Creative Ways Wineries Can Market Their Business During This Pandemic
As of last night, California asked all customer-facing wineries, breweries, bars, nightclubs to be shut down to help flatten the curve of the coronavirus spreading throughout the United States. He asked restaurants to go to 50% capacity, embrace social distancing with customers at least 6 feet apart from each other, and focus on takeout and delivery services. UPDATE: All California restaurants are delivery and takeout only.
He did not give specifics on the length of the interim closings, because frankly, right now there are so many unknowns.
Today six of the counties touching the San Francisco Bay went a step further and asked everyone to stay home, unless their job is essential, a.k.a. medical, veterinarian hospitals, gas stations, grocery stores, restaurants, and police, fire, etc. This ordinance does not include Sonoma and Napa County, but it does include Contra Costa County where I live.
UPDATE: All of California has a shelter in place order (March 20).
Earlier today, I had a second brainstorming meeting with a few members of the Iron Horse Vineyards team, to talk about the next steps now that the tasting room is shut down. Joy, the CEO, and my boss, she went on Facebook live on Iron Horse Vineyards’ page to simply talk about what’s going on. In addition, we came up with a few other ways to marketing wine.
Wineries Go Virtual
Virtual wine tastings seem to be what everybody’s talking about right now to have that personal connection with wine buyers. I love what Sandra Hess is doing with her company, DTC Wine Workshops. She recently launched a "Virtual Wine Tasting Setup" web training program. I do know others like Alison from Smith Story Wines and Hardy from Dirty & Rowdy Wines are doing virtual tastings over Facebook - though, you do have to make sure your attendees are over 21, so I suggested creating Facebook groups for virtual tastings for your brand so you can control who shows up.
I also LOVE that Big Bottom Market owner and cookbook author Michael Volpatt is inviting his Facebook community to join him for cooking classes on how to make his famous biscuits. Seriously, when this is all over, GO VISIT his Guerneville restaurant, and hey.. go wine tasting in Russian River Valley while you are at it!
Virtual tastings bring me back to the early days of my wine blogging journey when everything was done on Twitter and wine bloggers all over the country and the world would get sent the same few wines to try, and talk about them through 140 characters and no images. Ahh.. the good ol’ days.
Wineries Get Personal
As Paul Mabray (CEO of Emetry.io, Analytics Software for the Wine Industry) tweeted that “now would be a good time to use email, social media or even the phone and talk WITH your customers. There's always ROI in talking with your customers.”
Now would be a good time to use email, social media or even the phone and talk WITH your customers. There's always ROI in talking with your customers.
— Paul Mabray (@pmabray) March 16, 2020
In a wine-industry specific Facebook group he also mentioned there are so many ways to get personal with customers, and shared a few ideas to both gain revenue and keep staff busy/employed:
Call campaigns for checking in, data hygiene, or sales
Individual emails
Handwritten cards by staff to key customers/groups
Inventory exercises
Customer journey mapping
Each staff member conducting virtual tastings with small groups of customers
The first two are both really fabulous ways to connect on an even more personal level. It goes back to social media 101 -- connections matter more than the tool. And right now, when millions around the world are isolated in their homes due to social distancing, people are excited about the idea of a connection. Many wineries already have these connections with their customers, whether it's through social media, or in person at their tasting rooms, events, etcetera.
But right now is a great time to reach out the personal emails, or simple phone calls letting customers know about the situation, and asking how they're doing. As businesses, our job is to serve people - and right now people need some help or something to make them smile and feel normal, even if it is just a for one sip.
I shared this image on Instagram the other day, and I truly believe that during a crisis, it is the time to focus on your best customers, versus going after new customers. None of us know the full scale of how this virus will hit small businesses, but one thing I do know is that during hard times, it is easier to focus on current customers rather than acquiring new customers.
Potential customers may not be planning vacations right now, but you can focus on the connection your current customers have with your brand.
As I mentioned in my speech with Sonoma County Tourism the other day - it costs more money to acquire new customers than to focus on current ones.
This means it’s a good time to move some of your marketing budgets from trying to get new customers (like ads going to a visit us page) to upselling products/services (without being overly salesly and inconsiderate by saying “hey, you may be stuck at home for a few weeks, you should stockpile our wine”), and keeping customers up-to-date with what you are doing at your place of business to say clean and safe. Ask your community how they’re doing on social media, and with other personal touches.
Focus on long-term customer loyalty, and if you’re in the wine industry, make sure to not talk about anxiety, because legally you’re not allowed to say that wine can help with anxiety! Just FYI.
Wineries Get Creative
My customers are not only in the wine industry, so a lot of these suggestions apply to other businesses as well. And I always love looking at other industries for creative inspiration. for example, Seattle’s fine dining restaurant Canlis restaurant is thinking outside of the box when it comes to their business — and changing up the entire format of their business from fine dining, to take out.
I would love to see more businesses brainstorm with their team or online communities for ways that they can try to make it through this pandemic while keeping their staff employed.
Some ideas I’ve seen are for businesses to focus on takeout, or heavily discounted shipping (since the wine-industry can’t do ‘free’), or if you are an educational event business, like Harness_U, or my own personal social media courses, adapting and making some of your courses online versus in-person for a short period of time. Some of my retail friends are creating programs and selling products online also.
I’ve also seen businesses come out with new products (a great way to upsell - I mean, creating a hat with your logo on it, or shirts with a fun wine-centric saying and your logo is great marketing), partnering with local artists, or doing pop-ups at outdoor venues that are still getting attendees (note, this was shared a few days ago when that was a possibility).
Northern California, obviously this is very different than some of the wine counrty fires that have hurt business over the past three years, but we have definitely learned from those disasters, and I have two articles that I wrote for the north bay business journal on how to deal with social media during a crisis, and how to create a crisis communication plan, please check them out and share, or simply share this article and brainstorm creative ideas for your winery or small business. Because we are all in this together.
Article: Create a social media communications plan for a disaster.
Article: 5-step social media action plan for business during a crisis
I don’t have all the answers, but I want to encourage people to take some time to assess what’s happening with your business and work with your wine team to brainstorm creative ways marketing the business, and to try to get through the next few weeks or months. ❤️ And remember - it’s time to be prepared, but not panic.
Update: here are even more creative ideas for wineries and restaurants to market their business, embracing ecommerce and delivery. And, if you are looking for ideas to help with your social media marketing during a crisis, here are 15 content prompts.
