If you’re into wine or looking to up your skill, you would probably appreciate some type of innovative recommendation technology that gives you wine recommendations suited to your personal tastes. There are no doubt a lot of people out there trying to find the magic formula for this. But, the bigger idea for you, the consumer, is how to actually buy the wine that’s been recommended to you. You’ve got 2 choices: you can either buy it direct or you type in your zip code and find the nearest retail outlet that carries the wine.

In regard to Direct-to-Consumer sales, I’ve been ordering some wine direct over the past few months, and as cool as it sounds, it has become a bit of a pain. It takes a week, sometimes 2, to arrive, and you have to be at your place of residence to sign for it. This becomes a huge hassle for younger consumers, especially those in undergraduate or graduate schools. So how do we get around this problem and still provide value to the consumers?

There’s a balance. The wines that consumers will buy direct are those quality inexpensive wines that they can’t find at a local store. This applies especially to international brands, which don’t have mass distribution due to domestic product saturation in trade outlets. However, for most wines that consumers get recommended to them, they will just want to type in their zip code and find the nearest supermarket, specialty shop, or restaurant that carries the wine they’re looking for. That way they can take a 5-10 minute ride down the street and buy it. Even more, with a retailer such as Total Wine, the consumer can actually order wine online and then go pick it up. This gets around the problem of typing in their zip code, finding a store, and then going all the way there just to find out that the wine they’re looking for isn’t in stock.

Of course, if the logistics can be well oiled and the profit margins reduced by eliminating distributors, then buying direct can be more cost effective than buying in stores, even with shipping costs. This will happen to some degree over the coming 10 years, and will ultimately put price pressure on the retailers and distributors to lower their prices. But for now, it is just not going to be a huge sales channel because a 40 pound box is a 40 pound box and the waiting time and hassle with having to be at your residence to sign is just too much to not go down the street and buy the wine.

While true longevity comes with lower prices, Direct-to-Consumer sales can thrive in the coming years by providing quality, inexpensive wines, mostly international, that do not have much distribution in retail outlets. For this, people will wait awhile and go through the trouble of being at their house to sign. Even more, making certain wines part of the taste recommendation technology and delivering them from the same fulfillment house (such as Wine Tasting Network), could be a cool promotional feature that encourages direct sales. Next post, I’m talking about our virtual import model for bringing in international brands well suited for D-T-C sales channel as well as thoughts on how to integrate a “local supplier network” of retail outlets, such as Winesearcher, into our online community.

If you’re a winery, there’s about a 50% chance that you have a website. If you have one, the odds are probably much greater that the majority of your site visitors come because they have either 1) had the wine or 2) it was recommended. Point being… if someone has never heard of you, they probably aren’t going to be stumbling onto your site. And if they do, is the webpage enough to make them feel like they are missing out on something if they don’t try the wines?

Your wine is your brand, and the worst thing for a brand is to not have a point of difference. So next time your strolling through the online world, and looking at all of the wineries’ webpages, pay attention, and one thing will become very apparent. Most winery websites follow the same template. It really does look like the winery sent in a few pictures and a paragraph description to the web-design company, and they just stamped the site right out. Granted this doesn’t apply to all wineries… many take the time to find a designer and pay them $1000’s to develop a site that is unique to their image. Unfortunately, the majority of wineries don’t have this budget, and resort to the ever looming “default” home page. This could be because godaddy.com gives you the template for free, or you put out a website simply because you felt you had to.

Every winery is different, every wine and its vintage is different, every wine maker unique and lovable in their own ways… How do you share that with an audience? How do you attract the audience? The solution isn’t for a winery to work intensely at marketing themselves, but to do what they do best… be unique. One of the most recent internet phenomenons is myspace.com. As the name portrays, its MY space… unique to that individual, created however they would like. Granted there are almost always similarities in basic design, but every page has a personality to interact with… not to mention the page is plugged into a community of millions of people. How easy is it to stumble on a myspace profile… too easy almost… browsing through the site, clicking on friends’ friends, and their most popular friend, looking at the comments that have been made, going to a bands page, reading what the artists are experiencing, and even talking with them on their wall. Some wineries are even taking advantage of this already…Bellview Winery, (a small winery in New Jersey, they are only sold locally in the state, and they have over 500 Myspace friends) The one drawback is that Myspace pages give samples of the musicians work, whereas wineries will obviously not be able to give tastes of their wines.

