5 Ways Your Winery Can Thrive with a Virtual Tasting Room Video Production

The world has gone digital. Possibly more than ever, bringing the experience of your tasting room to the homes of your customers and potential wine buyers can truly impact your direct to consumer wine sales. Amid the recent pandemic, wineries have had to close their doors (physical doors) to the public. It can be scary, a bit terrifying to continue to operate without knowing what the future might look like. Regardless of the pandemic, there are other ebbs and flows to business such as season, weather, and countless others. However, we are going to cover 5 different reasons why your winery can thrive in uncertain economic climates with a virtual tasting room.

One of the best ways your winery can continue to make a splash in those seasons, which can typically be described as slow, is by way of a virtual tasting room. Below, we will also cover the benefits and real life applications for how you can creatively go about tackling various initiatives with your online virtual tasting video.

Here’s a sneak peek of the reasons we will cover:

  • Virtual tasting rooms on video have no limits
  • Educate a larger audience
  • Customers can experience the tasting room in their own home
  • Other wineries are already getting started
  • The virtual tasting room is open 24/7
map of multiple destinations

1. The Virtual Tasting Room Exists Wherever There’s Internet: Everywhere.

The first reason for why your winery can thrive with a virtual tasting room is that it is no longer confined to the 4 walls of your space. Your winery is no longer limited to who can fit into a tasting room at one time, nor the timing for which your customers show up. Your tasters can also be wherever you ship your wine meaning they can taste with you wherever they are in the world as long as they have an internet connection. With winery video production, you can bring the tasting room to the comfort of your customers homes. You can also host an on demand Q and A creating a direct line of communication with your tasters. If they have questions, you can answer them online. Remember, the event does not have to be live in order to serve your customers through a virtual tasting room. You can host a pre-recorded event, and host the tasting similar to a webinar and be on demand without necessarily having to perform another tasting on video.

The Benefit:

Reach more customers, in a shorter amount of time while still being able to build a meaningful relationship with your tasters.

Real Life Application Tip:

Professionally pre-record your private tasting room event so you can laser focus on how you would like to deliver the tasting experience. Live events can have their hiccups, so being able to pre-record and perform based on a predetermined strategy can showcase a much more customized and premium experience for your tasters. Your winery can also continue to use the virtual tasting room commercial video production in future marketing endeavors throughout the year, so you are not limited to a specific time and location.

collage of wine tasters on their computer

2. Educate A Larger Audience with Virtual Tasting Rooms

A winery virtual tasting room also gives you the ability to educate a larger audience about your wines. Instead of being limited to the size of your tasting room, you can now walk tasters through each of your wines, how they’re made, what qualities to pay attention to, along with what they can be paired with. The sky’s the limit with the amount of tasters you can reach because there is no boundary to how many fans can taste with you online. A lot of wineries we’ve spoken with have found the most success of their sales are by word of mouth, but now they’ll have the ability to share your tasting room with even more families and friends. They’ll be able to hear directly from your most trusted team member about the wines they’re tasting, and what makes them different. By bringing the experience online through video production, you can truly scale your business.

The Benefit:

Bring the tasting room experience to a larger audience and scale your sales at an exponential rate, versus only being able to speak with those directly in front of you in the tasting room.

Real Life Application Tip:

You can still apply all of the perks of what it’s like to be in your tasting room, such as exclusive wine discounts and club membership incentives. Remember, you’re just bringing the unique experience of your winery tasting room to their home.

wine bottle and glasses for tasting at home

3. The Wine Tasting Experience on Video without Leaving Home

With a virtual wine tasting room, you can now provide a guided tasting experience without any of your customers having to leave their home. Your winery’s tasting room can remain open without having to physically be open. This is incredibly important and relevant at a time when California has been ordered to close all essential businesses to the public for health and safety. As reported by Silicon Valley Bank, 30% of wineries income comes directly from the tasting room1 so it’s understandable why it’s very scary when you can’t have the tasting room available for your members and customers. However, with a virtual tasting experience, you don’t have to stop doing business. Customers can enjoy your tasting experience right at home, and they can have a direct line of communication with you to purchase even more wine. Get live feedback, and answer any questions from your home to theirs.

