Wine Country small business owners and marketers are always looking for ways to get more bang for their marketing bucks. After all, marketing is one of the most important investments a business can make—but it can also be one of the most expensive. If you have a limited budget, it's especially important to ensure that every dollar you spend is working hard for your business.

Since the pandemic, ecommerce has become a larger part of many small wineries' businesses. New customers have become more comfortable buying wine online, meaning that wineries need to think of their websites as more than just a place to list directions to the tasting room (which, tbh, is still important). This is where content marketing comes in. 

Potential customers will almost certainly visit your website before visiting your tasting room—and sometimes even before they buy your wine on a retail shelf—so it's really important that your website makes a good first impression.

If you want to have a successful ecommerce website, you’ll need a new focus on content marketing. 

Why is content marketing so important for wineries?

Content is what will drive traffic to your site and convert those visitors into paying customers. When you have great content on your website, potential customers are more likely to stay on your site, thus increasing their chance of making a purchase.

If your content is interesting and informative, potential customers are also more likely to share it with their friends, which sends even more traffic to you.

Wait, what is content marketing for wine websites?

Content marketing is creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage your target audience to drive profitable customer action (i.e., not just creating content for content’s sake).

Content is basically everything that goes on a website, from basics like the homepage, about us, contact us, and sales pages to blog posts, videos, and landing pages to capture emails. Creating informative and interesting content can boost your site in search engines and turn it into a valuable visitor resource, leading to increased sales.

How? By providing the information needed to make a purchase decision and an easy path to follow through with buying.

The issue: Creating ongoing content doesn’t come naturally to everyone, especially if you're already stretched thin running your business. 

Not everyone is a natural writer or designer, but there are ways to make the process easier.

Need help coming up with ideas for the next six months’ worth of social media and website content? This six-month content creation calendar can help. 

5 tips for creating content when you're short on time:

Picture this: it's Friday morning, and you sit down at your computer to start working on that blog post you've been meaning to get to. But then you realize…you’ve forgotten what you wanted to write, and you don’t even know how much time it will take to draft that 2,000-word essay. 

What do you do? 

1. Write down ideas as they come to you. We all have ideas, but taking a seat and writing them down can be daunting. Keep a notepad or smartphone handy, and jot down your thoughts as they come to you. This will give you a starting point to work from later on. Don't worry about perfection—just get your thoughts down on paper. Oh, and I recommend starting with the questions you get asked most frequently by your customers. It’s a great way to make sure what you’re creating is helpful to your target audience. 

2. Set aside time each week to outline and plan ahead. Set a kitchen timer, take the ideas you wrote down, and create a game plan for them that excites you. Think about the type of content that can come from each idea: blog posts, YouTube videos, short-form videos for Instagram Reels or TikTok, social media posts, going live, hosting a virtual tasting on Facebook, etc. With a limited amount of time, it's important to make the most of it—so seriously, set a timer for a specific amount of time, and then start writing (I use my kitchen timer to help me create content). Once the timer goes off, you can revise what you've written.

Examples of the types of content you could create: Let's say you own a winery and you want to sell your wines online. You could create blog posts that feature tasting notes and pairings for each of your wines, or you could produce videos that showcase how your wines are made. These educate potential customers about your product and build trust and credibility (two essential elements when it comes time for someone to hit the "buy" button). 

3. Set aside another window for content creation. Coming up with ideas for content and actually creating it are two different things. Once you have outlines of what you want to do, pencil in dedicated time to photograph a photo shoot, film B-roll footage on your phone to edit later, or write out a blog post. This way, you can batch your content creation and make the most of your time.

4. Repurpose old content in new ways. Expand upon an old blog post that ranks high on your website. Republish an evergreen social media post that received great engagement a few months ago. When you repurpose old content, take the time to update it with new information, insights, or perspectives. This ensures that your audience is always seeing your best work. 

Recycling old content allows you to create new content, which can help you grow your reach and engagement even further.

I have shared this content marketing meme a few times on Instagram over the past year. The image has the same caption, and I have scheduled it to go out once every 3-4 months. Each time it gets pretty good engagement and a lot of shares. So don’t feel like you HAVE to be posting original stuff. Your dropbox, or hell - your phone — has years’ worth of content for marketing, so reuse it!

5. Make sure to include a CTA. Good content isn’t just about writing something that your audience can get excited about—it’s about getting them to take action. So make sure to always have a CTA and share a link to where you want them to go next… See the last paragraph for an example. ;) 

If just reading these five tips stresses you out, I would recommend looking at outsourcing some of your content creation. Connect with me, and I can see if I can help or at least provide you with a recommendation for a marketing freelancer or agency to help you with content marketing.

Content marketing should ultimately be a fun and rewarding process. To achieve that, follow my favorite tip for content marketing: cater your creations to what you are passionate about within your business (check out how to find your brand passions for your business). If you infuse your online presence with passion for your brand, then it’s only a matter of time before that passion is shared by your new customers.