Just as with other brands and sectors, no online presence makes you practically invisible, or not even present at all.
In the following post we are going to look at how to create a powerful online strategy that helps to cultivate your craft beverage brand while at the same time strengthening the relationship with your customers.
Marketing craft beer and other beverages, a world full of opportunities
Unlike in the past, there is no longer any need for the huge and exorbitant budgets that the beer and beverage giants used to have to build an advertising campaign and a solid marketing strategy.
The world online, digital tools available and apps revolution have broken down the barriers to attracting a large number of new followers and potential customers interested in your products. Now even the smallest manufacturers with micro-breweries can achieve great things with an attractive website and a presence on the right social media.
Although WOM (word of mouth) works relatively well in craft beverage consumption, the truth is that the typical user is connected to a mobile with a wealth of applications and at least two or three social media, where they can find out about endless new beverages, their characteristics, where they are made or even where they are served or sold online.
Source: Untappd
In a not-so-recent study into the effects of mobile phones on the beer industry, the consultancy firm Xenopsi discovered that no fewer than 74% of the consumers of craft beer found their tipple of choice through a Smartphone. This figure is growing every year, making mobiles the most popular dissemination tool and included in any strategy.
B2B VS B2C, boosting reputations and brand confidence
First of all, and this is not to say there won’t be a subsequent post on this vital part of any marketing strategy (and even more so for the craft sector), we must separate B2B (Business to Business), which focuses on business strategies, from B2C (Business to Consumer), which expects conversions from the end consumer, thinking about their emotional decisions.
B2B marketing in the craft sector is a long and ambitious process which does not give immediate results. However, with the right steps that we will expand upon elsewhere, we will explain how to achieve them.
Steps to create an online marketing plan in the craft world
Before creating strategy, you must sit down and analyse your current situation and design a proper marketing plan, in which you will define your objectives. A step-by-step plan of where you want to get to.
1. Where are you now? Analyse your current situation
Are you a hub, a micro-brewery with a very successful product but you are trying to reach a more mainstream public that is unfamiliar with it? Are you focused on improving processes with the aim of being more efficient? Do you want to take the plunge with a new liquid creation that is considered craft but not mainstream?
You must be very aware of the environment that you find ourselves in (your budget and economic capacity, your position, competition, sector opportunities and weaknesses, as well as knowing your point of maturity with the product, or beverage, or the service that you want to offer).
2. Outline objectives
Outlining the objectives is essential to any marketing plan. You have to set realistic and specific goals, to subsequently be able to measure the results. For example, generating traffic to your website, either with a blog or by other means, increasing your engagement with presence on certain social media networks, or raising the much-desired ROI in any online strategy.
3. Of course, have a clear strategy
The third step after outlining objectives is in creating a very clear strategy where you must know with full certainty how to transmit the message depending on your brand: the tone for each platform and the visual identity. In the world of craft beverages, among other aspects, it is important to have a website and a space for general information about sector trends, while at the same time functioning as a storefront showcasing the latest launces.
4. Analyse results
Lastly, you should arm yourself with all the right market tools (i.e. one of the most popular, Google Analytics) which provide specific results for actions performed and which give you a broader overview of where you have to be and which actions work better.
5. Entrust your strategy to a specialised online marketing agency
Last but not least, you must put the time in to what is really up to you, in this case, crafting, selling quality products and providing a competitive service to your customers. That is what makes it so interesting to delegate and entrust your strategy to a specialised team who can successfully achieve marketing results.
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