To make social media effective for your winery, your posts and tweets need to reflect your personality and the personality of your winery — this is how you gain fans and hopefully, loyal followers and consumers. But do you have time to do all the social media marketing yourself? And if not, is it possible to outsource some of your social media responsibilities without losing your unique ‘voice’?
I am an AVID following of Donna Gunter’s blog ‘Get More Client’s Online’. What makes her blog so pertinent is her information is focused on small businesses — which easily translates to small wineries. This latest article of hers is a case in point: 7 Most Effective Tasks to Authentically Outsource in Your Social Media Marketing.
In this article, Donna explains what can’t be outsource, and what CAN — and knowing this may help you delegate some of your social media responsibilities so maybe, you can get a much needed break!
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!
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.