Explaining how Twitter can help you attract potential wine buyers, make your current customers more loyal and help your website’s Search Engine rankings — along with ways to gain more followers and some free tools you can download to make Twitter more manageable.
I have to admit, even though I have a Twitter account and have posted a bunch of tweets, until today, I really wasn’t sure what to do with it! I knew to send out a new tweet every time I posted a new blog topic or finished a new design, but other then that — what could I possibly post that people would be interested in? And then I read ‘Twitter Demystified for Business Users’ by Nancy McCord and Boy, were my eyes opened!
Getting to Know You
Twitter is not just about telling people what you had for lunch, its about expressing your personality and allowing your followers to get to know the real you!
Now I’ve met MANY of you small vineyard and winery owners and so know from personal experience what an interesting bunch you are! You come from all walks of life, a myriad of careers and life experiences and you use this rich personal history in your approach to the vine and/or wine making process. You want to share this with your Twitter followers!
So, if you were a history professor in a previous life and have decided to use your knowledge of the past to make wine using a little known historical technique, tweet your ideas and progress to your followers. (And since you can send in tweets from your cell phone, you can’t use "I’m never near a computer" as an excuse! )
Or here’s an interesting scenario I’ve run into a few times — a husband and wife team who’ve both worked full time jobs for a million years and have finally decided to make a leap of faith and start their own winery. Who WOULDN’T be interested in hearing about the trials and tribulations you experience during this grand adventure?
Tweet about how long you had to wait for label approval, what a nightmare it can be getting state shipping licenses or how your adult children won’t answer your phone calls anymore because they’re afraid you’re going to ask them to help trim vines!
Not only is this interesting, but it can also be fun and informative too!
Another thing I just learned about Twitter is you can tweet with pictures using http://twitgoo.com/. Just the fact that you ARE a vineyard or winery means you have access to a LOT of photo opportunities that wine lovers would find interesting. So, if you’re in the middle of bottling, take a picture of the line and ‘tweet’ it!
Your followers will LOVE it!
Power of the Millennials
Another reason to embrace Twitter is to reach out to that growing Millennial market we’ve all been hearing so much about. This is especially important to you small, boutique and micro wineries because according to Leah Hennessy’s phenomenal article ‘Where Millennials Are Buying Wine: Some Tough Love For The Wine Industry‘ most Millennials have NEVER been to a winery! They mainly buy their wines from grocery stores!!! So unless you’ve netted yourself a great distributor, you NEED to focus on Millennial Outreach!!!
"Talk to your favorite wine shop, encourage them to reach out to this age group. If you are a winery and the shop carries your brands, offer to hold a tasting there geared towards younger drinkers. If you are a retailer, look into social media – even if you’re intimidated, all it really takes is a Facebook page. Throw events, reach out to younger social groups in your area, get creative. I know of a young BOOK CLUB in LA that has all their meetings at a wine shop with a tasting bar." (This is a quote from the Leah Hennessy article referenced above and be sure to think of Twitter as part of your social media repertoire.)
Search Engines
Search Engines (especially Google) do index Twitter (in fact, because the content is updated so frequently, tweets probably carry more Search Engine weight then web pages!) and so you want to be sure to link to your site in your tweets.
For example, if you’re offering a 2 hour Twitter sale on your ‘Willamette Valley 2005 Pinot Gris’, then be sure to link to your 06 Pinot Gris ‘Buy’ page. This way, when the Search Engines index all the various tweets your website will be ranked along with the keywords ‘Willamette Valley’, ‘Pinot Gris’ and so forth. (You can learn about more about Search Engines in my Demystifying Search Engines for Winery Websites post)
Getting Followers
Now that you’ve committed yourself to the Twitter experience (riiiiiiigggggghhhhhhttttttt), your next step is to attract ‘followers’. Here are a few ideas to make it happen:
Post a link to your Twitter account on your website so visitors can immediately start following your ‘tweets’
Make sure your Twitter username is on all your print materials.
Start posting regularly!!!! (This is something I’m trying to do myself!)
Be sure to respond to any tweets sent directly to you.
Completely fill out your Twitter profile with a link to your main website and a picture (I won’t follow someone who doesn’t have a profile)
There are TONS of wine enthusiasts using Twitter to express their love of wine — these are the people you want following you! So once you have your profile set up and a few tweets under your belt, use Twellow to search for Twitter profiles that involve wine and ‘Follow’ them. This alerts them to your presense and if they like your posts, they will probably follow you right back.
