Posted in
Business by
Greg on July 23, 2008
So we’ve been going through a little bit of a whirlwind lately over here at GT trying to find our path, and it ultimately led up to a fabulous meeting Monday in Atlanta. Paul, Andrea, and Pascal from Inertia flew out to meet and hang with us. It was great because we had Gahnert and my pops and his importer operations guy Mike — there was some serious industry weight in that room. Yet, everybody was laid back and chill. We built some great confidence in TasteVine being the product and the brand. We’re going to put the recommendation engine more backend for now and start focusing on finding some awesome global wines and producers that want to be a part of the brand. Anybody will still be able to use the engine (which will give recommendations from Inertia’s domestic direct client base), and others can try our TasteVine Selections, which will be the best wines and labels from around the world. We’ve got some great people behind us and are going to work hard to find the best juice in the world. Given this crystallization, we feel its best for GrapeThinking (or maybe GrapeThink) to naturally become TasteVine’s blog and get everybody unified behind one focused effort. So glad I didn’t take that banking job.
What is going on in the world? How is it that Bear Sterns can go from $20 a share to $2? Basically, my feeling is that the credit crunch of the past 6 months sends a serious message to us all, a message about value.
The problem with board members who rely on econometrics and statistics to forecast company growth and decide who the CEO should be is that they have become too focussed on the profit, and have completely forgotten value. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, who summed up the crisis we’re in quite well: beware the man who puts a price on everything whilst not knowing the value of anything. The sub-prime mortgage is a result of a bunch of spin-doctors who tried to put a price on things without caring about value. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in
Business,
Marketing,
Technology by
Jake on April 3, 2008
I was browsing through some old notes, and found this post by Ryan Opaz at Catavino talking about their site stats, and figuring out the reality behind pageviews in the wine industry. The post had spawned a great discussion, and in preparing a response, I decided should just write a post about site stats.
Are you tracking visitors to your website? If the answer is NO, then you have to catch up with the times. If you owned a hardware store, and I could tell you information about:
- who your customers are
- how many customers you have
- how they find you
- how long each of them are in your store
- what they are looking at
- how long someone is in a particular section
- is this their first visit
- what they bought
- at what point did they decide to leave
Would you not practically beg me for this? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in
Business,
Marketing,
Millennials by
Jake on March 31, 2008
So you are ready to start advertising on Facebook?… Great! This simple tutorial should help you to get your ad set-up in less than 15 minutes.
Step 1 - What are you promoting? - Login to Facebook, then go to the Create Ad page and enter the url you want your traffic to go to. (For our clients, we customize a landing page for each ad in an effort to better convert the traffic). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in
Business,
Marketing,
Millennials by
Jake on March 28, 2008
What do you do if you want to show your ads to single females between the ages of 22 and 26, who are interested in Jack Johnson, traveling, and enjoy the hit TV series “Lost”. - Answer - Facebook Advertising
You can only narrow your targeted advertising down so far when using some of the traditional online advertising strategies. Google Adwords allows you to target specific keywords (a proven method), and they will use IP addresses to geo-target your ads to people in specific areas. You can roughly determine the demographics of a particular website for your CPM (cost-per-impression) advertising based on content..e.g. the most frequent visitors of dating sites are single males between 30 and 45 years of age, and they are interested in … 
Like many advertising services, Facebook offers you the option to pay on a CPC (cost-per-click) basis, which means exactly that. You only pay when someone clicks on the ad. You can also choose the CPM method, which can save you money and offer more overall exposure for your $. They launched the program in November, and have received both positive and negative criticisms. Read the rest of this entry »
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