REthink Wine Blog

I typed the names of several wine brands in the Google search bar and came up with some very interesting results.

The first search I performed was for a very well known brand and resulted in the following:

Organic Search Results

1. A listing for a lower price point subsidiary brand
2. A listing with the winery’s URL, rather than their name, as the title and their navigational categories as the description (for example, “………popular categories, Napa Valley, wine tasting”).  These results are not at all useful in building the brand or enticing the user to click through.
3. Shopping results pointing to sites such as Amazon.com, Bed Bath & Beyond, and a discount wine retailer

Sponsored Links

1. A wine retailer with the following description “Thousands of wines including (Winery’s Name) and other greats”.
2. “Buy (Winery’s Name) books”

There were several other sponsored links for this brand including two people finder ads, several competing brands, and an ad for Fresh & Easy.  The image below is an actual Google Ad served for a search of this brand.

The second search I performed was for another major brand and yielded the following results:

Organic Search Results

“(Winery’s Name) website requires Macromedia Flash. Get Macromedia Flash.  If you have Flash installed, click to visit the website. …”

This was the fourth search result (following some Wikipedia entries).

Sponsored Links

There was just one sponsored link, for an online retailer advertising “a huge selection on sale now”.

The third search I performed had much better results (and I’m happy to report that this was an IBG client). 

Organic Search Results

The first three organic results pointed to the winery’s website:

1. Local business results complete with a Google map and reviews
2. A listing with the winery’s name as title and a compelling description
3. A listing which pointed to the winery’s product catalog page (again with a nice title and description).

Sponsored Links

The sponsored results were not so positive though:

The first was for a bargain retailer

Cheap (Winery’s Name)
Looking for (Winery’s Name) on sale?
Compare Wine & save up to 48% now!

The second result was for WineZap

Buy (Winery’s Name)
Compare prices at hundreds of
US wine shops online

What should you do?  First, make sure you’re appearing first in the organic listings when you search your winery’s name.  Most likely you will be.  If you’d like to tweak the title or description that appears, just login to the admin panel for your website, go to your site settings and make the necessary adjustments.

Should you consider paid search advertising for your brand name?  My feeling is yes.  Appearing at the top of both the organic results and sponsored links adds authority and leads to confidence on the customer’s part.  It also provides you with an opportunity to tie any offline promotional efforts directly to your website.  You’ll likely end up with the top spot at a much lower cost than anyone else bidding on your brand name because you’ll have a higher click through rate and thus a higher quality score.

In developing the headline and description for your ad, I would keep it very simple.  Let visitors know that yours is the official winery site and that your wines can be purchased directly.  You might try doing a search for other companies whose products are sold both direct-to-consumer and through retailers, i.e. Godiva Chocolates, Clinique, Sony, and Dell.

Wine is an experience…… in the same way that a gourmet meal or a luxury vacation is an experience.  And because it’s an experience, the challenges in selling wine online are much greater than they are for commodities, which can often be sold based on price alone.  That fact shouldn’t deter you, though, because it can be done.  And in fact, if you understand the differences, it can be a whole lot more fun.

How do you sell an experience?

First, you need to engage the senses.  Create a vivid image whereby your visitors can imagine themselves enjoying your wine.  This is something best accomplished through exceptional copy and photography, not only on your product detail pages, but throughout your website.

Copy

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. –Mark Twain

Although it’s tempting to copy and paste wine notes or vineyard notes into your product descriptions, it’s important to remember that the product teaser and description are often your only opportunity to capture the attention and imagination of your visitors.  Web visitors have short attention spans so your words should be chosen carefully, with an eye toward attention to detail.  Your website may be the first and only opportunity you have to make an impression.  Spelling and grammar errors will cause a lack of confidence or trust in your brand.  And product descriptions which are too technical and lack personality will cause visitors to leave just as quickly as they arrived.

As an example, these are two very different product descriptions I found for sparkling wine.

1. Champagne is a sparkling wine produced by inducing the in-bottle secondary fermentation of wine to effect carbonation.
2. ………a shimmery coppery gold in the glass, with a gentle stream of tiny bubbles. Powerful and complex aromas of raspberry and fresh cut red apple are accentuated by appealing notes of cardamom and oak spice.

