Whether it’s a smooth Pinot Noir, a strong Valpolicella Ripasso or a fresh, crispy Riesling: a good glass of wine is like blood to some people, it keeps them running. Wine has been around for ages, like most of the wineries. You would guess that marketing efforts in the wine industry are traditional as well – but are they?
Not anymore. The traditional wine market has been overthrown by new, intelligent players. They combine the skills to make quality wines with the skills to market these with clever use of technology. Ever thought about getting a wine subscription, that has a number of bottles delivered to you every week/month? You should. Ever thought about marketing your wines on Instagram, instead of with a newspaper ad? You should. Wine influencers could be just what you need. Curious to what they could accomplish for your brand? In this article we’ll describe some of the main campaign objectives.
Wine Influencers for Awareness Campaigns
Let’s start easy: say you’re just launching a new wine brand, and you’re seeking awareness. You’re trying to get the wine placed in as many supermarkets as possible and you’re launching a billboard campaign all over town. Your objective is to reach as many people with your brand efforts, to anchor your message in the consumers’ brain.
Reach you say? Enter wine influencers. Influential bloggers and vloggers with a taste for wine, and thousands of followers. By collaborating with influencers you can ensure that these followers get to know your product in an organic fashion. They are sincerely interested in the influencer’s content, and learn about your wine. Want to make it more interesting? Perhaps you can invite an influencer to your tasting! Below you see some content from The Chef’s Quarter, a blog about food & drinks. Looks good, doesn’t it?
Wine Influencers as Authorities
The real essence of influencer marketing is not only the influencer’s reach. Influencers are trusted sources of information, since they’ve proven to know something (or a lot) about a specific topic. The consumer builds a bond of trust with the influencer, and actively enjoys their advice. Say you like a certain style of clothing, and you follow influencers who post about that style or clothing. Whenever they endorse a product they really love, you would find that interesting too. Right? Influencers become authorities on their topics.
Same goes for wine influencers. The field of influencers in the food & drinks topic varies from people who blog about fries and burgers to influencers specialized in Michelin-star restaurants. The same goes for wine influencers: users vary from drinking a random glass of white wine in the sun to sommeliers presenting their recent discoveries. Is your winery specialized in Burgundy classics, Super Tuscans or Duoro wines to die for? Considering working with a sommelier on Instagram, or a high-end wine influencer. Below you’ll find a post by The Story of My Wine, one of the best known wine influencers in the Netherlands.
Wine Influencers for Tourism
Let’s look at a different situation: you followed our advice and worked with multiple wine-influencers. They have made your estate popular with consumers in a certain area, and your wines are ordered frequently. Great job! To give your consumers the full-on experience, you decided to start giving tastings in your winery and you’ve set up a guest center for tourists in the area. Your new objective may be to get more people to visit your winery, and travel influencers may just as well be the solution.
If you offer more than just wine, then look beyond wine influencers. Some influencers may be authorities about the area you produce your wine in, or may be frequent visitors. Try to collaborate with them! The creative options are infinite: invite your influencers to the harvest, to a tasting, for a tour in your cellars – you name it. Influencers can create beautiful content that you can use for future commercial purposes. See for example this post by Narelle and Pim, a Dutch travel-couple. Wouldn’t you like to use content like this on your website?
Wine influencers on Events
Okay, we’ve tackled a number of situations already, but let’s look at one more: say you’re not a wine producer, but you are organizing an event for one. You’ve found a location, invited some chef’s and sommeliers and have all the tasting equipment you need. How are you going to promote your event?
Wine influencers love wine events – learning about new wineries and tasting new wines is their main goal. Perhaps you can invite multiple wine influencers for your campaign, promoting the event from well before to well after the event. Interested in how that would look? Easy! You could keep it simple and easy, like Jody did in this post. Nothing beats simple right?
Conclusion
Like mentioned before, wine influencers may be the solution to your marketing problems. Once you’ve made the decision to work with wine influencers, it may be difficult to find the influencer that matches your brand. Is it? Not really – by using Join‘s AI software it becomes very easy to find the right influencer, as well as run a campaign with several influencers. Through our keyword matching it becomes easy to find all available wine influencers, from those specialized in easy drinking white wines on the couch to Super Tuscans with elaborate tasting notes. Request a demo of our services below, and we’d love to show you how it works.
