Marketing Wine, Food, and Luxury

Sell More Wine in July, Part Two

Posted on July 4, 2016 by GordonP

July 4th has come and gone, and so have the Independence Day parties. Does that mean there are no reasons to run promotions in order to sell more wine? Not at all! There are plenty of days in July into which wine fits perfectly. Your job is to let everyone know that there are plenty of wine-drinking days in July and that they should buy your wine in order to celebrate properly.

Here are four days in July that are perfect for wine. YOUR wine.

July 23 – National Vanilla Ice Cream Day
Moscato D’Asti pairs extremely well with vanilla ice cream. The creaminess of the ice cream balances the citrus flavor of the Moscato. Serve cold Moscato in a chilled martini glass with a dollop of vanilla ice cream. Your friends will love you forever when you do this.

July 23 – National Hot Dog Day
I’m sure you have some kind of wine that pairs well with hot dogs, don’t you? There are plenty of lighter reds that go well with grilled hot dogs. Just grill up a few, open a couple of bottles and do some taste-testing. All winners should be reported to your email list and Facebook page right away. Along with a coupon for your wine.

July 28 – National Milk Chocolate Day
Promotion suggestion: Have a “chocolate pairing party” in your tasting room. Send invitations to the people on your email list, invingint them to bring chocolate to your tasting room on 7/28 so that they can taste and pair. Have the crowd submit their favorite pairings, then vote on which they think is bbest. Post the results as well as lots of photos on your Facebook page, Instagram, and Twitter.

July 29 – National Lasagna Day
Lasagna and wine are made for each other! Announce Lasagna Day to your email list at least a week in advance, and tell the recipients which of your wines pair well with it. Include lasagna recipes in the emails so that the readers have a reason to buy your wine.

There you have it: four days in July that are perfect for wine. Invest a little time now to promote the days and include your wine. By making pairing suggestions and getting people thinking of both food and your wine, you’ll discover that your wine sales will begin to increase.

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Sell More Wine in July, Part One

Posted on July 1, 2016 by GordonP

There are plenty of interesting days coming up in July that you can help your prospects and customers celebrate with wine. In this post we’ll talk about what’s promo-worthy for the month of July.

July is:
•   National Grilling Month
•   National Hot Dog Month
•   National Picnic Month.

Grilling and Your Wine
Come up with some outdoor-grilling recipes and pair your wines with them. Your Merlots and Cabernets would go really well with some grilled steaks or burgers, wouldn’t they? Of course! So tell the world! People don’t stop grilling after the 4th, so give them reasons to fire the BBQ back up! If you can’t think of any recipes, then Google “grilled steak and red wine” or “grilled burgers and red wine”. Then select a few recipes, try them, modify them to fit the taste of your wine, and then send the recipes out (with photos) in your email newsletter.

Picnics and Your Wine
How about taking your wines on a picnic? Lots of people like to pack a lunch and eat outdoors in nature. So make it an occasion with your wine! You must have Chardonnays and Pinots and other light wines that would pair well with picnic foods. Put together some suggestions for “the perfect picnic” and send it to your mailing list of prospect and customers. That will bring people into your tasting room looking for your wine.

Your Customers Want It
Remember this: your customers see you as the product expert. They’re expecting you to give them ideas for food and wine pairing. They want you to make suggestions. So do it! When you do, they’ll buy your wine. So get to it! Suggest pairing ideas and you’ll see your bottom line grow.

Seriously, folks. There are so many different wines out there that your customers are overwhelmed. Most people will respond positively to you when you regularly offer tips, advice, and suggestions. You’ll become a friend to them. And that’s what you want because it means they’ll come to you to buy your wine.

If you give these suggestions some thought you can come up with great ideas for promotions. And if you create something really interesting, submit it to your local media. They just might make a story out of it.

Happy promoting, and next I’ll talk about the specific days in July that can be used for promoting your wines.

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Influence 67% of Your Visitors

Posted on March 9, 2016 by GordonP

Recently, the Wine Market Council released their survey of female wine consumers, a study of more than 1,200 participants, which was conducted in November 2015. They explored the purchasing patterns of women and what drives trial and repeat purchase. Here’s what they found out.

Sixty-seven percent – more than two-thirds – of the women surveyed buy and drink wine regularly, but don’t have an extensive wine cellar or consider it a hobby. In other words, they like to drink wine and have a couple of bottles on hand at home, and that’s it. They don’t study the various vintages/years/etc, and they’re not wine snobs.