Use the ‘hashtag‘ (#) in your posts. (I’m still trying to figure this one out, but I take it to mean words that are prefixed with a # are grouped and can be found and tracked back to you — and if I’m wrong, somebody PLEASE correct me
‘Retweeting’: Per Wiki Answers, to "retweet" is to repeat/quote someone’s tweet. Usually when you come across an interesting tweet and want to publish it as your own tweet so that people who follow you see it too – you retweet it. The syntax of your tweet should start with the abbreviation RT or the word Retweet followed by the username of the person who tweeted it and then finish with the content of the actual tweet. Example: RT @WineryMarketing Rachell is the greatest wine marketer of ALL TIME!!!!
A little nicety that can spread good will amongst new followers is to reply directly to each new follower with a little note saying something to the effect “Thank you for following us!”
Free Twitter Tools
Here are some of my favorite Twitter tools
and ones I’ve just learned about and plan on using regularly (I’ve listed them in order of importance — to me anyway
http://tweetbeep.com
Keeps track of conversations that mention you, your wine, your winery, anything — with hourly updates! You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL (like bit.ly or tinyurl.com).
http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta
TweetDeck works like a ‘Twitter’ browser that allows you to organize the people you follow into various groups and then displays their tweets within each group to help make some kind of order out of what could very possibly be twitter chaos. I have the following groups set up: Wineries, Marketing, Technical and Fun.
http://tinyurl.com/
Shortens long urls so you can add them to your Twitter posts and still stay under the 140 character limit.
http://useqwitter.com
Qwitter emails you when someone stops following you on Twitter — it will even let you know what was the last post they read before they quit! So if you see a bunch of people quit after you posted "Robert Parker SUCKS!!!" you’ll know you have a lot of Parker fans out there and may have some serious making up to do.
http://twuffer.com
Twuffer allows the Twitter user to compose a list of future tweets, and schedule their release.
http://twitter.grader.com
This is just a fun application that allows you to see where you stack up against other Twitter users. Twitter Grader measures the power of a Twitter user based on followers, number of updates, and posting frequency.
http://twitterfeed.com
Posts your blog posts directly onto Twittter and other microfeed sites.
http://twitoria.com
Twitoria finds your friends that haven’t tweeted in a long time so you can give them the boot!
So, are you sick of everything ‘Twitter’ yet???!!!!! Until I wrote this article I never realized how many things started off with ‘tw’ and am thinking of adding a few of my own: ‘twittercide’ (death by twitter), ‘twitterphobi’ (afraid of everything twitter), the ‘Twitter Defence’ (Twitter made me do it) and
‘twitted out’ (sick of twitter).
But as much as it may overwhelm you, or even if you’re already sick of it, Twitter has proven to be an incredibly effective marketing tool. So why don’t we all just bite the bullet (I’m including myself here), and give it a shot?
Oh, and while you’re here, could you help me out and let me know what kinds of posts from me you’d be interested in? As some of you may or may not know, along with my passion for marketing, design and helping small vineyards and wineries, I also have 2 teenage sons, a housefull of animals (including a pig and a possum), a co-dependent relationship with my pug ‘Pugsley’ and volunteer regularly with at-risk teens and non-profit animal organizations.
So, should I be tweeting about EVERYTHING? Or only things relating to the wine industry? Please check what things you’re interested in in the pole below (because who wants to hear about the pig getting into the pantry when all you really want is more wine marketing advice! Select as many answers as apply.
Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.
Explaining, in very simple terms, why Search Engines are important to you, what the rankings mean, how Search Engines work, choosing your keyword phrases and using them to improve your Search Engine rankings, and ways to check your progress.
Disclaimer
This article is by no means the end-all, be-all of Search Engine Information!!!! They are such complicated beasties it would be as difficult to try and totally explain them as it would be to explain the U.S. tax system!
Instead, what I’ve tried to do is focus the article on those of you who may not be very familiar with Search Engines and to give you an idea of how they work and what you can do to help your winery website’s rankings — without spending a fortune at a marketing company.
Importance of Search Engines and Rankings
We all know Search Engines are important, but you may be asking yourself "How do they effect me and my winery?" Well, believe it or not, people are actually using the Search Engines to look for new, undiscovered wineries and wines.
For example, I just checked on Google to see how many people searched using the phrase ‘buy pinot noir’, and was FLOORED! An average of 1,600 people search using that term per month! PER MONTH!!!! How do you think it would effect your pinot noir sales if you showed up in the first few pages of these results? (And to be effective, you want to show up in the first 3 pages of the results for the keywords you’ve targeted.)
But how do you get on the first 3 pages? Well, first you have to know a little bit about how Search Engines work . . . .
