Last month I was selected by Tripbase as one of the top ten bloggers in their World Wine category. Please bear with me as I do a little chest-thumping, because my real intent is to share with you how you can make your blog impactful.
Continue reading "On Blogging: The Power of an Evergreen Article" »
Central Coast Wine Blogs is now the #1 blog on the topic of wine on Facebook's Networked Blogs list.
The Dover Canyon wine blog, which I also wrote, has slipped from the #1 spot but is still hanging in there at #6.
Dubost Ranch Winery, another CCWB blog, has entered the Top 50 list at #44.
Other central coast bloggers in the Top 50 include Justin Vineyards & Winery at #49, and Elizabeth in SLO at #24.
On the 'Dating' Top 50, my personal blog, A Year by the Lake is currently #24 and rising.
Come on, central coast bloggers! You belong in the Top 50 too. Go to NetworkedBlogs today and submit your blog. (You can also get a cool widget like the one at right to add to your blog.)
Video advertising is a great way to promote your business or enhance your business blog.
Here's a short video clip produced for The Wine Line, and sent to us by Scot Burns at Redbarn Marketing in Paso Robles. Scot is a San Luis Obispo homeboy, with some serious marketing chops from his career sojourn in The City that includes accounts like Red Bull ... always a favorite with crush pad survivors! Scot and his minions have a talent for getting right to the point, using humor and style to deliver punch for the small family businesses they love to represent.
Scot and the Redbarn inhabitants are also promoting this video clip through video hosting sites like YouTube and Vimeo, and on the various groups, pages, and forums populating sites on Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. They've also been sending it out to blogs and discussion forums with an emphasis on food, wine, travel, hospitality and the central coast.
What was that contact info again?
Goals
Social media sites are for socializing! These are not appropriate venues for a hard-sell product pitch, or for consistent and annoying brand messages.
The really excellent news is that social media can both replace and supplement old-fashioned stumping.
Inter-personal contact has always been important in the wine industry. Wine pourings, charity events, ride-alongs with sales reps ... and of course, the tasting room. Anyone in sales or marketing in the industry will confirm that the personal connection is important. Wine is a fairly expensive luxury good and customers want to know the artisans behind the brand.
Social media gives wineries a golden opportunity to expand that personal connection. You can build a collection of friends and fans, contact them regularly with a personal 'wazzup' and be accessible on their favorite platforms. While it is not an appropriate avenue for hard sales, social media is just as important as personal appearances. In many ways, it's actually more effective because you can relate to your customers on their schedule, and not on yours. Instead of a once-every-six-months appearance at a wine bar, you are accessible at any time.
How to Use Social Media: The Smartfast Way
Continue reading "How to Use Social Media to Build Your Brand" »
The following article is the second of a three-part interview with Mike Duffy, author of The Winery Web Site Report. Mike's impressive career spans design and development of successful software companies (and their products) and equity venture firms.
We asked Mike: What are the five top mistakes that wineries make in web design?
Mistake #1: It's all about me.
Probably the #1 mistake is making the site all about the winery (look at me!), and not all about what a visitor wants to accomplish when they visit (how can I help you?). Visitors arrive at your website with a goal already in mind. The harder you make it for them to achieve that goal, the less satisfied they will be, and the less likely you will establish a relationship with them. You've got to think like a visitor.
My premise is that there are four types of visitors to a winery website:
1. Someone who wants to buy wine right now (buyers)
2. Someone who wants information about your wines (browsers)
3. Someone who wants to sell your wine (distributors, retailer, restaurants—the trade)
4. Someone who wants to tell others about your wine (the media)
In each case, your primary site navigation needs to get them to the right place—a page focused on addressing their specific needs—with one click. Most sites tend to ignore (3) and (4), although I've seen slow progress in the past couple of years.
Mistake #2: Stagnant as an old pond
The #2 mistake is neglecting the site. Most winery webssites are only updated when there's a new release. People search the web for information, and that makes your web presence key. It's annoying to visit a site which doesn't look like it's been updated in 5 years. For example, ConnValley Vineyards has the exact same home page as when I evaluated the site in 2005. The front page of your website should always feel fresh. One pet peeve I have is a winery home page that trumpets an event two weeks in the past.
Part of the reason that wineries neglect their sites is that they don't have an easy way to make modifications to the site.
Mistake #3: Lack of useful information
Lack of comprehensive information. Ideally, you should have a product page about every wine your winery has ever released. If a visitor can buy it, a big "Buy Now" or "Add to Cart" button should be visible. If it's not available, "Sold Out" does no harm. If you make wines to age, it's useful to place results from your most recent library tasting of the wine. If you have library wines available, this is a good place to capture e-mail addresses from people who might want to order them.
Mistake #4: Awkward e-commerce
# 4 goes to all the crappy e-commerce experiences out there. How can you expect people to buy if you make them register first, or you make it unattractive, or generally get in the way of people who actually want to buy wine? People obsess about the Flash intros to their site, but then theysettle for a clunky third-party shopping cart. If you care about selling wine online, the add-to-cart-and-check-out experience must be close to perfect. This is not rocket science.
Mistake #5: Kissing your customers goodbye
Failure to capture an e-mail address for follow-up contact. Of course, you may need to sell this request—people won't willingly give up their personal information without some incentive. Do they get a newsletter? Special deals? Be specific. If there's a newsletter, let them look at the last issue (or better, all of the past issues). Some wineries don't manage list-building in their tasting rooms very well, either.
The following article is the first of a three-part interview with Mike Duffy, author of The Winery Web Site Report.
Mike's impressive career spans the design and development of successful software companies (and their products) and equity venture firms.