And here are two product descriptions for Chardonnay.  Assuming you have no previous experience with the brand, which one captures your interest?

1. The grapes for this wine are grown in an extremely difficult area – composed of rock and gravel. The yields are very low, as the vines must struggle greatly just to survive.
2. This gorgeous Chardonnay defines the concept of synergy, and it beautifully expresses the character of its distinctive vineyard and wonderfully ripe vintage. The aromas are a lovely mélange of lemon custard, fresh apple and toasted coconut, with just a hint of pineapple: a fruit and oak combination that is as exquisitely balanced as it is luxurious.

And just for fun, here’s something I found on the Dove Chocolate site - yum.

“As you unwrap your DOVE® Chocolate, note the aroma. Take the same care in experiencing the smell of your wine. Swirl the wine in your glass, then sniff it lightly to sample the bouquet. Break a piece of DOVE® Chocolate, then place the chocolate on your tongue and let it luxuriate and coat your entire mouth. As the chocolate taste envelopes your senses, take a sip of wine. Notice the subtle layers of flavors from the two tastes mingling together in a truly sensual experience.”

I just may need to stop on the way home and buy some DOVE® Chocolate to enjoy with my wine this evening.

Photography

The primary purpose of the imagery on your website is to complement your words as they gently guide visitors through the buying process. Each image, whether product photography or images used elsewhere on the site, should aid in creating the experience you are trying to convey through your copy.  Professional photography showing people enjoying your wines coupled with high quality product shots will go a long way toward guiding the purchase decision.  Conversely, sloppy or unattractive pictures may actually hurt in your efforts. 

I love this image I found on the Tamber Bey site.

Kudos to Mumm Napa for the lovely description of their 2004 DVX Rosé  and to Chasseur for their 2007 Chasseur Rued Chardonnay description.

If you work in the wine industry, it’s likely you rely on a number of different technology and/or service providers to run your business efficiently;   ecommerce,  wine club, point of sale, CRM, email, compliance, fulfillment, accounting, sales and inventory management  to name a just a few.  It’s no secret that as an industry we’ve been slow to adopt certain new technologies, ecommerce in particular.  Aside from the obvious compliance challenges, when you look at that list it’s not difficult to understand why.   In some ways, eCommerce for wine can be viewed as what is referred to in the business world as a “discontinuous innovation”.  In other words, it requires you to modify some of the other technologies that you rely on.  Frankly, it’s not easy to make all of these products work well together.  Innovation is a good thing until it begins to impose new day-to-day challenges upon us. To compound the problem, the costs and risk associated with making different software solutions work together often fall to you.

Integrations of disparate technology solutions can be problematic for a number of reasons:

• They’re costly in terms of both monthly service fees and integration costs
• It’s often difficult for employees to learn all of the intricacies of each new technology
• Issues with data integrity and error handling frequently arise
• There is often confusion over who to call when things go wrong
• Due to the sheer number of solutions on the market today, it’s difficult for any vendor to integrate with each of them 

Benefits of an Integrated Package:

A full suite of direct sales tools can provide the answer to a number of these challenges by offering solutions which expedite your time to market and result in cost and administrative efficiencies which allow you to focus on your business.  What’s more, it results in a partner who’s in a better position to share responsibility for the success of your direct sales efforts.

This holistic approach to direct sales has a number of advantages:

• You  gain a service provider with the skills necessary to manage the full lifecycle of your technology, including roadmap development
• A stronger partnership leads to a better understanding of your needs, which allows your technology partner to drive innovation and value
• A single data repository will more accurately reflect your customer interactions and touch points
• You avoid the “Not our problem, talk to the other guys” phone call.  Instead, you have a single point of contact across product lines

These are just a few of the reasons I find what we’re doing at IBG so exciting.  For one, we’re providing a means for you to lower your cost of ownership just when competitive dynamics in the wine industry have necessitated it.  Even more exciting though, is this:  by owning the primary pieces of the puzzle, we’re in a position to build a better product.  Tighter integrations result in better visibility and better customer management.