Explaining the Search Engine Process
How Search Engines find web pages and content to rank for their search results is they send out little computer programs called ‘web crawlers’ or ’spiders’ who browse through websites on the internet and, based on certain words and phrases in the web page’s coding and text, rank it for the keyword phrases it feels are most relevant.
For example, if the ’spider’ reads through your ‘Vineyard’ page and encounters the phrase ’sustainable farming’ a lot, then it will consider your page relevant for that keyword phrase and rank you for it accordingly. Of course, this is a gross simplification of the process, and does not take into consideration how much competition you may have for these same keyword phrases, but I hope it helps you understand a wee bit about how they work.
So, what do you do with this knowledge? Why, make sure every page on your site is rich with the keyword phrases you want to be ranked highly for! Sounds easy doesn’t it? NOT!!!!
Finding Good Keyword Phrases
You may be asking yourself, "Why do I need to FIND good keyword phrases? Can’t I just optimize my site for ‘buy pinot noir’ and get ranked high for that?" Unfortunately, no. The more popular a phrase is, the more competition there will be amongst websites for space in those coveted 3 results pages I mentioned above. For example, below you can see that over 4 million web pages showed up in the results when I searched using the term ‘buy pinot noir’ — that’s A LOT of competition!
Unless you are pretty dedicated to being ranked for this phrase (and when I say ‘dedicated’, I mean with both your time and your money) your chances of showing up in the top 3 pages is pretty slim. So now what do you do?
You are going to have to get creative with your keyword phrases and narrow your focus. You want to use keyword phrases that are popular enough by potential consumers to be worthwhile, yet not so popular with your competition that it is impossible to make it to the top 3 pages.
So, Instead of shooting for ‘buy pinot noir’, maybe you should focus on ‘willamette valley pinot noir’ or ‘award winning pinot noir’. And maybe there are keyword phrases out there people are using that you never thought of! (We are so involved with the wine industry it can be impossible to try and ‘think’ like a consumer and figure out what keywords they would use to look for wine.) So, to help you come up with keyword ideas is Google’s Adword Keyword Tool. (This is actually for their ‘Adwords’ customers but anyone can use it.)
When you click on the above link, you are taken to the page where you can enter in the keyword phrases you want to use as a starting point. In the below example, I used ‘willamette valley pinot noir’.
After you click on ‘Get keyword
ideas’ the following page comes up:
What you are looking for on this page are keyword phrase ideas you can use and how popular they are (like I mentioned above, you want a phrase that is popular enough to be worthwhile in pursuing but not so popular you don’t stand a chance of ranking in the first 3 page results).
After looking at the keyword results Google gave me I found several phrases I hadn’t thought of! One of these is ‘willamette valley vineyards pinot noir’ and with it averaging 260 searches a month, this would be a great phrase to pursue for your website! You KNOW at least 260 people are using it to search with per month, and when I searched for it using Google it returned only around 50,300 results. This may SEEM like a lot, but with a little work optimizing your site you have a good chance of rising to the top.
Take your time and have fun using this AWESOME Google tool! You may be surprised at the keyword phrases that pop up and the more specific keyword phrases you find the better your chances of showing up in the top 3 pages of the search results.
Where To Put Your Keyword Phrases
Now that you have your list of keyword phrases, what do you do with them? I’m going to go over where you need to insert these words and phrases and once you understand how this works, either you or your web designer can put them into action.
Home Page
Search Engines consider your home page to be the most important page on your entire site! (This is the page that comes up when people type in www.yourwebsite.com.) Because of this, you need to make sure your home page is chock full of keyword rich text! So, if you have an intro page that only includes a graphic and/or Flash animation with a link to the rest of your site, you could be missing out on many Search Engine opportunities.
Spangler Vineyards is an example of a winery who knows what keyword phrases they are targeting and do a great job of making sure their home page is rich with them. ‘Distinctive Red Wines’, ‘Vibrant White Wines’ and ‘Wines in Southern Oregon’ are all keyword phrases used in their main header and are popular enough terms to be searched for in the Search Engines but not so popular they’re impossible to get ranked in. These phrases are also used in the text that follows which makes the Search Engine ’spiders’ think this page is even more relevant for these keywords — thereby increasing their chances of being ranked high.
Keywords In The Code
Something you may not be aware of is that much like the wiring for your home is hidden in the walls, the coding for your web page is hidden behind the visible face it shows to the world. To the right is an example of the coding that makes up a web page.
Those of you using Mozilla FireFox, Google Chrome or Internet Explorer can view the coding by pulling up a web page, right clicking anywhere on the page (except on an image or flash animation) and selecting ‘View page source’ or ‘View Source’ from the window that pops up. This will open up another page that includes all the coding for that page.
