Wine Marketing & Website Tips

Interview with Leah Hennessy — Millennial, Owner of Millennier Wine Sales, author of the blog The Millennier: Wine + Millennials and all around AWESOME person! During our meeting we discussed what she likes and dislikes in a winery website, ways to attract Millennials to buy your wine and join your wine club and some basic marketing advice we should all implementing. What I love most about Leah is her advice is down-to-earth, easy to follow and, most importantly, actionable!!!!!

What do you consider to be the Millennial age range?

You can go to a dozen different places and get a dozen different age ranges for Millennials.  For me, personally, I consider anyone born after 1978 to be a Millennial.  But more important then age, what truly makes a Millennial are the shared experiences of a generation that have shaped us all in a similar way.

Why are Millennials buying wine?

Many of us have graduated from college and identify drinking wine as a symbol of our new mature, independent status and lifestyle. We’re basically like everyone else – we are looking for wines to celebrate special occasions, to share with friends and to drink with dinner.

Why do you go to a winery website?

I think that most Millennials don’t associate wineries with websites. So if I’m drinking a wine and see a url, or see that a winery is following me on Twitter I may go check it out. But I have to be looking for it specifically — I generally don’t just randomly search for wineries or wines on the Internet.

What do you look for in a winery website design?

Good design and information that is easy to access. And DON’T use the same design you’ve had for the last 20 years!!!  Look at your web design kind of like a hair cut — you might be really comfortable with the same hair cut you’ve been getting for the last 20 years, but by now you are looking PRETTY dated with that ‘do. Update it!  And just like a haircut, take a look at current magazines and pick out what you really like that is going on RIGHT NOW and incorporate those elements into your design. It will work wonders.

PS: We don’t mind scrolling down to read the whole page so don’t kill yourself trying to fit everything in one screen with no scrollbar.

Do you prefer Flash websites? (I’m asking this because many wineries feel to attract Millennials their site needs to be developed in Flash.)

You have to understand, I (and Millennials in general) are on the Internet ALL THE TIME. We just want to be able to access the information we’re looking for quickly and easily. So if the Flash is well done and I can still get to the information, then its fine. But if its over-stylized or unprofessional then I won’t be going back. So really, whether a site has Flash or not makes no difference to me — its all in how well put together it is and how much it excites me about the wine.

How do you feel about websites that open to music or someone talking to you?

Everyone I know HATES that — especially if I’m at work! Maybe because it reminds us too much of our old MySpace pages [that opened to music]. Whatever the reason, 9 out of 10 times it’s pretty annoying.

What irritates you the most about winery website’s?

Sites that still have old, dated designs, pixelated images, spontaneous music – also when a site does not have enough information, and/or when the site is difficult to navigate.  These things drive me CRAZY, but I’m always amazed at how many are out there. These businesses are shooting themselves in the foot by having these old or unprofessional websites representing who they are to a consumer group that they want to impress. When I sat down with Morgan First [Marketing and Community Director for 'The Second Glass' wine magazine and website, and Millennial Extraordinaire], the state of many winery websites is one of the first things we ended up discussing. Morgan relies on these sites for information on an upcoming articles and/or tastings. She wants to get her information quickly and easily and does not want to be bogged down with poor navigation, out-dated text, and slow loading graphics.

Millennials don’t need all the bells and whistles, but we do need a site that is professional looking, well designed, updated regularly, loads quickly and the information is easy to access.

What information do you look for in a winery website?

Where you are!!!! If you’re based in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, I want to know it. After that, I want your branding to make me excited about your wine! For anyone who doesn’t understand what branding is, it is your identity and your point of view that you show the world – this is what makes you stand out.

For example, Red Cap Vineyard’s POV centers around the young family that owns and works the vines in their Howell Mountain vineyard. They back this ‘branding’ up with pictures showing the family actually working in the vineyards and in their text with such headings as "Is Daddy Out Kissing the Grapes Again?"

After the home page, I go right to the wines section and look at the prices. If you are charging a lot of money for your wines, then you better have an impressive website.

What makes you want to return to a winery website?

I would go back for more information, to buy wine (especially if there was a sale or the shipping was free) and maybe to check out their blog and see new pictures — but I would only do this if I knew the blog and gallery were updated regularly.

What type of internet connection do you have?

Very fast. This is true for most Millennials and if they don’t have a fast Internet connection at home, then they would definitely have one at work.

Do Search Engines figure into your search for good wines?

Not often. I never blindly search for wines on the Internet. I have to have heard of a specific region, wine or winery before I will go searching for them on the Internet.

Do many Millennials access winery websites using mobile devices?

I do look at websites using my mobile device, but if your site doesn’t look good on my mobile browser its not a deal breaker. However, if you do decide to create a mobile version of your website, be sure to FLAUNT IT. Maybe even incorporate your technical experience into your POV.

I read about how Millennials live and breath on Facebook and don’t really even check their email — is this true?? If so, would an eNewsletter campaign even work with them?

If you are going for Millennials, then you should know that eNewsletters = junk mail. If you truly want a Millennial following, create a FaceBook ‘fan page’ for your winery, then utilize it as another mailing list. If you’re not sure how to do this, you can read my article on FaceBook for Wineries and if you still need some help then reach out to any Millennials you may know and have them show you the ropes. They can be your FaceBook expert and teach you its ins and outs as well as proper FaceBook etiquette.

Wineries are being told left and right to use Twitter. But how effective is using Twitter to attracting Millennial attention? Would their time be better spent focusing on their FaceBook page instead of twittering?

Twitter is a very important tool in your social media kit, and its not just limited to Millennials.  There are no where near as many Millennials on Twitter as there are on Facebook, and many Millennials "don’t get" Twitter – however, you can reach more than just Gen Y-ers on Twitter.  Businesses are reaching out to Millennials right now to increase sales – remember that, and don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. There may not be a huge concentration of Millennials on Twitter (yet), but there are millions of other potential consumers there to connect with.

What other social networking sites do Millennials go to regularly in regards to wine?

Yelp is a review website and is incredibly valuable to anyone who goes out to a restaurant, a store and/or BUYS WINE. If you sell wine then I would see if you are listed on Yelp and if you have any reviews.

You suggest in your Millennial Wine Club Outreach article that wineries should offer a lighter version of their wine club to Millennials — wouldn’t doing something like this alienate their existing Wine Club members?

No. As long as your rules are clearly posted, then why should your existing members get upset? After all, I don’t get ticked off when my bank offers discounts to students! I understand where they’re at and why they need the discounts. The same goes for us Millennials. Most of us are paying off student loans or saving up to buy a house and may be more likely to join your wine club if you have a ‘lighter’ version that we can more easily afford. And we are very picky about what wine club we want to join. The club needs to offer good discounts, good shipping, good events and, most importantly, treat us with respect.

I can’t thank Leah enough for her insightful and informative answers to my questions! I feel she has given some specific, easy to follow ideas to help you reach out to Millennials and hopefully, make them loyal wine buyers!

As usual, your comments and suggestions are encouraged!!!

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’

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.