Marketing planning for Wineries
By: Irena Semenic
Tags: Social Media, Wine, Marketing Strategies, Marketing, Wineries

Marketing planning for Wineries

Recent innovations in digital marketing have opened a whole new manner of how companies interact with consumers and their demanding needs.

However, it seems that the wine sector is still lagging a bit, especially the Old World wineries. A recent study¹ shows wineries are not fully utilising social network tools to better position their product or to reap the benefits of increased sales from a clear communication strategy.

Addressing the right needs

The core benefits consumers seek from wine are dependent on: the role of wine in culture, its image compared to other alcoholic beverages, and the influence of wine in the major religion of that country.²

To dive in deeper let us take a look at “The Benefits Spectrum for Wine” to see how it all comes together into a decision to purchase your wine instead of your competitors wine.

Benefits Spectrum for Wine: Consumer behaviour expressed in layers

Viewing a bottle of wine as a product, it is a bundle of benefits which in combination satisfy a consumer requirement. Core benefit is why a person choses to drink wine. The tangible features are there to appeal to the senses of touch, sight and smell where intangible features are the way the product is differentiated from its competition. So in essence: it is important that this bundle of benefits are complementary and promoted clearly to influence buyers perception of the product in the marketplace. A failure to do so can result in a disadvantage, for example: promoting certificates of excellence but choosing discount outlets stores that offer lower prices over quality will surely backfire.

From Production Orientation to Market Orientation

Perhaps most due to the industry’s volatile seasonality, the wine industry is still production-based. Meaning the marketing decisions are based on product and its benefits.

As a result it fails to facilitate change and adjust to an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Marketing orientation should be adopted to create products that satisfy consumer needs. When exporting wines globally this aspect becomes more compelling as you want to answer to a world-wide need with a marketing strategy catering the different values and consumption habits per country/region. Read more on adapting a market orientation for exporters and how to manage communication.

So by this point you should have a general idea of your wineries values and brand image. You know which features you wish to push forward and all that is left is to choose a medium to transfer this message.

Social media is essential

Looking at recent figures it all points to a digital renaissance.

Whoever you are trying to reach — your best bet is on digital!

Social media offers advertisers access to 80% of global consumer expenditures.

B2C companies that blogged 11+ times per month got more than four times as many leads than those that blog only four to five times per month.³

90% of searchers have not made their mind up about a brand before starting their search³.

75% of social media users admitted that wine-associated social media interactions can influence their purchases and increase spending on an individual wine purchase.⁴

47% of buyers viewed 3–5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales representative.³

How wineries use social media

The profile of a digital winery in 2016 includes the use of a webpage, social media, online services and e-commerce. Moreover, wineries use social media in order to not to loose the opportunities of this communication tool, but most of the wineries are starting in social media without a well-defined strategy.

The wineries do not segment and target their social media which would allow wineries to focus on task groups increasing the efficiency of each action. In the era of communication with plenty of information available to focus on the target group, SM communication strategy could be optimised.¹

We will publish an article where we will more thoroughly examine digital media best practices for winemakers and how to incorporate them into your marketing team.

Meanwhile, take a look at what U.S. wineries are currently using for their digital promotion:

Conclusion

Designing a marketing strategy requires a lot of data and time. Correctly executing is even harder, so we prepared a few steps to help you out with the planning and which goals to gradually reach.

Figure out your brand identity and values you wish to put forward. Find your target audience and their needs & wants, segment them. Create a marketing plan. Choose your mediums depending on your revenue stream Use Gantt Charts to communicate activities and deadlines and to delegate responsibility among your team. Negotiate the time-frames with the winemaker, bottling hall manager or accountant to ensure they are realistic. Implement. Monitor: get acquainted with your KPI’s. Adjust

PS. We hope this helps, and if you need some more tips and guidelines for your marketing department or if this is all to overwhelming contact us here at Mineral!

Let us guide you through marketing strategies specialised for the wine and spirits industry.