At the same time, we recognize that customers often have existing systems or relationships in place which they would prefer not to disrupt, and that the “best of all worlds” implies choice.  This is why we believe in fostering strong industry partnerships and working with our clients to develop a solution that meets their needs.  The adoption of one technology should not necessarily mean that by default you are locked into another that might not suit your needs.  Our fulfillment and ecommerce products are compatible with numerous applications, from POS and ecommerce to fulfillment.

“The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.” Douglas Horton

I moved to wine country from South Florida in 2002, yet I’m still very much aware of the official start of hurricane season each year.  Although it technically runs from June 1st through November 30th, the majority of named storms tend to hit a little later in the season, beginning in September or so.  And each year, as activity starts picking up in the Atlantic, I’m reminded of the many hours spent preparing for tropical storms or hurricanes, storms that in many (if not most) cases take last minute turns and hit other (hopefully less populated) areas.  Preparing for a hurricane is a monumental task; shuttering your home, preparing your place of business, stocking up on supplies, and on and on.  Not surprisingly, after a number of false alarms people often become complacent.  And standing beneath beautiful blue skies, braving the Florida heat and humidity while waiting in line to fill the car with gas, it’s not difficult to understand why.  But reality always prevails and history, in the form of storms such as Andrew or Katrina, reminds us just how real the possibility is.
 
What do hurricanes have to do with wine sales?  That analogy, in some ways, reminds me of the many stops and starts we’ve endured in the wine industry over the last several years.  When I first became involved in the industry in 2002, excitement was just starting to build around the potential of Internet marketing and direct to consumer sales.  In fact, I believe that predictions at the time put DTC at somewhere between 5% and 10% of total wine sales by 2003.  Since that time we’ve seen many companies try to navigate the myriad of regulations that each of us deal with on a daily basis.  A few have succeeded.  Many have not.  Yet once again excitement is building around the direct channel.   Is it time to start preparing for the hurricane or are we just in for more of the same?  What is different about 2009?

In 1991, Geoffrey A. Moore wrote the book “Crossing the Chasm”.  While it focused on the specifics of marketing high tech products to mainstream customers, I think the principle itself is very relevant to the market for wine online.  Moore postured that a chasm exists between the early adopters of a product (the visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists).  Moreover, he argued that these two groups have very different needs and expectations, meaning that you shouldn’t try to market to them in the same ways.  Visionaries like being ahead of the curve and will seek out the new and exciting, whereas the early majority rely more on recommendations and word of mouth. 

Who really buys wine online?  It’s heavy.  It’s expensive to ship.  And it’s not always easy to get across state borders.  Why would I go online, pay a premium for shipping, and wait a week or more for my wine when I can walk to the nearest Safeway, purchase a bottle, and open it that evening?  Where do we stand in terms of the lifecycle for online wine sales and which group should we be marketing to?  I believe it’s the innovators and early adopters.  They’re the visionaries who enjoy being out in front and searching out superior products which are not broadly available.  This is the group who will go on to become viral marketers and evangelists as we try to gain broad appeal.  The current challenge for the industry as a whole is in pairing innovation with demand to successfully cross the chasm, finally landing in a marketplace where the mainstream can confidently place an order for a bottle of wine and know that 1) the product is exceptional (having been recommended by an early adopter), 2) the sale is entirely legal, and 3) the product will arrive in a reasonable amount of time and in perfect condition.  So what is different this time around, and why should we believe that direct to consumer wine sales might finally be entering the mainstream?  I think there are three signals:

1. It’s been a gradual shift but since those early days we’ve seen many regulatory changes, most of which were precipitated by Granholm v. Heald.  In 2002 direct sales by out of state wineries were banned in at least half of the US states including states such as New York and Florida.  Today, wineries can access 36 states.
2. Wine has gained the attention of some of the major Internet players.  There may be nuances and regulatory hurdles, but the end game remains the same.  Today’s landscape is attractive and they are ready to participate.  The question now is not whether or not a top retailer will enter the market, but rather who will be first. 
3. New technologies make it easy for innovators and early adopters to influence the early majority, a key in crossing into the mainstream.  Using innovations which unite wineries (complete with their product detail, order processing systems, compliance safeguards, and customer management capabilities) with new customers, sophisticated Marketing Agents can market wines and present customer recommendations and reviews to their own loyal customers.