This is very good news for wineries. It means that, of the women who come into your tasting room, 2-of-every-3 fit this category. Why is that good? Because they’re the easiest to reach and influence. It means you don’t have to talk about all the vintages and types of grapes, etc. You can jump right into how to enjoy the wine. And the best part is, it means your sales pitch can be geared toward these people and you’ll be hitting the target seven out of ten times.

So, armed with that knowledge, your job is to influence those people to come into your tasting room.

How do you do that? You approach them using a couple of other pieces of knowledge:
(1) Women are more likely to buy a wine based on a recommendation from friends, family, and off- or on-premise staff.
(2) 84% of wine buyers use Facebook.

Therefore:
1. Use Facebook to deliver targeted messages that convince them to visit your tasting room (or website) and purchase your wine.
2. Leverage your friends and family to refer people to your tasting room.
3. Leverage current clients to recommend your wines, preferably on Facebook.

Here’s how:
1. Set up a referral program with your friends and family.
a.) Have them recommend your wine to their Facebook friends.
b.) Give them a reward when their friends show up and buy.

2. Regularly produce Facebook posts that show your wines paired with food.
a.) Talk about how it’s good for holidays, family dinners, etc.
b.) Recommend specific wines for specific days (ex: March 20 is National Ravioli Day. What would you recommend for that?)

3. Encourage all the visitors in your tasting room to:
a.) Post to Facebook that they’re enjoying your wine in your tasting room.
b.) Post a review onto Yelp as well.
c.) When they post to Facebook, re-post it onto your Facebook page.

What this does is provide social proof; you’re showing the potential customer, over and over and from different sources, that your wine is worth trying. Remember, the 67% drink wine regularly, and they want to hear from friends and trusted sources that it’s good. They’ll try it after that.

So take the time to expand your Facebook presence. And also review the sales pitch in your tasting room. You’re reaching out to the 67%. Help them understand that a lot of people like the wine they’re tasting. Do these things, and you’ll find that more people are coming into your tasting room because they’ve heard all about it from their friends.

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March Wine PR Opportunities

Posted on March 3, 2016 by GordonP

March is here, and with it comes lots of
“National Food Days” that March Wine you can take advantage of. Below I’ve listed several food days that are coming up in March. Pick at least one day (preferably one day per week), pair your wine with the food listed, and send a release to the local media to tell them about the pairing. It’s possible that they’ll like the idea and create a story around your pairing.

March Wine Paired with Food:
For example: March 20 is National Ravioli Day. Surely, you or one of the chefs among your family and friends knows how to make a tasty ravioli dish. Have them make it, pair it with a couple of your wines, and launch a press release to the media (“The Perfect Wine for National Ravioli Day!”). They may like the idea. Especially if nobody’s ever talked about Ravioli Day before. Better yet, connect with friends of yours who own restaurants and have them come up with several different ravioli dishes. If you promise to include the recipes for the people at home, the media may go for it.

Wine-friendly food days in March:
March 12
National Baked Scallops Day

March 20
National Ravioli Day

March 22
National Bavarian Crepes Day March Wine

March 25
National Lobster Newburg Day

March 27
National Spanish Paella Day

March 28
National Black Forest Cake Day

Finally, March is International Hamburger and Pickle Month. Come up with a few pairings for international-style burgers and you have a story that the media will definitely be interested in!

Japanese Burger

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Larger Summertime Depletion Rates

Posted on February 10, 2016 by GordonP

The holiday season is over. Despite the fact that freezing cold weather is gripping many areas of the country, now’s the time to plan for spring and summer. As the weather warms up, people will start going outside and grilling, having picnics, and spending time with friends. People buy wine for those occasions. Let’s make sure they buy YOUR wine.

To do that, it’s important to create a series of promotions and incentives to drive warm-weather sales. Helping your direct sales force influence the distributors to carry your wine can mean the difference between mediocre sales and great sales in the coming months.

Wines that are selling the fastest:
One of the first things to recognize is which wines are selling. According to Wine Business Monthly’s Industry Outlook and Trends Report (February 2016 issue), three types of wines are growing in sales volume:
1. Sparkling wine
2. Red blends
3. Rose’

Sparkling wine sales increased 12% during 2015, and red blends climbed 10.4%. Sparkling wines are consumed mostly for brunch, but they’re also popular for weddings and engagements. Red blends and rose’s are popular with outdoor dining activities. So it’s to your advantage to create your plan to promote those to your distributors as well as showing them how you’re going to drive demand for your product.

