The beverage industry is becoming increasingly saturated with new brands, and competition is fierce. Consumers are presented with an abundance of choices, and it can be challenging to find new ways to get your brand in front of them.
Our team have a vast depth of experience in the beverage industry, and we’re delighted to share our top 8 strategies for businesses in the beverage industry wanting to maximise their brand awareness and sales opportunities – whether you’re marketing wine, craft beer, cider, or spirits.
Product Packaging
Having packaging that resonates with your target audience and stands out on the shelf (or behind the bar) is imperative to capturing those who haven’t purchased your products before.
When designing your product packaging (or tap decals), be sure to consider:
- How your product looks on the shelf against competitors, and what elements you could use to stand out amongst the crowd.
- How your logo is presented.
- Whether your design is likely to resonate with your target audience.
- For product packaging: whether you’ve gained GS1 approval for your barcode (some retailers have this as a requirement in Australia), and your packaging is compliant with Australian laws (don’t forget to use the correct pregnancy label and state recycling icon).
- For tap decals: the size and shape of your decal, your logo size and placement, use of colours, and the ABV percentage.
Brand Positioning
When was the last time you reviewed your brand positioning? How well do you know your target audience? When evaluating your brand positioning, consider the following:
- Have you articulated your vision and brand values, strategic pillars (how you will achieve your vision) and measurable objectives to reach your business goals?
- Have you identified your target audience and where you can reach them? What type of content would appeal to them?
- Your brand personality, including tone of voice and visual brand assets that are distinctive in the market.
- Evaluate how your brand differs from your competitors.
Before making any moves with your brand, you need to understand who you exist for and what factors will drive your audience to choose your product over a competitor’s.
Social Content Worth Stopping For
These days, it’s not enough to just take photos of your product on a bench. Your audience needs to connect with your brand personality and message.
Coming up with a content strategy that captures your brand through varied content topics is imperative to growing your brand on social media.
- Engage your audience with a mix of image posts, reels/videos, and stories. Once you have a consistent mix of these, shake things up by posing questions in your captions, posting in relevant groups, and running interactive polls to gain insights and further engage your audience.
- Leverage user generated content by re-sharing quality posts and tagging the original poster. This is an easy, tried and tested approach to increase brand credibility and further engage your followers
- When creating video content, consider how you can either entertain, inform, or persuade your audience. Keep in mind who your target audience is, and what kind of content would engage them
- Stick to the 80/20 rule – avoid posting only ‘salesy’ content. We recommend keeping sales content to a maximum of 20% – 1 post in every 5. 80% of your content should be entertaining or value add with the goal of increasing brand awareness and engagement. This will create sales without disengaging your audience or losing followers
- Leverage the reach of relevant influencers. While you may not be able to recruit influencers like the Inspired Unemployed boys (well played, Better Beer), you can still engage relevant beverage influencers. Start by reaching out over Instagram to micro-influencers (<20k followers) and offering to send samples in exchange for a post on your product. Increase your conversion tracking ability and understand the power of your influencer network by creating a unique discount code they can share with their audience
- Engage your team when creating content. Show your audience the people behind your brand and let your team have fun with the content. A great example of this is Mountain Culture’s Instagram (craft beer), who are always getting their team involved in different image posts and videos.
Wholesale Platforms and Subscription Delivery Services
Do you stock your products with national retailers? Maximise your wholesale and online retail orders by ensuring your content on the retailers’ Product Management Systems is up to date. Connect with your representatives to see if they need any additional information, or how you could improve your product listings with them.
Reach new customers by leveraging subscription delivery services. Here are a few to get started:
All beverage types:
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Wine:
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Spirits:
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Beer:
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E-commerce Sales
Be sure to consider these factors when reviewing your website:
- Your e-commerce site must be user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing, making it easy for customers to navigate. Incorporate high-quality, low size images and detailed descriptions of your beverages.
- Ensure your website is mobile-optimised, and page loading speeds are reduced as much as possible. For every 1 second delay in page load time, there is a 7% loss in conversions.
- Provide multiple secure payment options to increase customers’ trust in your site and make it easier for them to complete purchases.
- Implement effective search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies to improve your site’s ranking on search engines. High-quality content can help you attract, engage, and retain site users.
- Want your products to automatically feed into Google’s shopping section? Ensure you have Google Merchant set up and linked within your e-commerce platform.
- Utilise Google Analytics to understand customer behaviour on your website and use these to improve your customer journey and conversions.
- Regular promotions, discounts, and special deals can entice customers to make purchases. You could offer first-time buyer discounts, bundle deals, seasonal promotions, or offers to clear ageing stock.
Membership or Loyalty Programs
The key to creating value for your customers is through both your e-commerce site and loyalty program. By offering excellent products, a seamless shopping experience, and rewarding customer loyalty, you can significantly increase direct sales through your website
- Offer exclusive benefits to members, such as early access to new products, special discounts, or free shipping. These incentives can encourage customers to join the program and make more frequent purchases.
- Implement a points system where customers earn points for each purchase, which can be redeemed for discounts, products, or other perks. This can encourage customers to make more purchases to accumulate more points.
- Use customer data from the loyalty program to provide personalised experiences, such as tailored product recommendations. This can enhance customer satisfaction and boost sales.
- Consider a tiered system where customers receive greater benefits as they move up levels based on their purchase history. This can incentivise customers to spend more to reach higher tiers.
- Keep members engaged with regular updates, personalised emails, and exclusive content. This can help maintain a strong relationship with your customers and encourage repeat purchases.
Email Marketing
If executed well, email marketing can become one of your biggest e-commerce sales drivers. It’s also a great way to communicate multiple messages in one activity. Want to increase your email database? Here are a few tips to get those sign ups rolling in:
- Ensure your website footer has a (working) email sign up form. Ideally, it should automatically integrate with your CRM mailing list.
- Create a website pop up that incentivises email sign ups with an offer. Just make sure it isn’t too persistent – we don’t want it to get annoying.
- If you have a tasting room, restaurant or venue that uses a booking platform, add an ‘email opt in’ check box and integrate the feed with your CRM. Once set up, you’ll benefit from the ongoing collection of already engaged customers.
- Run a lead generation campaign in Meta Ads, driving email sign ups through Facebook. Create your lead form, then tell your audience why they should sign up. Want to collect email addresses from as little as five cents each? Run a competition to entice email sign ups, such as a product giveaway.
- Collect emails on the road and in your venue by displaying a QR code that links to your email sign up form. Take it a step further by offering a discount code for online orders when someone signs up via the QR code.
Consumer and Trade Events
Participating in local and national consumer and trade events, beverage festivals or music events provides powerful opportunities to boost the visibility of your beverage brand.
By aligning your brand with these high-traffic events, you can engage with new customers who are already interested in your product category.
Promoting your involvement in these events across your social media channels, while also connecting with the official event organiser pages, can significantly drive traffic to your own pages.
Putting Our Tips in Play to Boost Your Beverage Brand
As you put these marketing strategies into action, remember the crucial step of monitoring the results to identify what’s effective and what’s not. Be flexible and adapt your strategy as needed to maximise your budget and time investment.
And if this all seems a bit too overwhelming for your liking or you simply don’t have the time to execute it, our expert team of professionals are here to help take your business to the next level in the beverage industry. Contact us today and let’s chat over a drink!
