectations. None of us can run a marathon the first time out on the track. In the same way, while you should think big, it is hard to target the largest publications when you are first starting out. The wine business is built on name recognition and reputation and you have to build this. Just keep telling your story, and if you are honest and persistent, eventually you will gain the recognition you deserve. Talking to the media takes practice, so always start with the smaller publications like your local newspaper and slowly work your way up the chain. When targeting media outlets, start slow and find different and creative outlets, and try to use your online resources to communicate with and start getting the word out!

Be persistent and always follow up with any media leads. Remain patient with outlets that may take awhile to develop your story. Finally, don’t get too discouraged if you get some negative press, all PR professionals will tell you, all press is good press, and remember you are just getting started! Good luck!