Going back to hurricane season, the forecast has changed dramatically since 2002.  It’s quite possible that what we’re experiencing right now truly is the calm before the storm.  What can you do to prepare?  To quote another book, “Purple Cow” by Seth Godin: you can “be remarkable”.  Remarkable begins, obviously, with your product.  But it extends far beyond that, to your branding, your content, and your customer service.   Think of who you are, where you’ve been, and what it is that makes you stand out from the crowd.  Put serious thought and effort into your product content.  And don’t be afraid to hire marketing and/or copywriting help if need be.  It just may be one of the savviest investments you can make right now. 

These are my principles.  If you don’t like them, I have others.   Groucho Marx

As we’re all very much aware, shifting market trends have made it a tough time for wine sales.  Eric Asimov summed it up in a recent article for the New York Times when he stated “Cash may be trickling, but anxiety is gushing forth.”  And while uncertain economic times may make it tempting to pull back on marketing spend or concentrate resources on the latest and greatest trend, it’s worth remembering that huge benefits can often be gained by focusing on the basics.   The essence of marketing is to understand the needs of your customers and develop a plan for meeting those needs.  With that in mind, I believe that all marketing efforts should fall into one of four buckets:  1) Building Equity, 2) Generating Demand, 3) Garnering Loyalty, or 4) Enhancing Channel Sales and Profitability.  By compartmentalizing in this way, all promotional tactics are focused on specific goals and objectives, allowing you to more easily measure results and plan for the future.

Build Equity:  Put simply the focus here is on acquiring new customers.    This includes all efforts to gently guide potential customers through the relationship cycle: from awareness, to contemplation, to preference for your wines (and your brand) and finally to loyalty and word of mouth.  Several tactics fit into this bucket, including but not limited to the following:

• Focus on direct marketing and list building strategies.  Maintain and stick with a promotional calendar.
• Reach out to both traditional media and the wine blogging community.
• Social Networking is a great way to attract new customers of every age (most notably younger generations), to add a human touch, and to build good will.  Whether developing a Facebook page, joining the conversation in Twitter or utilizing YouTube, you will need a strategy for both participating in and monitoring conversations. 
• If you’re feeling adventuresome, consider developing an online video.  Video can be used for many purposes:  winemaker interviews, culinary productions, or telling your story in general.  It can add a whole new dimension to your marketing effort.
• Build traffic to your website using SEM and SEO.  SEM is an often overlooked method of paid advertising which if approached correctly can be very powerful both in building brands and in generating demand.  Use it to build awareness for your winery, as well as for short term promotional efforts.  Focus on niche keywords, your winemaker, your winery and other terms which are important to your brand.

Generate Demand:    This involves the use of promotional methods to generate sales and increase the average spend per customer.

• Focus on the tasting room:  invite people to events, sponsor other local events and work with neighboring wineries if feasible.  Capture information that will allow you to approach these visitors in the future:  incentivize them to sign up for your newsletter or mailing list, and always encourage wine club participation.
• Recognize that tourists are looking closer to home and reach out to locals.  For California wineries, this might mean anyone within a three hour radius.
• Build upon your eCommerce strategy.  Remember the adage that “Content is King” and revisit your web site.  Make sure that content is up to date and product images and descriptions are clean and well thought out.  Also be sure that your site is frequently updated, with news, events and other happenings.  Don’t allow it to get stale or give the appearance of nothing more than an online “brochure”.
• Consider different techniques for increasing average order value:  offer product bundles, case discounts, or shipping incentives on volume orders.

Engender Loyalty:  The use of creative methods to increase the lifetime value of customers and club members

• Attack email campaigns and club promotion strategies with renewed vigor (use geographic and other forms of segmentation to ensure promotions are focused).
• Examine ways in which you can add value to club memberships.  Acknowledge milestones such as birthdays, anniversaries, club longevity.  Offer “members only” events, tours, and tastings.  Include re-order materials with your club shipments.
• Focus on current club members and solicit updated credit card information when necessary.
• Revisit your customer service policies and customer relationship management strategy and ensure club members are treated accordingly.  In turn, this will allow you to rely on your customers to help with marketing - happy customers and the word of mouth they generate can be very positive.  And remember that social media is not just about acquiring new customers; it is also a great tool for generating customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Be sure to utilize relevant metrics so that you always understand the value of your customers.

