How to communicate in wine market.

I have just returned fromVinitaly where I have made some accurate analysis about wine brands communication strategies. Here is some advice.

Communicating means first and foremost knowing your audience. This is a concept that I have already explained and if you follow me you know it very well.

Sometimes itis not easy to identify your audience because you can offer services or products that could be interesting for a lot of people. This is often Isthe case of a winery company.

Obviously,I do not forget the exclusive product concept, but at the same time I think that everyone, has bought once in a lifetime a high-level wine bottle at a restaurant or for a special dinner just to impress a woman.

It is important that you don’t consider your potential customers as anundefined group of persons. Focus on the objective of knowing more about them and you will be able to create efficient strategies.

Ask yourself this question: who are my potential customers?

If you don’t answer to this question, or your answer is too general, keep reading this post.

Millennials prefer quality to quantity

They are born after the 80’s and cover about 30% of wine consumers; an important percentage.

In the USA,one of Italian’s biggest wine market, they are almost 87 million people (eMarketer data). It is a high percentage of potential customers compared to any other groups and they are considered the generation that has the most potential for growth in quality and quantity of consumption.

Talking about quality, millennials are precise consumers with a good winemaking culture.

Already in 2014, the Wine Meridian announced in the US that lower-end products (cost for bottle under 10 dollars) had lost important percentages of turnover while products with a cost for bottle over 15 dollars had increased sales.

How important are critics today?

This is the real revolution that your winegrower must take part in in order to avoid the risk to remain behind.

New generations have changed their shopping methods: digital world is their natural ambient.

The opinionon a product does not only come by watching a tv spot, reading specialized magazines or guru reviews. Instead, word of mouth, friends influence and social media are acquiring a prominent position.

How to intercept such an important market segment, different from the previous one?

It’s easy! Communication strategy, brand awareness and web reputation.

Where do we start from? Website!

Remember:Your website is your central hub.

Millennials use websites to search information and build their opinions therefore, thedigital worldis the main platform to get in touch with them.

Digital is website only?

Digital meansnot only website, but also blogs, social networks and mobile applications. It needsa lot of work to create a position to your brand, and to make it interesting. Every step counts but don’t forget, every step is only a part sof a strategy.

Let us take social networks as an example: a research, the Noise Cassandra Report, conducted on more than three thousand young people from different countries (Italy, India, Germany, U.S.A., Brazil, Spain, China, UK, South Africa and South Korea) revealed that although 77% of the interviewed believe it is very important to stay up to date on latest news, 60% considers social medias an essential source for this purpose. (21% doesn’t consider them important while the remaining 19% does not agree or disagree on this).

Communicating on social networks means staying in touch with our potential customers, listening before speaking.

Your brand will live on social networks, produce interesting items, comments and answers.

Experts, competitors, activities around the wine world and wine bloggers page (especially those of them who write a lot and have a lot of public) will be important for you.

Build a wine web reputation

Wine is a living product. It constantly changes, has its history, is linked to a territory, and for this reason, it has a lot to tell.

Think about famous wines: Barbera, Dolcetto d’Alba, Barbaresco but also Nero d’Avola, Sassicaia, Chianti. Do you expect to drink a bad wine with these brands? No. They are famous to be good wines. Surely, we are not speaking about brands but wine grape variety.

The power of the these names has overtaken the barriers of the wine expert and has reached out to  the consumer who doesn’t have a technical knowledge of the product and who, to avoid any mistakes or to drink well, relies on the famous brand that is asymbol of quality.

So to grow up your brand speak with wbloggers, or wine bloggers, influencers and wine opinion leaders to let people know about your brand and in the meantime, stimulate buzz, and let people talk about your products.

Once people talk about your brand, answer in a correct and consistent waywith yourbrand values. Be present, make yourself known by people through digital advertising carried out according to your style.

Here is an actions summary

• Know your customers, try to understand who they are, what they do, what they love, what their tastes are;
• Create a website that will please your audience, not you; (It has to be responsive, the most researches are done from tablet and smartphones)ì;
• Work with great attention on company pages on the main social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and Google+ (Search for a professional because it makes the difference, choose your social networks based on your potential audience);
• Spread your style, take photos and videos, invent, dare;
• Produce contents but always put yourself in the shoes of your potential customers. It gives them exciting stories. Be generous;
• Carefully consider integrating an eCommerce into your website. Online sales is a possibility that must be managed with great attention;

And last but not the least…

Pay attention to your partner: the key to success is made of your product mixed with his skills and your ability to trust and rely on him.

Kind Italian Regards!