The big idea – Marketing wine is more about your meaningful relationship with your targeted audience than the actual wine itself.

First of all, do we actually have to market our wine? I mean really…can’t our wines just speak for themselves with gold medals and Parker scores?

Nope. Won’t work, BECAUSE, as a wine maker or owner, you are competing against 60,000 other labels (in the U.S.) including wines from around the world.

And it doesn’t make a bit of difference if you are in the Dry Creek region of Sonoma County or on the Rutherford Bench in the Napa Valley. If you have 60,000 competing labels, you are fighting to cut through the glut of information bombarding “customers” to carve out your slice of mind-share and wallet-share. The amount of information affecting all of us is almost overwhelming. That affects your customers, too.

Of course you will get tasting room visitors where every you are, but in today’s world with the global reach of the Internet and growing proliferation of new brands and labels you have to be doing more than depending on medals, scores and the next tour bus.

That means getting in front of and staying in front of your intended wine/winery audience.

You do that by creating your own wine marketing strategy, complete with a vision, audience, SWOT, VAIA and more.

For now, let me quickly cover the high points to get your mental juices flowing and we’ll cover the detail of each of these in later posts.

1. Vision – What is your passion about growing grapes/making wine? What got you into this in the first place? You need to create an answer with a high emotional index because it will drive who you market to and what you say to them.

2. Audience – Who are you targeting and why? Drill down on this and clearly, succinctly define them. Don’t just say “Everyone who stops by my winery in Omaha.” Be specific. Then work to identify how big that market is and how THEY communicate.

3. SWOT – Identify your winery’s strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Don’t put “Small, family owned” under strength…because 98% of all wineries are small and family owned so that is not a competitive differentiator.

4. VAIA – When you know who your audience is, what they are interested in, why they might listen to you and where they are, then you can begin to craft your marketing pipeline by identifying how to gain Visibility with them, cut through the glut to develop Awareness about you, craft messages and offers to build Interest in your winery and wines and take Action to buy from you.

Think about this and we’ll go into more detail going forward.

Have a great day.

You know how when you were growing up your parents and teachers wanted you to conform and be like everyone else? Being different was bad? Well if you are a winery or small business, being different is what will make you a success. Being different is VERY good. In fact, being different and being meaningfully differentiated relative to your target audience is what will cause them to be aware of you and gain interest in your message.