The two “profiles” on this page, one for Estancia, and one for Dromos (picked simply because they’re a couple of the favorites here - click to enlarge) were quickly designed to give an idea of how a winery could have a community profile page that not only complements their website, but also allows interaction with the fans. It gives some basic information, and gives the ability to have an open discussion right on the page. They would need to be somewhat similar for ease of navigation, but the main point of difference being a combination of the functionality and the ability to interact with the viewers. Furthermore, it could serve a really cool function of providing a virtual tour of the winery. This is the type of feature that could actually had value to the consumer’s buying experience and even entice them to travel to that location, which could even be arranged through the profile page. Estancia’s website is rather advanced for winery websites and should not be discarded. Instead, there should just be an RSS feed on the profile page that brings in content from the website. Dromos, on the other hand, has practically no website presence and could greatly benefit from a profile.

The problem of rubber-stamped websites can be solved, but two very important things have to take place for the benefit of these personality profiles to realize itself. First, wineries have to be willing to update their profile with new content on somewhat of a regular basis… this applies to their websites as well. Second, and more importantly, in order for these profile pages to really serve their purpose, they have to exist within an established online community of wine consumers or within an online community of wineries, in which consumers go to check out their options. WineWeb and RadCru are doing some very interesting things, creating online marketplaces for wineries. However, they have a minimalist presence for the winery, especially their personality. This is probably because, as previously mentioned, it will be very difficult to get wineries to consistently add content and update their profiles. Ultimately, it’s going to take the attention of the consumer before the wineries start putting in the effort.

One of the best ways for wineries to connect with their customers is through an email marketing program. However, if wineries were given the capability to e-mail customers personalized newsletters, promotions, RSS feeds, etc., would they actually want or take the time to do it? Winemakers are rustic people and have a very strong passion for what they do. They enjoy the human element of winemaking and having close relationships with people that they do business with. Technology, especially e-communication, takes the face away from the customer, which in the eyes of the average winemaker or winery marketing director is not a real way of connecting. The marketing potential, however, is too great for this perception to not change in the near future.

In reality, wineries have indirect relationships with their customers through salesman, retailers, and distributors and that barrier is something that has existed for awhile. Thus, this new direct-to-the source e-comm. approach probably makes wineries a little timid, especially since they’ll have to become tech-savvy to utilize its potential. Even though they may be turned away at first, this does not deny the fact that if wineries directly connected with their customers more often, they would have increased success … they just need a medium that understands the consumer and understands how to deliver the winery’s information when and where the consumer wants it.

There’s a great product called iContact that simplifies this whole process. Through its web-based system wineries can send newsletters with personal messages, new products or promotions as well as surveys that get customer opinions about various issues, such as the quality of the latest vintage. They do RSS feeds, autoresponders and all that good stuff, as well as detailed metrics and tracking systems that inform who is opening newsletters and surveys, and therefore who is more likely to become a quality customer. This type of info can be so valuable to wineries because, with it, they can feel confident that they know who their customers are and what they want. Furthermore, they know that if they deliver on their customer demand, they can develop quality long-term relationships them.

The most important thing, however, is for all of this information to consistently get to the people that want it, while absolutely never becoming spam! This cannot be emphasized enough. It is a must that customers personally sign up for these newsletters, surveys, etc, which they can do on winery websites or other community sites. If people keep getting messages that they don’t want, they are just going to be annoyed and probably won’t buy your product again. Intellicontact’s parent company Broadwick has strong relationships with ISPs to guarantee that messages get to the customers, while strongly advocating ethical approaches to email marketing that are about building relationships rather than overloading inboxes.

This is some cool stuff, and there is no doubt that smart, tech-savvy marketing directors out there will start doing it for their wineries. For those that are more technologically challenged, I guess you’ll need a little guidance.

One of the most common misconceptions I hear as a web marketer is that an industry, product, or web site is just not viral material. That is to say, the content is so boring, so drab, that it would be impossible to muster up any kind of promotion that would harness the attention of the web. I laugh. I laugh because I want business owners to remember what it was like when they first started - that buzz, that energy, that creativity and excitement. It is still there, it has just been drowned by years of repetition, monotony and struggle.

The truth is, any site with the right spin can go viral. You will have to be creative. You will have to work. But there is always something interesting enough to drum up that can be turned into a fantastic marketing windfall. We have never run a successful viral campaign that did not bring in so much traffic that the client’s site went down. Below, I go through a comparison of the pieces that make a viral campaign work in terms of starting a bonfire. The analogy bares out well, and provides some sage advice (if I must say so myself) in making a campaign truly work.

1. The Matches: the initial spark
Without any doubt, this is the most important part of the campaign. Sink or swim, blaze or fizzle, your viral campaign needs substance. Luckily, you don’t have to put two sticks together and rub like crazy, there are plenty of ready-to-run themes that greatly increase the likelihood of a successful online viral campaign.