Why do you need to know this? Because within this coding section are some very important areas to the Search Engines: your Meta Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords and Header Tags.
Meta Titles
Meta tags are snippets of code at the top of your page that can be used in a variety of ways. You want to use them to give your page a Meta Title, a Meta Description and Meta Keywords.
Below is an example of the meta tags on my home page focusing on my primary keyword phrase of ‘winery website’
<title>Winery Website Design and Vineyard Photography</title> <meta name="description" content="Focusing on small, boutique and micro wineries." /> <meta name="keywords" content="wine marketing, wine web design, wine web site, wine website, wine websites, winery creative services, winery ecommerce, winery ecommerce solution, winery shopping cart, winery web design, winery web site, winery web site design, winery web site maintenance, winery website, winery website design, winery website maintenance, winery websites, micro wineries, small wineries, boutique wineries" />
As you can see, ‘Winery Website’ is the first phrase in my title, and focus this even more by including in my meta description the type of wineries I prefer to work with. If you are wondering why I did not include my company name in the title or description, this is because the keyword phrase ‘winery website’ has a lot more competition for high rankings in the Search Engines then ‘4 the Grapes’. And ‘4 the Grapes’ is used often enough in the site that I rank high for my company name anyway — make sense?
VERY IMPORTANT: Be sure to reinforce the keyword phrases used in your meta tags on the rest of your page! If you were using the above meta tag examples for your page, you would back them up by having ‘Winery Website” in your page header and also use it in the regular text of the page. This way the Search Engine spiders who are browsing your page can see you really do have relevant content for these keywords and will factor this in during rankings
Header Tags
Header tags are the HTML tags used to code the headers on your page. The Search Engines consider <H1> to be the most important heading on your page and the higher the ‘H’ tag the lower is its importance.
As you can see in the above example, I reinforced my relevancy for the keyword phrase ‘winery website’ by including it in my <h1> tag.
ALT Tags
Alt tags are part of the image coding describing what the image is about. They are mainly for folks who have their images turned off or for the seeing impaired, but the Search Engine spiders read these descriptions too and you can use them for your keyword phrases.
In the example to the left, the alt tag describes this picture as "Abacela, a southern oregon vineyard" which will help their ranking for ’southern oregon vineyard’
Other Factors That Effect Your Search Engine Rankings
I know I’ve already given you a TON of information, but I promise, we’re almost done! The Search Engines consider 2 other factors when ranking your site.
#1 is how often you update your web pages (especially your home page). You see, they think if a website is updated often then the site owners are ‘obviously’ on the ball and should have their keyword phrases ranked higher then a website that’s been sitting, unchanged, for months. (I always recommend to my clients they update their home page regularly with the latest wine releases, new reviews and awards and listing any events they will be having.)
And #2 is how many outside websites are linking to yours. The Search Engines feel a site that has a lot of links leading to it from other sites MUST be important, so they will rank this site higher then a site that has no other sites linking to it. There are many ways to get other sites to link to yours but here are just a few to get you started:
You can ‘trade links’ with other websites. For example, set up a ‘Visit’ page on your website and ask the various businesses you want to include on this page if they would link to you if you link to them.
You can start playing with social media websites like Twitter and LinkedIN and post links to your site there.
How to check your progress
For my Grand Finali, I’m going to let you know a little secret on how to track your progress in the Search Engines — Web Position. This program will look through the Search Engines you specify for the keyword phrases you set to see if, and where you rank. It is a WONDERFUL tool and is considered the industry standard software for Search Engine marketers everywhere. You may think because of this it would be pretty expensive, but you can buy the ‘Standard Version‘ for about $150 and they do offer a free trial. Below is an example of one of their result summaries for my own site:
I hope I haven’t completely overwhelmed you, but by breaking down all the different elements of the Search Engines I’m hoping you have a better understanding of how they work and some solid ideas you can implement on your site to improve your own Search Engine rankings.
Regularly sending out eNewsletters is a PROVEN technique to instilling loyalty in your site visitors and turning potential customers into actual customers. But, if you don’t already have a huge list of subscribers to start with, how do you go about growing your list?
Growing your Winery Email List
Have your ‘Subscribe to our eNewsletter’ form prominently displayed on your homepage and, even better, on every page of your website.
Add to your list the email addresses of all the people who have ever purchased your wine online.
When people order your wine over the phone be sure to ask for their email address and include them to your list.
Have a ‘Guestbook’ or sign-up sheet always available in your tasting room and on your table at winery events where people can give you their name and email address.
