How to Develop a Winery Marketing Plan That Increases Engagement with Customers

How to Develop a Winery Marketing Plan That Supercharges Engagement with Your Customers

When it comes to selecting a winery to taste at or wine to buy, your winery is usually one of the many in a seemingly sea of options. Wine tasters new to the area and even seasoned veterans find it hard to make a decision if they haven’t heard of you before. Tasters don’t always know where to start and they are most likely going to look online to explore their options. It can be overwhelming. But in this post, we want to show you how to develop a winery marketing plan to more effectively engage your customers and why it’s important to do so.

It is becoming so important to set yourself apart for potential new wine fans to consider your tasting room. How can you attract more visitors to the tasting room or your eCommerce site so you’re not just one of the options, but the best option? Below, we will walk through 5 different steps you can take to develop your winery marketing plan in 2020 and beyond. And of course, this will include how you can take the most advantage of your commercial video production content.

Step 1: Define Your Winery Marketing Goals and Budget – Be Specific

Before beginning any marketing initiatives with your winery, the first thing you will want to do is define your goals, along with what budget you will be allocating toward these marketing goals.

All too often, we see a number of wineries who start to do marketing because that’s just what you are supposed to do in order to get the word out. And so they start investing in this newsletter, or this digital magazine to talk about their upcoming events and wine releases. They start to get more images, more graphics and then post on social media. Post and share, rinse and repeat. Although these tactics are not all for nothing, they are sometimes performed without a specific goal in mind and it becomes harder and harder to even measure how effective these marketing tactics are. So first things first, define your goals and begin to form your budget around what it might take to achieve those goals.

As you could imagine, there are a number of different goals you can set for your winery. There’s not one right way to set goals, however, we’d suggest to begin with those goals that moved you to want to perform marketing in the first place. What problem are you seeking to solve that marketing might be able to handle? Is there a number you need to reach or number of bottles you need to move with regards to revenue? Are you wanting more visitors to step foot in the tasting room? Perhaps you want to sell more wine online? Remember, be specific about these goals.

For example, your goal might look something like this: I would like my winery to increase online wine sales by 30% by end of year.

From there, you can begin to ask yourself a number of questions for you to be able to move into what marketing plan you should put in place to make sure (best you can) to achieve that goal.

What does that revenue number look like? Based on current traffic and conversions to sales, how many more visitors to my website would I need in order to increase the number of sales I have online? What am I willing to invest in order to see that outcome?

Step 2: Define Your Audience – Attract The Right Buyers and Club Members

Once you are able to establish your goals, you are going to want to make sure that you define the audience who will help you to achieve those goals. How old are they, where do they hang out? How do they interact with content online and how can you better serve them and their needs before they come to the tasting room?

Just like we worked through with your goals above, you are going to want to be very specific about your audience. As we briefly discussed in our previous blog, “How Winery Commercial Video Marketing Can Increase Wine Sales” you must be very clear as to who your ideal customer is and to understand the “anyone who drinks wine” isn’t going to cut it. You need to show your audience exactly who they are, what they think and who they look like, so every touch point they have with your winery brand is relevant to them. One way wineries can think about defining their audience, is by building a tribe you want them to be a part of.

For instance, when you think of Nike, those who wear their clothing are a part of a tribe. Why do their sneakers cost more than brands you haven’t heard of? Why do I feel more like an NBA player when I wear their shoes in a basketball game? Nike has made me feel like I am a part of a particular tribe by how they market themselves. They’ve defined their tribe and it consists of the athletes I see on television who represent that brand. “If you buy our clothing, you’re one of us.” Don’t mistake targeting your audience with having to discriminate against others, because Nike’s mission is all-inclusive!

“Our mission is, To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. *If you have a body, you are an athlete.” –

What Is Nike’s Mission? | Nike Help

So who is your audience? What tribe are you inviting tasters to be a part of? It’s okay to have an inclusive market, however, be very precise with your touch points with each of your potential customers.

Step 3: Create Better Winery Marketing Content – Not More Noise

We’re almost half-way there, and this is the fun part! Time to create content that engages your audience and hits those goals. As you know, when it comes to social media and the web, there is a lot of noise and not all of it is helpful. Nor engaging. A lot of content is great, however, the way in which we deliver content does not always get their attention.

How can you start creating better content?

With absolutely zero bias, we recommend a video marketing strategy.

According to Hubspot,

(Wordstream, 2018) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)

Remember that sample goal above with regards to selling more wine online? The use of winery videos on your website can increase conversions by 86%. That’s a lot more sales.

A couple more stats that show how others have taken advantage of commercial video marketing content:

(My SMN, 2017)

(Forbes, 2017) (Source: HubSpot)

In short, let’s develop better content; video content. Developing content that moves the needle and makes an impact on your marketing efforts is key so you can achieve the goals you’ve set out to accomplish. Tell your story, show your tasting room, and give your audience a reason why they should visit or buy through winery commercial video production.

Step 4: Create a Winery Marketing Campaign

Let’s put everything we’ve covered so far together (goals, audience, and content) and create your marketing campaign. Once again, the key to creating your marketing campaign is to be specific, organized, and strategic.

How long should a marketing campaign be? Well that depends on your goal, audience, and content type and how aggressive you would like to be in reaching that goal.

To continue with the example we’ve used before:

Goal: Increase online wine sales by 30% by end of year

Audience: The discerning wine taster age 35 to 45

Content: Winery Brand Story Video Production

Marketing Campaign: Before you kick off your winery marketing campaign, start with a schedule and ask yourself: How will I share my content and where?

Making sure you promote your content is key and so important to launching an effective winery marketing campaign. Ever hear of the latest product that solves your x, y, z needs? Probably by way of a marketing campaign. Share the content you’ve created for the right people. This is why we recommend working with a winery marketing agency you can trust like our friends at Vinbound Marketing. They offer a full range of digital marketing and branding services to grow tasting room traffic and help you to sell more wine.

Step 5: Measure the Results and Be Flexible

How did your winery marketing campaign perform? Did you reach your goal? If not, where do you see areas for improvement?
Measuring the performance of your campaign is important to note so you can be flexible in how you approach your next marketing effort. Marketing, like everything else, is about making sure you’re always improving and simply getting better. For instance, if you did not see as much traffic as you would have liked, find out why. Ask yourself how you can make better use of the content you have on hand. Moreover, you may realize that your marketing campaign was delivered in the best way, but you might have to be more realistic with your upcoming goals and expectations. Or maybe you exceeded all expectations and blew your goal out of the water and it’s time to set your sights even higher, make it more challenging. Whether you missed your goal by a landslide, or over performed, take note and adapt for your next marketing efforts to pack your tasting room in 2020.

If you would like to learn more about how commercial video production can impact your marketing plan for 2020, let us know and send us an email. We’d love to hear more about how you are video marketing today, what’s worked, and what hasn’t. Learn More