Why a Digital Marketing Strategy Matters Now More than Ever, while Living in Uncertain Times
As a citizen of our great country and state, and a longstanding member of the wine industry, I have lived through crises and turbulent business cycles before. We will get through this. But to do so requires a realization that in the near term, we need to pivot whatever strategies we had in place for 2020 and be proactive. I lead a team of 18 professionals serving almost 30 wine brands. Right now, we’re using this strange waiting game as preparation. It’s a time to sharpen our swords and work on our swing, so that when the world regains balance and wine lovers are ready to travel and engage again, we will be ready. This is what is clear to me.
Digital marketing will be increasingly important for the health and wellbeing of your business. If you don’t have a fully integrated digital marketing strategy with a strong social media marketing core, you need to start building one now.
Here are the facts that matter.
We are now in mid-March in the midst of a declared national and state emergency which affects peoples’ willingness and ability to travel. Compounding this is the significant impact on the financial wellbeing of households from business/job disruptions and the perceived changes in the “Wealth Effect” from the stunning stock market declines. While this will likely have more impact on the numerous high-end wineries in Napa/Sonoma selling expensive wines, it will still affect all wineries and wine retailers in the near term and even longer. The fact that restaurants around the country are closing or operating on a limited basis with major reductions in traffic will result in potentially bigger problems for wineries dependent on 3-tier sales for contributions to their annual revenue stream. Many restaurants may ultimately be forced to close from the fallout from lost business during the crisis, and the ones that stay open will likely still be in stock of wine.
And on top of the recent heavy harvests which have depressed grape and bulk wine prices, the backup of wines sitting in distributor warehouses across the U.S. will create a severe backlog that will be an obstacle for 3-tier sales for all wineries. It will also likely force extreme wholesale price reductions by wineries reminiscent of the financial crisis of 2008-09. For wineries trying to gain new access to distributors or to restaurants and retailers through self-distribution, the competition and obstacles will be fierce.
DTC Impact
In the near term, tasting room traffic will get hit hard by this crisis. Even when it recovers, it may be weaker than last year due to the financial impact on families and longer-term uncertainties. It is possible that there could be a positive “staycation” effect from travelers who had planned trips abroad, cruises, or flights to other parts of the U.S., who choose instead to vacation within driving distance of the Bay Area. But this is unknown at present. So, what to do?
Digital Marketing Reboot
A combination of boosted engagement, empathetic social media, segmented email marketing, and digital advertising is the best way to maintain and nourish your existing customer base, building your audience of prospective customers for your brand and converting them to purchasers and wine club members. And yes, digital marketing can be your most cost-effective way to do this when visitors are NOT coming to your winery’s tasting room.
If you don’t have an existing digital marketing strategy, build one now. Start telling your story in engaging ways on the major social media platforms with boosted posts and social ads. Execute segmented email marketing campaigns, particularly around ones that differentiate between your subscribers that are within driving distance of your winery, from those that need to fly to make a visit. Think of creative ways to nurture and reward your wine club members and most loyal purchasers. Use geo-targeted local SEO and Adwords to capture whatever local traffic is out and about looking for places to visit and shop. Be proactive. Once the market starts to return to near normalcy, consumers will remember the love and attention and hopefully reward you.
If you have an existing digital marketing strategy, make sure you revisit it to take into account the consumer’s current state of mind and needs. If ever there was a case for it, now is the time to make the story and engagement about them and not about you. How can you make a difference in their lives by engaging with your brand and sharing your wines with those around them? Be empathetic, sell softly, and let them share their stories with you.
While waiting for the market to return, here’s a summary of things you should do:
Refresh your website with relevant content including more photography and lifestyle imagery that reflects the visitors you want to have as your customers, as well as edutaining blog content. If you want potential visitors to discover you online to drive more tasting room traffic, you need to optimize your site for SEO and for Google My Business visits.
An ongoing SEO strategy should be implemented to optimize the website and ensure ongoing SEO maintenance to maximize visibility in consumer search, both local and national.
Your data should be cleaned, deduped, and appended with current email addresses to ensure the highest rate of deliverability. Based on a customized segmentation strategy built on your specific customer attributes, a customized rolling 90-day promotional calendar should be created to target key segments. Example: Wine club purchasers, large and/or frequent purchasers, 1-time purchasers, never purchasers, Bay Area purchasers, specific SKU purchasers, etc. Emails should not all be promotional sales emails, but should also feature relevant content and imagery around the winery and brand to keep subscribers interested.
A fully engaged social media marketing strategy should be implemented on Facebook and Instagram that aligns with your promotional calendar and email campaigns.
An Adwords campaign strategy should be implemented that aligns with your SEO strategy, email campaigns, and social media marketing strategy. This would include both local, Bay Area, and national markets.
Wine club growth – in addition to driving wine club membership in the tasting room and through your planned referral program from existing members, wine club growth can be accelerated by:
Email/social outreach to existing purchasers with incentives to convert to membership
Digital ads targeting audiences for wine club signups (this was worked for other wineries)
Enhancing your wine club page on your website – add testimonials from loyal wine club members.
Three-Tier Sales - We find that a fully engaged and integrated social media marketing strategy has positive impacts on the wholesale marketplace. Buyers in the trade follow social media around winery brands, and our efforts can lend credibility and confidence to the sales team promoting your brand in this channel.
Final Thoughts
We are all in this together, but you also each have your own unique challenges as competitors in the wine marketplace. Be creative. Be bold. Think outside the box. Try things you might never have considered for your brand marketing. You and your customers need to get through these uncertain times, as long as these times last. But if you have a digital marketing strategy that is relevant to the times we live in and beyond, you can come out on the other side with a head of steam.