When discussing your wines with an interested party, ask them if you can add their email address to your eNewsletter list.
If you belong to a regional winery/wine growing group such as ‘Dundee Hills Wine Growers Association‘ that collects site visitor emails, ask the website administrator to send you a list of all their email subscribers.
Offer the chance to win a prize by subscribing and be sure to include the price (so they understand the value they are getting), a picture and, if possible, testimonials of how wonderful it is.
Some potential prizes could be:
a cork-screw
a tasting kit (aka tasting flight) Since you probably can’t send wine, this could include a wine opener, logo glasses, wine glass sheet along with notes and a pen (maybe even some cheese?)
a logo wine glass
Some of your branded apparel
Give new sign-ups an incentive to join by offering something they can download after signing up. (and be sure to include the price and, if possible, testimonials of how wonderful it is)
Some examples could be:
A collection of recipes that can be paired with your wine in pdf format so they can be downloaded after subscribing.
A wine and food pairing booklet in pdf format so they can be downloaded after subscribing.
Maybe a ‘how-to’ manual on hosting a wine tasting? (Which of course would be in pdf format so they can be downloaded after subscribing.
I know coming up with this material make take you some time, but it would be so worth it in the long run because not only does it increase your eNewsletter sign-ups, but it helps to build brand loyalty. Even better, once these digital files are put together, it will cost you nothing for them to be downloaded!
Use Twitter to collect email by:
Including something in your Twitter bio like "subscribe to our eNewsletter to get more indepth info"
Responding personally to new ‘Followers’ with a ‘Thank you for following me, if you want more information be sure to sign-up for my eNewsletter’
Ideas for Using Your List
You want to PUBLISH REGULARLY (weekly or monthly) so your recipients have more opportunities to get to know you. Since I know how difficult it can be to come up with fresh material for a regular eNewsletter, something I’ve done to help me out is keeping an idea file where I can store anything and everything that could be of interest.
Here are some things I’ve come up with you can use in your eNewsletters (I know some are pretty obvious, but I hope I’ve included some stuff that was new :
Post any wine awards and/or good reviews along with a link to where they can actually purchase the wine (if you have a shopping cart).
Include any new wine releases along with tasting notes, food pairings and a link to where they can actually purchase the wine (if you have a shopping cart).
Any wine sales and/or special offers such as free shipping. (And I always thought it would be good idea to offer a special ‘2 day sale’ just for your eNewsletter subscribers to see if it increases your sales any.)
Let your subscribers know about any upcoming events.
Offer seasonal packages. Examples of this could go on forever (Christmas, Valentines Day, etc…) so maybe shake it up a bit with a little known special day? For example, did you know December 5th is Prohibition Day? This is as good a reason as any to offer a ‘Happy Prohibition Day’ package!
Winery specific information
Let folks know when and what you are bottling — and include pictures!!! (Remember, you want your recipients to get to know you and what better way to do this then with pictures.)
If you use one of those traveling bottling trucks, maybe let your subscribers know about it and explain how they work (I know I was fascinated when I first found out about the traveling bottling trucks and was amazed how they fit all that equipment into a truck!)
Let them know when you are barreling down.
Let folks know if you are considering using any new techniques or equipment such as oak alternatives or screw caps — and ask their opinion!! Make them feel involved in the decision.
Let your subscribers know about any new personnel you’ve hired or any new milestones you’ve reached. For example, ‘Our 10 Year Anniversary’, or ‘We’ve just added a new winemaker, John Smith, to our team. He is know for his . . .’
Vineyard Updates
Let them know when bud break happens and include pictures with captions.
Do the same thing for veraison explaining what it is and include pictures with captions
Of course harvest is always a great time (if you aren’t too busy ) to let your subscribers know what is going on.
Consider letting them know about canopy management, what it entails, why it is done and, as always, include pictures with captions
If you do anything special with your vineyard, include that in a eNewsletter. For example, Domaine Drouhin has a ‘green harvest’ during the summer where they thin a lot of their clusters, and Sokol Blosser is certified organic which entails a lot specific vineyard practices they need to do in order to maintain their ‘certified’ status.
Unique ways to use your wine
Pouring your desert wine over berries for a sweet treat!
Instead of buying ‘cooking wine’ in the grocery store, suggest they use some of your wine and why.
And then of course you can always throw in recipes to be paired with your wine.
What to Use to Send Out Your List
I recommend NOT using your regular email program to send out your eNewsletters — it can really tie up your server and the more sign-ups you get the more unwieldy it will be to handle everything. So I suggest using Vertical Response or Constant Contact to send out to your list. The reason for this is:
They are very inexpensive. If you plan to only send out eNewsletters sporadically, then your best bet is to use Vertical Response because they charge per email address and you can send out to about 1,000 emails addresses for only $15. Constant Contact charges a monthly fee so they are good for those of you who plan to send out eNewsletters regularly.
