Courtesy Vineyard Wiki
Wine marketing is the number one challenge for wineries in today’s economy. The importance of social media for wine marketing can be directly related to the acronym “DTC.” Direct to consumer sales provide opportunities for higher profit margins, increased special event sales, and to sell important wine club memberships. Yet with all that is riding on direct to consumer sales and marketing, the awareness of the power of social media marketing as a sales channel remains underappreciated and underutilized.
Case in point, the Winebusiness.com “Direct to Consumer: 2009 Tasting Room Report.” Most interesting in this report are the “barriers” to maximizing DTC potential for all wineries. The reported challenges as well as the opportunities to overcome the challenges may surprise you.
Direct to Consumer Challenges
- Compliance and Shipping: (39 percent) believe issues of compliance and shipping “still outweigh all other barriers“
- Lack of Resources: (17 percent) people, time and money
- Effective Technology and Systems: (13 percent)
- Acquiring Customers: (13 percent) aka lead generation
- Marketing Tools: (13 percent) believe a lack of DTC marketing tools like customer relationship marketing (CRM) and Web analytics
Direct to Consumer Opportunities
- Tasting Room Software: according to the report there are many online systems available to greatly reduce the challenges of shipping and compliance
- Lack of Resources: the three resources are people, time, and money. The answers should include social media marketing training that enables key employees to become more efficient in their social media tasks. Another solution is to hire a social media marketing agency to run your marketing program
- Effective Technology and Systems: technologies that could improve DTC sales would be a blog and a strategic social media marketing plan to engage with consumers on Facebook and Twitter. Placing laptops in the tasting rooms so consumers can directly fan your Facebook winery page or follow your Twitter account(s) creates a bridge from real world to online world.
- “Acquiring Customers”: this challenge (lead generation) could be addressed with a DTC Twitter strategy in concert with a Facebook company page for customer relationship management
- Marketing Tools: customer relationship management would be the role of a strategically implemented Facebook company page that engaged consumers and created “Call to Action” messaging. Web analytic measurement tools could be implemented to measure each message delivered in specific channels including the blogosphere, Facebook, and Twitter for the messages relevance or effectiveness
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Great post! I am new to Sonoma County and educating myself on the marketing challenges that face wineries. This is a great list of 2009 challenges. Now that it’s 2012, have you seen a lot of wineries capitalizing on your suggestions here? It would seem that by now, most wineries would have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and perhaps a photo blog. The world of wine-making = instant content.
Hi Erin,
Thanks for the kind comment. We believe every winery has at least two of the three on your list. Blogging is often not adopted due to the time involved, lack of manpower, unwillingness to pay for blogging services or a combination of these factors. Instant content true but that doesn’t mean instant connections to consumers. The wine industry, although vastly improved since we worked in the industry in 2008, still remains years behind in marketing sophistication.
Our experience is not current so don’t take this as an end all be all answer. The opportunities should be plentiful and could be more so today. With that said, the challenge you face as a marketer, looking to break into the wine industry, isn’t a lack of opportunities for wineries to leverage Web 2.0 social media marketing. Instead, challenge #1 is winning contracts as an outside consultant; #2 being compensated according to your consulting expertise; #3 Sonoma and Napa Valleys have been inundated with consultants, micro firms, and large companies in the social media space trying to sell services.
Best of luck and please let me know how you are progressing!
dean