Enhance Channel Profitability:  The pursuit of new growth opportunities and customer acquisition strategies via expansion into new and profitable sales channels

Direct to Consumer Opportunities:  As new marketplace opportunities become available, the landscape for direct to consumer sales will begin to change dramatically.  Participation in these marketplaces, whether Inertia’s new direct to consumer marketplace “CollectiveVine.com”, or via a Marketing Agent provides many benefits, namely:  1.) A captive audience and the ability to introduce your wines to an expanded customer base.   2.)  New opportunities for market research and testing without the traditional costs associated with them.  3.) Costs for participation are significantly lower than through traditional channels, resulting in better margins.  4.)  Customer acquisition: participation in winery direct programs means that customers are delivered to you for future marketing opportunities.  5.)  An opportunity to build brand equity:  today’s wine buyers are savvier and are accustomed to searching out preferred brands.  Online marketplaces provide an excellent opportunity for building awareness.
 
Direct to Trade Opportunities:  Wine REvolution, our direct to trade marketplace provides an opportunity to reach restaurant and retail buyers directly via an ecommerce platform, providing several benefits:  1) Access to new markets and trade accounts, 2) Control over your brand and 3) Increased profitability.  Make the most of your participation and aid trade partners by providing complete product data.  In short, make it easy for partners to sell your product.

Finally, as you reach out to new customers via channels which have not been available in the past, I think it’s important to remember that you are building a brand. With that in mind it is essential that you maintain a consistent customer experience across all sales outlets:  from sales collateral, product descriptions, prices, and the content and images provided to online marketplaces all the way through to the customer service experience.  Customers should know and respect your brand regardless of the touch point.

Amid all of the news of economic downturn, I think it’s important to call attention to some of the reasons for optimism for this coming year, and trends we can look to in ensuring it’s a good year.

The Promise of Millennials (born between 1980 and 1990)

This market is growing.  The people of this generation are enthusiastic about wine, and they’re not afraid to try new things.  They’re only now shaping their tastes for the future and present a tremendous opportunity for wine marketers.
 
In mid-November StrategyOne conducted a study on behalf of Pepsi, very appropriately named POP (or the ‘Pepsi Optimism Project’).  The survey was conducted as part of a new branding initiative by Pepsi, which will include an ad campaign featuring this theme of optimism.
 
According to the Pepsi study, 94% of Generation Y (or Millennials) have a positive outlook on the future.  Moreover, despite recent job forecasts, 77% of them report having a strong sense of optimism about their careers.  When you think about it, this would seem to make sense.  In an article for CIO Magazine, Meredith Levinson points out that:  1) They’ve been taught to put their own well-being ahead of that of their employers, and as a result may well be better prepared to weather the storm – or to take action in advance of potential bad news, 2) They’re just starting out, which means they are generally paid less relative to workers who have been around for longer, 3) Their financial burdens are less.  They typically haven’t taken on things like mortgages or childcare at this stage. 4)  They’re adept at multitasking, making them well prepared to fill in the gaps where necessary.
 
This group is fueled by an eagerness to begin shaping their own destinies and make 2009 their year.  As Pepsi spokesperson Lisa Orrell points out “With so much to worry about over the next several months, maybe we would all be better served taking on this group’s optimism.”

New Innovations in Social Media

In difficult economic times, Social Media becomes even more relevant and more important as a means of energizing loyal consumers than ever before.  It’s particularly useful for our industry given the social nature of wine, and because after all, wine may well be the last sacrifice in hard times.  More and more wine marketing professionals are realizing that tomorrow’s marketing is all about developing a conversation with customers.  And what was once reserved for the early adopters has now become mainstream.  Social media is not reserved for just Millennials, but is popular with Gen X, and Baby Boomers alike, and with the potential that Smart Phone Apps present for 2009, these same people are more connected than ever before.  According to a great new book, Groundswell by Forrester Research, Stormhoek (a success story that is familiar to many in the wine industry for its early adoption and success with social media) first started tapping into the blogging community in 2005 and grew from a $1 million dollar company to a $10 million company within a couple of short years.