They provide the coding for your web designer to add to your website so every new subscriber will automatically be added to your eNewsletter list.
They make it easy to prepare and send out your eNewsletters and you can even schedule them ahead of time
And I saved the best for last!!! They can actually track how many of your eNewsletters were opened and, if you included links in the eNewsletter it can even tell you what links were clicked on along with how many times. This information is PRICELESS for figuring out how successful your eNewsletters are!
What Is A Good Open Rate?
For those of you who ARE tracking your eNewsletters, I thought I’d throw in this interesting bit of information I discovered today: According to Donna Gunter of ‘Get More Clients Online’, "a good open rate is considered to be 30-40%, which means that between 30 and 40% of your list is actually reading your broadcast." This may not seem like a lot, but considering how busy everyone is now-a-days, and how many eNewsletters they must get, its impossible to think all of your eNewsletters are going to be read by everyone.
As always, I would LOVE to hear your thoughts. So if you have an idea for winery eNewsletters (whether its growing your list or ideas on what to write about), please feel free to comment this blog or email me directly.
In a nutshell, you need to give your visitors a REASON to come back to your site. So think about it — what makes you return to a site time and time again?
The usual reasons are:
They have something you want (whether its a product or information)
The site is easy to navigate
They update their site regularly (so you know if you return there is a good chance you will see something new)
You receive regular eNewsletters from them about new products/information or a special offer
So how can you apply this to your own site?
Give your site visitors what they want
Most visitors to your site are looking to buy wine and/or find information about you. So make sure your site ‘gives them what they want’!
Offer a quick and easy way for them to buy wine online
Allow them to buy wine directly for your site (I’m planning a blog article discussing orderform/ecommerce solutions for wineries. You can vote to have this be my next topic here)
If you don’t want to deal with an online form or ecommerce (believe me, I understand what a nightmare shipping can be), then at least list and link to where they can buy your wine. For example, at Capitello Wines they have a link next to each wine where it can be purchased from AvalonWines.com.
Provide detailed information on your wines
Include a label and/or bottle shot
Provide tasting notes and/or technical notes
List any awards and good reviews the wine has received.
Offer a printable version of the wine information (usually in pdf format)
Tell your Story
ALWAYS include an ‘About’ or ‘History’ page telling visitors how you got started and why you are now making wine.
If you use any special techniques, have a unique set-up, or anything else of interest about your winery and/or yourself, TALK ABOUT IT!!!! For example, Mark and Marie Jurasevich of Noble Estate Vineyard make all their own wine using top-of-the-line but tiny equipment! So small, in fact, that during harvest Mark loads his beautiful Italian press using 5 Gallon buckets! What makes this so unique to consumers is by processing his grapes in such small amounts, he is able to control EVERYTHING that goes into them (no stray leaves, insects or bad berries).
If you are using organic or sustainable methods, say so! And maybe even explain what that is.
Make your site easy to navigate
Have you ever searched a site looking for a specific product or bit of information and it took at least 20 minutes to find? If so, then you KNOW how FRUSTRATING this can be! So make sure you aren’t doing the same thing to your visitors.
Make your navigation clearly visible (don’t hide it in a bunch of design elements) and easy to understand (don’t use ‘clever’ wording)
Try to keep your main navigation under 10 links — otherwise you can overwhelm your visitor. If you have a LOT of pages, then organize them into categories and sub categories.
If you have a lot of pages on your site, add a search feature and/or a site map
To see how intuitive your current navigation is, have some non-industry friends and family (maybe even trusted customers) visit your site and go through the motions of purchasing wine or looking for information. Once finished, ask them about their experience — what was good, what was bad, and what could be improved on.
This is especially important because we are always so familiar with our own sites that things we just automatically know, site visitors could be fumbling with.
Update your website regularly — especially your home page!!!!!!!
Show your site visitors you have a dynamic website by frequently updating your home page. Don’t know what to put there? Here are some ideas:
List any wine awards and good reviews
List upcoming events
Add any new wine releases
If you’ve hired any new personnel, include their information
If you have a blog, list your latest blog title with a link to the blog itself
Besides your home page, make sure your wine list and event schedule stay current and get rid of past events — nothing makes you look more out of date then to still have an event listed from months ago!