1. Bad Customer Service
2. Incredible Customer Service
3. PopTechnology: Apple, Linux, Ipods, Ruby on Rails, Nintendo Wii, Gadgets
4. Amazing Stories, Pictures, or Videos

The question for wineries is always how to include “primed-for-viral” topics into something drastically different from wineries and wine in general. Well, here are just a few grains to get you going

1. Incredible Customer Service: Customer gets a bottle of your wine at a restaurant complains. Complaint makes it back to your winery. You contact the restaurant to find the customer information and send multiple free bottles to their house.
2. PopTechnology: Include a Free Ipod Shuffle with a case of wine. The shuffle comes pre-recorded with tasting notes by the winemaker, recipes, and romantic music.
3. Amazing Stories, Pictures, or Videos: The next time you get a cold storm that freezes some of your grapes and ruins them, run out there with camera and take some gorgeous shots of ice-covered grapes melting in the sun. Put those up on Flickr and watch the traffic come in.

The key here is value. Make your site something people want to see and read. Now that the ideas are rolling, lets start talking about turning that match into a bon-fire.

2. The Kindling: superficial burning that light the real flame.
Just like any fire, you can’t go straight to the logs. Well, you could, but your chances of success are greatly impeded. This is where the savvy of internet marketing companies really comes in handy. Here are some tips to help the fire get going…

1. Profiles with Reputation. Most Web 2.0 communities value User reputation. Users who have been at the site and participated at the site for long periods of time are much more likely to be successful when posting stories than new accounts. Use an old, reputable account to post stories to sites like Digg, Reddit, Netscape, etc.
2. Link to the Story. Make sure that visitors to your site who are reading the story know that they can vote on it at various web 2.0 sites. Remind them by putting buttons below or beside the story. This is always good for a few extra votes early in the running from your most loyal site readers.
3. Friends. I am not going to say go get all your friends out there to sign up and start voting for your stories. I won’t even go so far as to say that you should tell friends already on the site to vote for the story. I am going to say that you should make friends on these sites (such as the “Friend” function on Digg) so that they will know when your stories are posted. Moreover, feel free to tell your friends about the story. Some of them may already have accounts at web 2.0 sites, and you have now earned an extra vote or two.

3. Firelogs: keep that fire burning long
The key to long-lasting virals is that they must be RESPONSIVE. While most viral campaigns at least leave up the comments section so that users can state their opinions, a truly responsive campaign will keep folks coming back for weeks. Let’s say that you are running a viral based on gorgeous photography you have of your vineyard. Make sure in your post that visitors know that “more pictures are coming soon”. Ask them if they know any tips for “taking nature shots without getting overwhelmed by the sun.” People need a reason to keep coming back, and setting up a responsive viral will accomplish just that.

4. Suffocation: Preventing your story from burning out fast.
The most common problem with a viral campaign is early suffocation. In the same way that not enough oxygen is getting to your bonfire for it to burn, a viral campaign needs steady or above-steady growth to sustain itself. Once it loses its edge, it becomes very difficult to push through. This leads to several very important, key factors in a successful viral.

1. Keep your site up: Contact your webmaster / hosting company well in advance and let them know your intent on running a viral marketing campaign. Figure how much it will costs to keep that web site up when the onslaught of traffic comes. Pay it. If your site is down for 2 hours in the middle of a viral, you can count all your precious efforts good bye.
2. Don’t over do it: Don’t spam the web 2.0 site with multiple stories on the same thing - I haven’t found a business that could stand more than a viral a week, much less one or more daily. Your site can’t handle it, and users will catch on really fast.
   

5. Gasoline: Artificial ways to boost your viral campaign
Covering a bonfire in gasoline works. You will get huge flames. And third degree burns. And a felony conviction for starting a forest fire. In the same manner, you can purchase votes from sites, get your friends to all sign up and vote, you can do almost anything you want. You will get caught, it will get out of hand, and you will have huge PR clean up job to handle. Imagine those million potential customers turning into an angry mob. It’s kinda like that. No. It is exactly like that.

Hopefully this will put some ideas into your head about how to use viral marketing effectively for your winery. There is no easier, cost-effective method of developing brand recognition. It is time to join the revolution. Great wines, viral vines.

As many of you may know, we have been working for a while in creating some innovative solutions for wineries to help them reach their customers. One of the elephants in the room is Direct-to-Consumer and Direct-to-Trade sales.

We have recently spent quite a bit of time talking with wineries about some of our new methods, one of which being direct sales, and have received some very favorable responses, as well as some opposition.

One of the biggest “fears” expressed by wineries, especially the smaller ones, is they feel obligated to only use their current sales channel. Their fear is: if they were to begin selling direct, their distributors, who are fighting direct sales instead of asking how they can be a part of it, will take it as a slap in the face, and then either: A) refuse to continue distributing their wines; or B) become complacent in marketing the wines because they feel their efforts may be futile if the end consumer purchases the wine online. This is because they are not receiving any commission… because again, this particular distributor is not trying to find a way to become involved in direct sales, and instead is fighting it. Read the rest of this entry »