Wired magazine published a list of the “six web technologies of 2008 you need to use now” and it is no coincidence that several of these technologies relate to things like identity management and lifestreaming; items which in short are designed to make it easier for all of us to maneuver the social web.

As the social aspects of the web continue to broaden and provide new and richer opportunities for consumer interaction, one thing has become clear – traditional metrics rarely tell the full story when trying to measure consumer engagement.   Some forms of interaction are easier to measure than others.  For example, you can use web analytics to view visits to your website and to get an idea of exactly what people are doing once they get there.  Which pages are they visiting?  Which products are more popular and where are they dropping off?  It becomes more difficult though, to get a feel for the value that information brings to you.  Exactly who is your audience and what does that knowledge mean to you?  More difficult yet is the task of trying to understand how consumers are engaged with your brand – one of the primary benefits of social media and the form of engagement that ultimately translates to conversion.  Traditional metrics such as clicks and page views are still relevant in many ways, but they don’t capture the full picture.  They don’t fully measure interactivity and they don’t capture the viral nature of the interactive web.  There are many intangibles to be gained from participation:  industry recognition, insight into what you’re doing right (and wrong), the opportunity to respond to comments, both positive and negative, and of course word of mouth (people trust the opinions of others over other forms of information).  You need a framework for using metrics, and that framework is provided by the intelligence gained from social media.  If you’re blogging, or if you’re using Facebook or Twitter, how much feedback are you receiving and what types of comments?  That information, used in combination with your metrics, will give you a much better idea of interest level and the types of reactions that help build awareness and ultimately lead to purchase.

With hundreds of wine blogs, websites and social networking sites now concentrating on wine, one could spend an infinite amount of time trying to soak up all the wine information and intelligence needed to give you a head start and a foot up on the competition. It’s important to have a manageable collection of websites that can keep you informed and keep you learning about wine the industry without getting buried in information.

Here are a few of the resources we recommend to stay in touch with what’s happening in wine, while not getting buried:

Wine Business Monthly

This is a great site that is updated daily with articles, links to important news items, and links to blogs that focus on the wine industry. You just might want to make it your first stop on the Net on a daily basis. You can also sign up for their daily email of top news items here

Wines and Vines

Wines & Vines is America’s old trade publication for the wine industry, but nothing about it is old fashioned. The site is constantly updated with new articles and resources.

Wine and Spirits Daily

Daily Reporting on the wine and spirits market is this organization’s forte and they do it well - often breaking stories, offering analysis of important stories, conducting interviews with key industry figures and alerting readers to new research. You can go to their site daily or sign up for their daily email and have the info sent right to your inbox.

Wine News at Topix

This is an interesting aggregation site for both consumer and trade-oriented wine news. You are likely to find constantly changing articles culled from wine blogs, major wine websites, recently issued press releases and articles in major newspapers and magazines.

Inertia News

Of course, you can always keep up with the latest Inertia news by heading to our press page. There you’ll find links to recent announcements and press coverage of Inertia.

It has often been argued that the true value of social networking, whether in blogging, Facebook, consumer generated content, Twitter, or otherwise, lies in the transparency it brings between you and your audience.  That is especially true if your ultimate goal is in building long term relationships with your customers, partners, vendors, or employees.

As technologies that are now considered cutting-edge become main stream, and as Millennials, with their reputation for being fully connected and passionate, begin to overtake Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers in numbers, a tremendous opportunity presents itself in the form of Social Media.  Exactly how are Millennials staying connected?  Are they reading newspapers or are they reading blogs and other forms of Social Media?

For employees, partners, and customers alike, transparency provides clarity behind the direction of your company and your brand.  For employees, it’s a constant reminder of why they come to work each day.  For customers, it answers the all important question “Why should I stay”?

Web 2.0 has provided a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.  It allows for real people to connect with others – in vibrant and open discussions about what interests them most.  Gone are the days of hiding behind the corporate brand.  With transparency comes trust.  It is your opportunity to display your company’s human side and begin building a direct dialog with customers.

Developing a Social Media strategy means adapting to change and understanding that your brand is now in the hands of forces outside of your control, meaning it’s in the hands of your consumers.