If you’re concerned about the cost to have these changes done regularly, or if it takes your webmaster a long time to make changes, here are some ways to update your site yourself:
If your webmaster coded your site using Adobe Dreamweaver (this is the industry standard web design software), then you can download and use Adobe Contribute (which works in conjunction with Dreamweaver) to update your site as easily as a Word for Windows document. (You will need to get your site information from your webmaster in order to set this up.) What is so great about Contribute is you can try the software free for 30 days, and if you want to continue using it you can buy it for only $199.
Another option is to ask your webmaster about installing a content management system (CMS) onto your site. Once installed you will be able to login online and easily edit the text sections of your site.
Contact your visitors regularly
With so many places selling wine, you need to keep yourself in the front of your customer’s minds by contacting them regularly via eNewsletters.
With online eNewsletter companies like Vertical Response and Constant Contact, you can easily collect visitor emails and send out eblasts every time a new wine is released, to announce a new promotion, if you have a new event scheduled, received a new wine award, or any other reason you can think of!
By doing this, not only are you making sure your consumers don’t forget you, you’re also giving them a reason to visit your site and hopefully buy wine!
As I’m sure your accounting sheets have told you, the struggling economy has finally slowed down the wine buying boom we’ve been enjoying. People are still buying wine, but now they’re focusing on wines under $10 so they can buy two bottles of wine for the same amount they used to spend on one.
So, if you are selling $15+ bottles of wine, what do you do? Drop your prices to meet the $10 mark so your sales go up? If you do this, what happens when the economy picks up and sales for wines over $10 start to go up again? (And with the Millennial generation continuing their love affair with wine, people are pretty convinced that when the economy picks up again, so will the sales on $20+ wines.)
According to Chris Hanna, owner of Hanna Winery and a board member of the Sonoma County Vintners, “experience has shown that slashing prices to drive sales is not a smart long-term strategy. That’s what wineries did in the early 90’s and it’s tough to recover from such a move because consumers become accustomed to the lower prices.” (This information was pulled directly from the PressDemocrat.com.)
So, if slashing your prices isn’t a good idea, can you afford to hang tight until the economy picks up?
Before you decide, here are some ideas to increase sales (some in the short term) without actually slashing your prices:
Special offers & sales you can do in your tasting room and online store
Offer free shipping
A couple of days ago I received an email from Petsmart offering me free shipping until January 18th. Now, anyone who knows me knows I have a TON of pets, so you can imagine how fast I jumped on this offer! I ended up ordering a ton of stuff and it should be arriving soon!
Why did I include this little story? To show you how EFFECTIVE free shipping is in boosting your sales! And many wineries who offer free shipping are also experiencing a rise in sales.
You can either offer free shipping for a certain amount of time, or, you can follow Wine.com’s example and for $50 per year, a Wine.com customer can have all the wine they buy shipped to them at no additional cost. (And there’s no minimum order.)
For those of you who decide to send out this shipping special via eNewsletter, be sure to put ‘Free Shipping till ####’ in the subject line (studies show that having ‘Free’ in your subject line greatly increases the open rate of your eNewsletters)
Include a complimentary box of exotic chocolates with each purchase of 2 bottles
Consumers LOVE getting a little something extra, and this could be just the impetus you need to double your sales at minimal cost.
Buy 2 get 1 FREE!
Since so many people are choosing to buy the cheaper wines so they can buy 2 for the price of 1 higher priced wine, maybe offer 3 bottles for the price of 2.
Using your eNewsletter to make some quick sales
Offer online wine ‘exclusives’
Give your eNewsletter subscribers the option to buy a new release a few days before its available to the general consumer
Offer a 2 day sale or special deal (3 for the price of 1 or free shipping)
eNewsletter Tip
When creating the subject in your eNewsletter, don’t use the word ‘discount’. According to Gene Pierce, president and owner of Genora Wine Cellars in Dundee, NY (this was pulled from an article in‘Vineyard and Wine Management Magazine,) “The word ‘discount’ doesn’t mean that much anymore,” he says. “But the words ‘free’ and ‘shipping’ get people’s attention.”
Marketing ideas to increase awareness and potential profit
Focus on building your wine club
Each new wine club member is a guaranteed sale for each of your club shipments, and most of the members supplement these shipments by using their wine club discounts to buy even more wine. These loyal members can make up the foundation of your sales to help get you through these hard times.
Ways to attract more wine club members:
Create an eye-catching link or graphic saying ‘Join Our Wine Club’ in one of the upper corners of every page of your website that visitors can click to immediately be taken to where they can join your wine club.
Place the benefits of your wine club and the sign-up form (don’t forget to have a pen for them to use nearby!) stratigically around your tasting room so people can access it easily
Offer a sign-up bonus if a current member gets their family and friends to join.
