Why Wine Marketing Can Easily Fail
Imagine you’re at a cocktail party. The room is buzzing with the sound of background chatter and clinking wine glasses. A stranger approaches you and asks you the age-old question: so, what do you do? You don’t skip a beat and dive into a story steeped in the history of your grandfather’s legacy and how you studied at an Ivy League university to achieve what you have to this day. By this point, your freshly-formed acquaintance’s eyes have already glazed over as they backstep away from you. Why? Because you failed to get to the point and hook their interest! You were so wrapped up in your own story you didn’t learn anything about theirs.
While we’ve all probably been guilty of this on a personal level, here’s the problem: is your business doing this too? If you and every single person on your team are unable to summarize what your company does clearly and quickly, then you may be inadvertently pushing your customers back out the door as soon as they come in. Your wines will be ignored if you do not communicate effectively. To grow your business, you need to clarify your marketing messaging - ASAP.
The Importance of Clear Communication
As a wine brand, the reality is that you are in a race to get your customers to notice and understand you as quickly as possible. The ugly truth is that even if your competitor makes an inferior product, but their communication is better than yours, their sales will be better than yours too. As marketing guru Don Miller says “People don’t buy the best products. They buy the products they understand best.”
To succeed as a brand, you need to remember that your customers are people who want to succeed in this world. If what you are communicating about your product isn’t directly connected to helping your customers advance in life, they will not be interested.
In addition, you can’t take too long to get your message across. Why? When your brain has to process a lot of data that has nothing to do with your survival, it stops focusing. This is because it takes many calories to process information, and humans are designed to ignore information they don’t need to survive and thrive. So as a business, your goal is not to get caught up in how much information you know. You want to communicate to your customers simply what they have to know. The clearest communicator will always win!
Same Old, Same Old Doesn’t Work
If you cannot come up with a reason why you are unique, then how is a customer supposed to? Sure, $10 supermarket wine doesn't need to be unique, but for the rest of you selling $30+ bottles DTC, you need to develop a unique value proposition for your customer. If you don't, your competitor will and then beat you.
Inboxes are overflowing and Facebook is full of ads with the same generic marketing language. There are thousands of family owned wineries in the United States with 92 point wines. We hate to have to be so blunt, but that’s not enough to stand out in this overcrowded market. The #1 reason wine marketing fails is because it lacks a clear brand story.
Most customers don’t care what year your winery was founded or how your winemaker went to UC Davis. Customers want to know how you are going to improve their lives. So when you start a conversation about your family’s history and the old barn out back you restored, you instantly bore your customer. For a brand story to be effective you need to flip the paradigm and make the customer the hero of the story, not your brand! Make the story about the customer and invite them into it. They will be way more receptive and your marketing will be more effective.
Don’t Miss Out On The Golden Era Of Online Wine Sales!
The pandemic has accelerated trends. It’s no secret that we are entering the golden age of wine sales online. In 2020, US wine eCommerce sales grew by 153%, with the average order increasing by 190.67%.* So don’t miss out! It doesn’t matter whether you are an established winery or fledgling brand: people buy the products they can understand the best.
As a society, we are all continually bombarded with information. Your wine needs to stand out from the noise with a clear and easy-to-understand message or risk being lost in a red ocean of brands. If your sales staff are not on the same page and your message is being spoken a thousand different ways, then your customers are going to go to your competitors.
Get A Clear Brand Story
We understand that it can be overwhelming to know where to even start. You are busy running your winery, and you’re not an English major with time to write a new story. If you’re eager to tell your story in a simple way to boost your revenue, then book our Brand Messaging Workshop.
At Highway 29 Creative, our workshop is broken down into two separate sessions of two hours each. Trust us, they go quickly and are super fun! Both virtual sessions follow a tried-and-tested framework that will create a clear marketing message to help you stand out and sell more wine. Here’s what to expect:
Workshop #1: What’s Your Brand Story?
2 hours
In this opening workshop, we want to get down to the essence of your brand and re-write your story in simple English that both you and your customers will understand - and remember! Using a Hollywood movie storytelling methodology, you and your team will be guided through 7 short modules. You’ll be asked to identify who the character in your story is (clue: it’s not your brand, it’s your customer!), what problem your customer needs help solving and how your brand can act as a guide to save the day. You’ll isolate a simple action plan and calls to action to help your customer avoid failure and provide them with a path to success. This engaging session is fast-paced and interactive, so put your thinking caps on!
Workshop #2: Key Messaging
2 hours
This Workshop is about the different ways in which you can communicate your brand story to your customers. The workshop consists of 5 modules that build on all of the work from workshop #1. Together, we will generate your value stack offering, a revised mission statement, a tagline and a story pitch. The final part of the workshop will be a discussion around your brand to provide all the key information so we can prepare a longer editorial version of your brand story.
After the sessions, our team will refine your story and present you with a Brand Book which will become your company’s go-to internal guide. You should share this with your entire team and make it part of the training process. To have clear messaging, it’s vital that everyone is reading from the same script.
Ready to Improve your Marketing?
Our workshops are designed to offer instant feedback and leave you with a plan that you can immediately implement. Whether you continue to work with our DTC wine marketing agency Highway 29 Creative to manage your marketing or do it yourself thereafter, your Brand Book will be an invaluable resource to guide how you market your wines. We provide you marketing messaging that easily translates to your website, emails, social media, digital advertising, PR, and more. While it may be tempting to jump right into marketing and advertising your brand, you’ll waste money and time if you don't have clear messaging first.
We’ve made it super easy to work with us. While yes, we are a full-service creative agency, our workshops are available as one-offs and don’t require any additional commitment from your side. If you’d like to sign up for our workshops, simply:
1. Register for the workshop below and our team will follow up to schedule it.
2. Attend two, two-hour online sessions to work with our team of wine marketing experts.
3. Receive your Brand Book and implement your new marketing messaging.
Improving Your Marketing Shouldn’t Be Hard
We worked wineries of various sizes from startups to generational brands. No matter the type or size, they have found success by clarifying their marketing messaging with our Brand Workshop.
“At first the workshop seemed daunting, but the Hwy29 team’s upbeat attitude and expertise made the 4 hours fly by. We were challenged to think outside of our existing “brand” and to trust in the process. It was extremely helpful to have a knowledgeable person help us see ourselves from the customer perspective, and to make changes in our future delivery/messaging to help customers identify with it. The biggest change was to recognize that we are not the center of attention – the customer is. We’re excited to share our new story with this realization!”- Jackie Lee, Morgan Winery
Simon Solis-Cohen is the founder of Highway 29 Creative, a leading digital and creative agency serving the wine industry. He challenges clients to think about the future and constantly innovate. The agency chases data, not fads, and provides one-stop shopping for wineries looking to enter or jolt their direct to consumer sales. Their approach starts by designing and building a website focused on conversion (wine sales, club sign ups & tasting room reservations) and then dives into each digital channel with consistent and effective content and messaging. What to learn more or looking for advice? Shoot Simon a message at simon@hwy29creative.com.