Distributors are always interested in discounts and special deals, and I’m sure you’ve worked out your numbers to determine how much of a price break you can give in exchange for case sales. However, showing them the plans you have for stimulating demand in the summertime may make them demand a smaller cut in price, because their job is to move cases of wine.

Ideas for driving depletion
So along those lines, consider the promotions to make the consumer more eager to buy the product, and the sales person more eager to sell.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

One of the best (and cheapest) ways is to associate your wines with the special occasions that occur during the warmer months. For example, again, there are engagements and weddings. Start a campaign to pair your sparkling wine with this special occasion through Facebook posts, tweets, blog posts, guest blog posts, and magazine articles. South Coast Winery does an exceptional job of this by offering a “proposal package” through Twitter, in which they put together their wine along with a reserved location and chocolates to provide the perfect place to propose.

Beverage Trade Network made some good suggestions for promotions during the last holiday season which can be adapted for summertime. For example:

1. Variety packs or two-bottle holiday packs. People like variety in wine during their outdoor cooking fests. Package a red blend and a rose’ together and offer a bargain in order to influence the buyers to buy more.

2. Special packaging with related products. Would you like to move more cases of sparkling wine? Package together your sparkling wine with champagne glasses for those June weddings. Or brunch with your sweetheart. Or anything romantic. Or, you can package your boxed Rose’ with plastic wine glasses for parties at the beach or poolside.

3. Sales force incentives and programs. Run programs to get the sales force to rally around your brand. Incentives, contests, prizes, and cash bonuses will motivate the sales team to promote the product heavily as well as give support to the distributors.

Any of these types of programs can help build demand from the customers. Showing the distributors how you’re going to drive demand will make them more interested in carrying your brand.

Put it all together into a spreadsheet/calendar and share it with your sales force and your distributors. Working together with your distribution chain will drive more demand from them as well as reassure your sales team that you’re doing all you can to support their efforts and make them successful. When they’re successful, so will you be.

Next post: Innovative methods for driving sales when your winery isn’t big enough to go through a distributor.

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Get More Clients on Special Days

Posted on February 9, 2016 by GordonP

With Valentine’s Day coming up, I’ve seen a lot of wineries sending out Facebook messages that say “Come to our tasting room and have wine and chocolate!” That’s a good idea, but you’re probably not drawing in as many people as you’d like. There’s a reason for that.

They need a good reason:
People like having a good reason to do something. Just going to a place to do something is fine, but it can be swamped out by other companies offering the same thing. What really needs to happen is that you need to offer something special – something “in addition” to what you’re offering. The more the additional offering is charity or community related, the better the response you’ll get.

Use buyer psychology:
Here’s what’s happening: People buy emotionally, and then justify rationally. If you say “come taste our wine and chocolate”, they’ll be interested (that’s emotional). But a lot of people may hold back because…well…there are all kinds of reasons (including knowing that chocolate can cause you to gain weight) that will keep them from visiting you. But, if you give them a rational reason (for example, a portion of the sales will go to a local charity), then they have a rational reason to indulge their emotional desires. After all, it’s going to a good cause.

(Click to enlarge)

Here’s an example:
“Snooze” is a breakfast place in Phoenix AZ. Tuesday Feb 9 is National Pancake Day. Instead of saying “Come have pancakes for national Pancake Day”, they created a special promotion to donate 10% of their sales to local schools. They gave both an emotional reason (tasty-sounding pancakes such as green apple-pie, and biscuits-and-gravy) and a rational reason (10% donation to schools).

Did it work? It sure did! I usually don’t eat pancakes, but their menu sounded good, so I tried them out. After all…it’s going to a good cause! And, as I suspected, the place was packed. People were taking advantage of the special.

How to use it
You can do the same. For every “special” day that’s coming up, have an additional community-related thing to go with it. There are plenty of special days coming up on which you can promote your wines and foods. Rather than asking people to just come in, give them a special reason to justify their actions. A good cause will bring in more people than just asking them to do it.

Try this. It really works. When you do, you’ll find that there will be a lot more customers walking in your front door.