In your member benifits text, be sure to focus on the VALUE of their becoming a wine club member and how this will allow them to become an IMPORTANT and ESSENTIAL member of your TIGHT-KNIT family.
Increase awareness of your wines and winery with the public and Search Engines by starting a Blog and blogging REGULARLY.
One thing I’ve always recommended to increase your blogging entries without taking up all of your time is to assign someone different to do it each week. For example, if your winery is large enough, have your winemaker blog one week, your vineyard manager the next, your sales manager the week after that and then an entry by the owner. This way everyone only has to write one blog entry a month and your site visitors get to learn all about you from a number of different sources. This also increases brand loyalty because the more people read about you the more they feel like they know you and have a stake in your winery.
Even better, getting a blog is FREE! The most popular place to get one is of course http://www.blog.com/ and http://wordpress.com/, but you can find a free place to blog almost anywhere. If you really get into blogging you can even have a blog installed on your site with your own website design and can even have any current blog entries transferred over quickly and easily.
Another benefit about starting a blog is the Search Engines LOVE them! As long as you post often (weekly is best, but you could get away with posting only monthly) the Search Engines will consider you to be important and relevant for your niche and this will greatly increase your Search Engine ranking — which can in turn bring more site visitors and ultimately . . . more sales.
“Forward to a Friend”
This idea was proposed by Vertical Response: “We’ve seen some pretty rapid list growth from the wine industry specifically. Seems that everyone who loves a particular wine wants all their friends to know! Make sure in each email you send out you include a forward to a friend link. Even if your recipients don’t use the link, they may be inspired to forward it using their email reader. Also, make sure that you always use a link for this instead of a field.”
Google Adwords
According to Vertical Response: “If you’re not buying adwords through Google, MSN or Yahoo! you should be. It can be a very cost-effective way for you to get new customers or even newsletter registrants. If someone gets to your site but may not want to purchase just yet, they may want a bit more information from a newsletter. Make sure you’ve got a form for them to fill out prominently placed.”
From my own experience using Google Adwords, here are some of the ways you can customize your campaign to get the most bang for your buck:
You can select what states/countries (maybe even cities?) you want your ads to appear. So if you are only licensed to ship wine to California, Oregon, and Washington, then you set up your ads to only appear for people ‘Googling’ from those states. This way you don’t have to pay for someone from Michigan clicking on your ad and not being able to do anything on your site.
You can set up a daily budget and at the end of the month (or whatever trial period you set up), decide if the ad was cost effective or not. (Be sure to ‘track’ your site visitors so you’ll know how many were referred to site from your Adwords campaign and how many of those spent time going through your site and maybe even buying wine)
Launch a referral campaign
Per http://theideaspot.blogspot.com/2007/08/word-of-mouth-for-winery.html, Launch a referral campaign using the email list already in place. Email a coupon to the email list worth a certain percentage off the first purchase from your tasting room and/or online store, then ask everyone on the email list to forward the coupon on to 10 friends. The friends receive the discount too when they use the coupon in the tasting room and/or online store. But add another twist: The coupon is also a registration slip for the original forwarder. When the friend brings the coupon into the tasting room, the original forwarder’s name is signed to the coupon. Everyone who refers X number friends to the tasting room automatically receives a gift (case of wine, logo shirt, etc.)
Ways to increase brand loyalty with your existing customers and wine club members
‘Nicities’
Offer recipes to pair with your wine and include them in wine shipments and eNewsletters.
Wine specials and discounts
Have specials and discounts available only for your most loyal customers and wine club members that include complimentary receptions with specially paired food.
Whew, that’s enough for now! But I’d LOVE to hear any ideas you have that I might have missed!
I have to admit, even though I have a Twitter account and have posted a bunch of tweets, until today, I really wasn’t sure what to do with it! I knew to send out a new tweet every time I posted a new blog topic or finished a new design, but other then that — what could I possibly post that people would be interested in? And then I read ‘Twitter Demystified for Business Users’ by Nancy McCord and Boy, were my eyes opened!
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Importance of Search Engines and Rankings
Something you may not be aware of is that much like the wiring for your home is hidden in the walls, the coding for your web page is hidden behind the visible face it shows to the world. To the right is an example of the coding that makes up a web page.
ALT Tags
Offer the chance to win a prize by subscribing and be sure to include the price (so they understand the value they are getting), a picture and, if possible, testimonials of how wonderful it is.
Why did I include this little story? To show you how EFFECTIVE free shipping is in boosting your sales! And many wineries who offer free shipping are also experiencing a rise in sales.