As you begin to develop a Social Media strategy, there are several important principals to keep in mind:

• Know your audience:  Are they customers, employees, industry veterans, or colleagues?
• Give more than you receive:  Blogging is about the sharing of information.
• Always place the needs of your customers first.
• Admit when you’ve a mistake:  Your customers will respect you for it.
• Work with customers to improve your product and your brand.
• Don’t be afraid to show your weaknesses as well as your strengths.
• Reveal your true corporate identity: in the form of your product, your services, and your employees.

Social Media is a whole new ballgame.  If the goal is to display authenticity, you can’t address your audience through a corporate filter.  They want to know the real you.  This is your chance to talk openly and honestly with them.  It is the perfect opportunity to expose the people and the vision behind your name.

So, whether you’re just getting your feet wet by posting comments on blogs or on Facebook, or are diving right in and starting a blog of your own, the easiest places to start are in answering some of the following questions:

• What makes you proud to be sitting where you are today? 
• What is your story? 
• How about your winery’s story?
• Who are your customers and what motivates them?

Social media presents a tremendous opportunity to learn, both from the good news and the bad. 

From Jonathan Schwartz’s (CEO of Sun Microsystems) blog:   “Sunlight’s not just a great disinfectant, it’s a wonderful safety net, too - you can’t fix the problems you don’t know about. But once you know about a problem, even small attempts to help, multiplied over the long tail of the internet, can make an extraordinary difference.”

I’m relatively new to Inertia, having been here for about five months now.  My role is in fostering relationships with the many different types of vendors who share this space with us, with the ultimate goal of building a “partnership ecosphere” so to speak, one which will provide the most value to our clients.  And while I’m anxious to write about our plans regarding these operational partnerships, I thought I would write about a different sort of partnership today – the partnerships we’ve formed with our winery clients.

I’ve been involved in direct-to-consumer sales for many years now, and from what I’ve witnessed there are basically two different business models in use by winery direct sales platforms such as ours. 

The Investor Dictionary defines a business model as “the mechanism by which a business intends to generate revenue and profits.  It is a summary of how a company plans to serve its customers…….”  The way I see it, there are basically two models in use in this space:  1) a “Perpetual License” model, and 2) a “Value Creation” model.   The former involves a flat fee, while the latter involves a small share of revenue.  In looking at the rev share model, the provider or business partner doesn’t have a viable business UNLESS its clients grow direct revenues.   So while both models satisfy the first half of the definition above, in making that commitment to its clients, the rev share partner has gone much further in defining the latter half of the definition – developing a plan to serve its customers.

Let’s look first at the subscription or flat fee model.  In some instances they may build a website for you, in others they might simply host your shopping cart, charging a flat monthly fee in return.  Typically your contract will show different fees for services such as basic support.    Under this model, the focus is naturally on maximizing the number of websites which are turned out each month.  The model itself doesn’t provide incentive for the provider to work with existing clients to help them maximize revenue potential.

With a revenue share model, the focus by definition is on creating value.  I believe that this leads to the strongest possible relationship, one which is mutually rewarding and delivers an increase in creativity and high priority response times.   Since I’ve been with Inertia, I’ve had the opportunity to view the many ways in which we view our roles and responsibilities in terms of creating value for our winery partners, both in our current business model and in terms of our overall corporate vision.  While I won’t go into all in detail today, a few prime examples are:

Focus on quality not quantity:  We study best practices, usability, and conversion rates.  Each and every site is designed with one purpose in mind – selling wine.   Most importantly, as we develop the next generation of our platform, our focus is entirely on the ways in which we can leverage technology to connect our clients with demand, providing access to new markets and the opportunity for our winery partners to connect directly with both consumers and the trade, forging lasting relationships.

A passion for selling wine:  A perfect example of this is the Inertia blog and the enthusiasm with which our bloggers share their thoughts and tips for maximizing direct sales.  In addition to the blog, we offer quarterly workshops which focus on current trends in wine marketing, monthly newsletters loaded with useful tips, and a set of excellent training sessions.  In addition, our client development group is devoted to working with our existing client base to help maximize direct sales.

REthink Compliance:  Our free compliance tool is another great example of our overall vision at work.  By helping to remove the remaining barriers to direct sales and providing winery partners with access to an even broader marketplace, we enable them to tap into demand channels that were not available to them in the past.