We asked Mike: Why did you start The Winery Website Report blog?
I started the blog in 2005 as part of marketing The Winery Website Report, a custom report which evaluated the visitor effectiveness of a winery's website.
We had 25 rating elements, and provided a comparison of a specific winery to the aggregate data we collected from a review of over 2,800 winery websites. We segmented our data by case production, so that a winery could see how it stacked up against similarly-sized wineries.
Other industries are willing to pay for that kind of information, but wineries? Not so much.
What I've finally figured out (a little late) is that most wineries don't make a lot of money from their websites (perhaps 2-5% of total sales), and so they aren't willing to invest much effort in it.
CCWB: Are wineries keeping pace with web design and internet marketing compared to other industries?
As a whole, no. Of course, I don't think wineries need to have the latest and greatest Flash/AJAX/Web-2.0-goodness.
I think that most wineries would see more benefit from spending effort on just executing the tried-and-true.
Have an attractive, easy-to-use site with clear navigation. Give people a reason to give you their email address and then stay in touch with them. If there's anything a person would want to know about your wines or winery, make sure it's on your website so that search engines can find it and index it. When you get emails, answer them. Track results. Update your home page once a month.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and wondering why you get the same result.
If you want to see different results, you need to be able to measure that difference, and you need to experiment.
If there's anyone out there selling tons of wine through their website, I wish they would speak up so that people could see what really works. Of course, if I were selling tons of wine online, I'd probably keep it a secret, too. :)
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Coming up, Mike will discuss the: Top 5 Winery Website Mistakes and Five Top Things Every Winery Website Should Have.
A successful press release convinces a writer or editor to write about your product and business.
What actually happens to your press release when it arrives at the publication? I’ll tell you. An intern or editorial assistant downloads all the morning emails. Then she sorts them into piles. Then she picks up the biggest pile and walks it over to the advertising department. "Here you go," she says as she plops the stack on the advertising intern’s desk. "A hundred or so product pitches thinly disguised as press releases."
Print publications are in the business of selling advertising space to businesses like yours. This is the main source of their income. Therefore, if you approach the media with a message that you have a product to sell, your message will go straight to Advertising. Or worse—into the wastebasket.
"But I have wine to sell," you say. "New releases! I’m a new brand. I’m the hottest thing out there since Brad Pitt and they should be interested."
Um, sorry. They’re not. The wine industry churns out new labels like a Gallo bottling line. The fact that you exist and are anxious to sell product is not a story.
But you CAN capture a writer’s interest with a well-crafted press release, and there are only three things you need you do.
1. Identify a unique angle.
2. Position yourself as an expert.
3. Write a professional release.
Step 1: Identify a unique angle about your business.
It could be the start of a new trend, an unusual farming technique, experimental packaging—anything truly new or different. Here are some ideas:
Continue reading "How to Write an Effective Press Release" »
For most wineries, January is Finance Month. Get those P&L's updated and off to the accountants and lenders, review the 2009 budgets and performance, and plan for the new year. Now that you have your new goals, how do you get there?
February is Marketing Month. The first step in forming a customized marketing plan is to assess where you are.
So let's start by finding out a little more about your current marketing plans. Feel free to use this list to kick-start your own marketing plans. If you would like help creating a customizable marketing plan specifically for your winery, feel free to contact me at [email protected].
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1. What makes your winery different and unique? What do you think will set you apart from the competition?
2. Set aside your current sales blurbs for a moment. When you are talking to customers and visitors in person, what do you say about your winery and vineyard?
3. Do you plan to increase production in the next three years?
4. Do you plan a label redesign in the next year? Is the current label the one you plan to move ahead with?
5. Is your website designed and edited in house? How difficult or easy is it to make changes and edit? Is it cost effective?
6. How is your ecommerce cart working for you? Is data transmitted to you quickly and without errors? Can you update it yourself and is the process easy? Is it cost effective?
7. How comfortable are you with blogging and social media?
8. For wholesale accounts, do you currently have a broker or distributor? If so, how close are they to achieving your wholesale and distribution goals?
9. How would you describe your wholesale placements? What percentages of retail vs. restaurant? Are you getting high end, high visibility placements?
10. What support are you currently providing to wholesale accounts and sales reps? Do you have a system in place for producing tech sheets and shelf talkers?
11. Do you have a wine club? Is it a pack-and-ship club model, or a mailing list model? Do you have a system in place for tracking growth and satisfaction? Is it flexible? Can you fulfill special requests?
12. How dedicated are you to pursuing a media PR plan? Do you have a current press list? Have you sent samples to critics? Have you distributed story ideas to writers?
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Coming up this month:
Getting Ready for Wine Festival: Handouts!
When customers flock to your tasting room this coming festival weekend, whether they buy one bottle or one hundred, you'll want each customer to become an ambassador for your brand—and that means giving them information.
I usually recommend to clients that you craft a postcard handout. Postcards, unlike full size tasting sheets or newsletters, can be affixed to refrigerators and bulletin boards. And they're inexpensive to print—make the first side full color for impact, and the back in black-in-white to save money. With a supply of postcards on hand, you can save your more expensive print newsletters for customers who buy $50-$100 or more. If you have a spare laptop, set it up in the tasting room so visitors can subscribe to your blog and leave comments while they are there. (You might want to cover the keyboard with a plastic protector.)
Make sure you've got all the winery contact information on your cards, including your winery blog address and Facebook or other social media identities. Your goal is to get people to visit your website, subscribe to your blog, become your friend/fan on Facebook, and otherwise subscribe for future contact.
Posted on 05/12/2010 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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