Operating a wine or spirits brand online requires significant investment in digital marketing. You can’t simply launch a website or eCommerce store and call it a day. For starters, what is your current SEO strategy? Are there any areas where you can improve engagement or communication with your customers? What about the mobile shopping experience?
All of these tips, in addition to more targeted strategies, should be at the top of your digital marketing checklist. Here are a few more tips that can help you improve your online presence, attract new customers, and drive new revenue growth. From making your site more mobile-friendly to working with one of the best wine marketing companies, these are the tips all wine and spirit companies should know.
Add Product Reviews to Your Website
Every customer wants to know if the products they see advertised truly live up to the promises made in the copy. While wine and spirit brands can talk up their products to the moon and back, the true test of quality is always going to come from past buyers and, more specifically, what they have to say about their experience with a given brand. As such, one of the best ways to increase online sales for your wine and spirits brand is to include real reviews from customers directly on your website. Online shoppers want to know what regular people think of your products, and the more genuine reviews you can share, the better.
Prioritize SEO and Organic Growth
While many people buy wine and spirits in retail locations, a great many more use search engines like Google to find their new favorite products and compare several brands before making their decision. With the global wine market expected to reach $444.93 billion by 2027, there is significant revenue potential for any brand in the space. By working with your marketing team to optimize your wine and spirits website’s SEO, you can capture more of this audience as they search for products and brands like yours.
Through extensive keyword research, you can determine how your target audience is searching for products like yours, and you can work these keywords into your pages’ titles, headings, anchor text, title tags, and meta descriptions. From there, your team can work together or with an alcohol marketing agency to develop strategies for PPC advertising, link-building, content marketing, and UX. This can help give your wine and spirits site a well-rounded and customer-friendly structure that can gradually pull in more qualified web traffic.
Focus on the Perks of Your Products
While product descriptions might tell customers what your products will do (wine and alcohol are obviously for drinking), they usually don’t go too far beyond the ingredients and specifications. You want your products to stand out, and a great way of doing this is to focus on the unique aspects of your products. For wine and spirit brands, that means focusing on how different options might pair better in different settings or as seasonal gifts.
For example, your finest champagne would be great for weddings, but it’s also perfect for family celebrations, milestone birthdays, celebrating the purchase of a new home, or even a big promotion. Likewise, a poolside barbecue can always benefit from some pinot greige, red/white sangria punch, or a refreshing craft lager. While your marketing team will likely cycle through many ideas, the trick is to tell a story with your product rather than simply listing the contents of the bottle.
Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
It’s no secret that mobile eCommerce has been on the rise in recent years, with the pandemic accelerating the trend. More and more shoppers are searching for frictionless or contactless ways of shopping, and recent reports predict that mobile commerce will double its share of U.S. retail sales to over $700 billion by 2025. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile shopping, you could be losing out on valuable sales and revenue. Sensible menu and navigation options go a long way toward making the mobile shopping experience effortless. Likewise, high-contrast CTA buttons can help draw the eye of your customers during the conversion process, with short and sweet checkout processes helping to seal the deal.
In addition, running mobile-specific ads on certain platforms continues to be an excellent way to generate more sales and awareness for your brand. With Facebook offering the option to only show ads to mobile users, this can be a helpful way of directing mobile shoppers to your product pages.
Stay Active on Social MediaÂ
Few channels are as effective for nurturing existing customer relationships as social media. Whether it’s engaging with Instagram followers or bantering with your buyers on Twitter, customers tend to gravitate to brands with an honest, human component behind them. At the same time, social media offers the chance to place ads that can reach hundreds of millions of users, even if they aren’t already following or buying from you. These can be targeted based on age, location, job title, gender, and interests, with different ads for different audiences, helping you attract your ideal customers.
Partner with a Wine Marketing Agency
Whether your wine and spirits business operates exclusively online or you’re a brick-and-mortar store with an online component, digital marketing can be an extremely effective tool for generating sales and revenue. The above tips might take some extra time to implement, but that time is well spent, as it gives your business a foundation upon which to build more successful online marketing campaigns in the future.
Should you need some extra help streamlining your digital strategies, partnering with a reputable wine marketing agency is the logical next step. Not only do you gain a second team of wine and spirits experts, but also the opportunity to test out proven digital marketing strategies to target and engage your audience wherever they are in the buying process.