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Use the Super Bowl to Sell More Wine

Posted on January 30, 2016 by GordonP

To sell more wine, one thing you can do is to connect your wine to various big events of the year. Here’s a great example: Super Bowl Sunday will be here in one week. Online magazines and websites have been busily posting all kinds of wine and food pairing ideas, and they recommend specific wines with them.

Are YOU promoting your brand?
Before I list those sites, let me ask you…have you paired your wines with Super Bowl foods and then told your followers/clients/email subscribers/online magazines and blogs about it? If not, why not? The Super Bowl is one of the biggest events of the year. This is a huge opportunity to sell more wine.

Give customers a reason to buy your wine!
If you want customers and prospects buying your wine give them some recipes that pair with your wine, or take well-known SB foods and pair your wines with them, and let the world know. 86% of people buy based on recommendations. So do some recommending!

Super Bowl Pairings:

Vinepair.com gives us a nifty page that automatically pairs Super Bowl foods with wine.
http://vinepair.com/super-bowl-wine-pairings/

Wine Enthusiast Magazine gives us expert Super Bowl Party tips so that no matter which team wins, no fan will leave hungry—or thirsty.
http://www.winemag.com/2016/01/28/throw-the-ultimate-super-bowl-party/

Food and Wine Magazine gives us a smorgasboard of tasty recipes:
http://www.foodandwine.com/slideshows/super-bowl

Wine Spectator Magazine gives us Super Bowl 50 party snacks with recipes from Charlotte NC and Denver CO chefs, plus 22 value wines from Sonoma county:
http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/52677

Serious Eats.com tackles the pairing of “fiery” foods and wine:
http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2014/01/best-wine-for-wings-pizza-guacamole-super-bowl-snacks.html

Prepare to sell more of YOUR wine:
There are a lot more food-and-eating events coming up this year: Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Labor Day, and Independence Day, to name just a few. Increase your sales by pairing your wines with related foods and then letting the world know that they can have a great celebration with YOUR wine.

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Compel 62% of Wine-Drinkers to Try Your Wine

Posted on January 27, 2016 by GordonP

According to the Gallo Wine Trends of 2015, 62% of those surveyed said they’d be encouraged to try a new wine if it was featured prominently and positively in the media. What does that tell you? Get your wines featured in the media frequently.

It’s easy when you know how:
Problem: Many people feel that it’s difficult to get the media to cover their wines. It isn’t difficult when you have a strategy and you know how to appeal to their interests. Here are several story suggestions that could easily get media coverage.

1. Tie your wine to an event that’s coming soon. For example: Super Bowl Sunday will soon be here. Which of your wines do you recommend to pair with the food at Super Bowl house parties? Or at tailgate parties? Be specific. Don’t tell the media “we have a wide selection of wines”. Tell the media that you’ll recommend specific recipes and specific wines. And include the recipes for the media to publish. That’ll increase the chances of getting media coverage.

2. Do something unusual with your wines. Wine and Media Coverage
Something the media hasn’t heard of before. For example, I got several Arizona wines on our local TV talk shows by using them to create “wine cocktails”. Not wine coolers, but actual cocktails that involved mixers and garnishes. I then submitted the ideas, with photos, to the local media. Result: I was on TV morning shows demonstrating how to make wine cocktails and promoting Arizona wine.

3. Tie your wine to a special “National Day of….” Or “National Month of….” For example: February is National Heart Health Month. Studies have suggested that red wine helps maintain a healthy heart. But since that’s been covered before, here are three different angles on that story.
(1) The perfect heart-healthy meal, which includes your wine.
(2) Dark chocolate has been proven to be heart-healthy. Talk about “indulging” in red wine and ¼ ounce of dark chocolate every day.
(3) There’s been debate lately about if red wine really *is* good for your heart (yes it is). Settle the debate once and for all.
(Note: we discussed how to use Twitter to do this in a previous post.)

Finally, when you get a story in the media – especially print media like magazines or newspapers – don’t just frame it and post it on your wall. Make lots of copies and plunk one down in front of every taster who tries that particular wine. (You say: “Good choice! (put the article in front of the taster) That wine was featured in the (name the media) in “Heart Healthy Meals for February””). Remember: 62% of people are influenced by media coverage. Make sure that every taster sees your media coverage by putting it front-and-center in front of them.

Those are three ideas to get into the media. Give them a try. You’ll discover that you’ll get a lot more coverage that way.