The Benefit:

Whether we are in the midst of a pandemic, simply find it challenging to visit the tasting room because of taster’s location or inclement weather, you can bring the tasting room straight to your taster’s home.

Real Life Application Tip:

Build a video marketing campaign to attract and incentivize tasters to be a part of your virtual tasting room experience. As important as it is to create the VTR, it’s even more important to let potential customers know it exists.

various wine bottles from competitors

4. Rise WITH Other Wineries and Don’t Fall Behind

The fourth reason why your winery can thrive with a virtual tasting room is by being able to rise with the competition. Wineries, at least the good ones, are constantly thinking of new ways to innovate in the industry. How can we continue to deliver a better customer experience for our tasters? How can we make our experience more unique?

Many wineries are jumping on board and already have the ability to bring the tasting room to their customers’ devices. Visit Napa Valley2 is compiling a great list of those wineries in Napa county alone. With the world going digital, wineries are doing their best to keep up and enhance their online experience. The virtual tasting room is proving to be the perfect way to do just that.

The Benefit:

As mentioned above, with the current pandemic and the needs to close physical doors to the public, wineries are becoming much more creative about how they can still have the tasting room experience replicated without being open to the public.

Real Life Application Tip:

Partner with a commercial video production agency who can help you to be creative about how to approach your winery virtual tasting room. Review what the competition is doing and put your own spin on it, just like you’ve done with your wine.

winery open sign

5. The Virtual Tasting Room Experience 24/7/365

A lot of wineries are performing live tastings online through their virtual tasting room, which is great, however, you don’t have to stop there. Use the tasting experience over and over again by way of a professional video production.

How can our winery do that?

As suggested in our real life application tip above, pre-record your tasting experience, and do not just limit access to the one time experience for your guests. Instead of having a live experience, record professionally and continue to use the video as marketing material throughout the year. You can allow guests exclusive access 24/7 on their own time, at their own leisure. We all know that the more our customers learn about your wine and your story, the more wine they buy.

The Benefit:

The virtual wine tasting video can be used throughout the year rather than just a specific live event time.

Real Life Application Tip:

Work with your video production partner to use the footage captured in the wine virtual tasting room for other areas of your winery video marketing. You can use the footage in your various social media campaigns, on the website, and any other marketing campaigns you will be running. We’d also recommend creating a video that helps to promote the virtual tasting room so customers can see what it’s like to actually participate. Building trust with video of the VTR is key in building momentum.

What We’ve Covered So Far:

  • Virtual tasting rooms on video have no limits on the amount of people you can serve.
  • Educate a larger audience about your wine and what to look for
  • Customers do not have to leave the comfort of their home, and they can test with you and your team right from their personal devices.
  • Don’t fall to far behind, a lot of wineries are already using Virtual Tasting Room Videos
  • The virtual tasting room is open 24/7, any time, any season.

Are you considering a Virtual Tasting Room video for your winery? We’ve got a lot of ideas on how to make this possible and how to bring an amazing experience to your customers. Amber LeBeau at Spit Bucket has written an excellent piece on the subject in How Can We Make Virtual Wine Tastings Less Sucky? Despite the tactic and approach you take with your Virtual Tasting Experience, she says this as the key to remember:

“The key to remember is that even when you’re not selling bottles, you’re still selling your brand. You’re selling your passion, personality and insights.

We talked a lot about the virtual wine tasting room and how you can take advantage of video production. If you would like to learn more about how you can bring the tasting room to your customers online, let us know here and we would be happy to answer any questions you have.

Sources
1 Mobley, Esther. “While Sheltering in Place, California Wineries Rush to Offer Virtual Wine Tastings. Are They Fun or Just Awkward?” San Francisco Chronicle, 26 Mar. 2020, www.sfchronicle.com/wine/article/While-sheltering-in-place-California-wineries-15157851.php.

2 Maack, Janette. “Virtual Wine Tastings and Shipping Offers: Napa Valley Comes to You – The Visit Napa Valley Blog.” Visit Napa Valley, 18 Mar. 2020, www.visitnapavalley.com/blog/post/napa-valley-comes-to-you-virtual-tastings-and-special-shipping-offers/.

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