P.S. (Shameless self-promotion: I have a list of 32 different “hot buttons” that get the media’s attention. If you liked these three, you’ll love the others I have. If you’d like to get more media coverage, connect with me. I’ll gladly help you come up with ideas to get you into the press. Send an email to gparlova@gmail.com)

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An Easy Way to Build Brand Preference

Posted on January 22, 2016 by GordonP

Wednesday, 1/20, was National Cheese Lovers Day. Social media, and especially Twitter, was all abuzz with stories and recognition of lovers of cheese. Twitter even had a special hashtag, #NationalCheeseLoversDay, which trended to the top of the discussions that day.

Exploit the Twitter Trend:
During Jan 20, millions of tweets were made. Some peoples’ tweets got retweeted, but most did not. On those special days, you want your tweets to get retweeted because it builds brand preference as readers see your brand name in their Twitter stream of tweets.

What made the “retweeted” get retweeted?
The tweets that got the most retweets contained useful information that the reader could use.

Let’s look at some examples. First, a tweet that did NOT get retweeted.

Fontana Candida winery placed an excellent tweet about pairing their wines with burrata cheese. The photo was excellent and tempting, and the pairing sounded delicious. But, as you can see in the red box, this post wasn’t retweeted.

Now let’s look at a post that got a lot of retweets.

Serious Eats’ tweet was retweeted 31 times and “favorited” 67 times. Why? Because they offered a wine-and-cheese pairing cheat sheet on their website. The cheat sheet was something of value, so the readers forwarded the tweet – which built Serious Eats’ brand. (Here’s the link to the cheat sheet: http://goo.gl/ihOlpl)

Another example: the French Government tweeted tips on wine and cheese pairing and received 68 retweets and 58 favorites. Why? Because they offered valuable information, and people forwarded it to their friends.

Did any US wineries tweet with pairing charts or suggestions for wine/cheese pairings? Not any of the wineries that I follow! If you’re one of the ones who didn’t, you missed an opportunity to build your brand preference.

Get that brand recognition:
Don’t fret if you missed Cheese Day – there are plenty of “days” coming up durnig which you can grab some of that Twitter traffic for yourself. Here are a few:

February 7: National Fettuccini Alfredo Day
February 13: National Tortellini Day
February 18: National Crab Stuffed Flounder Day

So prepare for it: Create some recipes that match the food-of-the-day, pair your wine with the recipe, take some photos, and on that day catch the trending hashtag (#NationalTortellini Day) and send out tweets with the photo, the hashtag, and a link to your recipes. You’ll get retweeted a lot, your website will get visited a lot, and your brand name will be in front of thousands of Twitter users.

Sure, it’s work. But in the crowded world of wine, you need every advantage you can get. So start now. Take advantage of the National Days on Twitter and watch your sales increase.
.

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Promote Visitor Interaction on Facebook

Posted on January 18, 2016 by GordonP

According to the 2015 Survey of American Wine Consumer Preferences by Wine Business Monthly magazine, 84% of wine consumer use Facebook as their primary social media. Let that sink in. More than ¾ of wine drinkers use Facebook. That means there are plenty of opportunities to reach your customers and prospects through Facebook.

But many wineries that are on Facebook aren’t getting the interaction they want. Why not? Because they’re not posting material that their customers & prospects want. Visitors don’t want photos of your vines or long stories about your crush. They want fun and interesting things. And so do you. Specifically, you want to post items on Facebook that will encourage interaction by the wine-drinking visitors.

Here are a couple of examples of creating interaction:
* J. Lohr Vineyards and Wines encourages their customers to post photos of their wine being enjoyed in a variety of locations. And the customers do.

* Santa Margherita Winery holds regular food/wine pairing contests and announces the winner on their Facebook page.

Both J. Lohr and Santa Margherita have a lot of interaction on their Facebook pages because they invite interaction.

Things like that encourage people to interact, and they do. They’ll eagerly buy a bottle of your wine and photograph it in some unusual location just to get their photo on your Facebook page. They’ll also create tasty dishes and pair them with your wines if they know they’ll get recognized on your Facebook page.

So what are you doing to get people to interact with you on Facebook? Do you hold contests? Do you photograph visitors to your tasting room and post them online? Do you incentivize your customers to take photos of your wine in interesting locations? You might want to start doing things like that. Because when 84% of wine drinkers use Facebook, you’d be very wise to start using it to interact with them right away.

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