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 »

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 »

Most brands these days are a clever name and good looking label that an advertising department can run a campaign around and a distributor can push down the pipe. Nobody really thinks about the idea of building a brand by changing the way you actually market and sell the wine. If you could approach these tactics differently and appeal to the consumer and trade in a way that makes their lives easier, this new vehicle would become the brand in itself more so than the pretty label and tasty juice. Stormhoek, Twisted Oak, Pinot Blogger, and Sacre Bleu have pioneered direct marketing for a wine brand and have found some success doing it this way. However, the next generation of wine brands will learn how to break down the barriers of the industry and start actually selling the product in a unique way.

Here are a few steps that we plan to follow: Read the rest of this entry »

It was announced today that the Champagne region of France is expanding to meet world demand and we’re pretty excited about it. Once thought of as a celebratory drink for only special occasions, Champagne and sparkling wine are quickly becoming the wine of choice for many around the world. Among new wine drinkers and millennials, it seems that we actually prefer champagne even as a complement to our food. It’s the natural effervescence that adds to flavor depth and antioxidant health benefits, that combine to make Champagne and sparkling wine the all around global drink. It’ll be great to see different types and flavors appear on the shelves at decent price points, while still maintaining the natural quality and mystique. We’ve always believed that wine is the one taste substance that everyone around the world shares, and maybe this news is a small sign that we’re starting to celebrate more together.

For more reading see: Champagne - A New Year Tradition

After reading both Tom Wark’s post last week about the coming implosion of the US wine wholesalers and the news released yesterday of Amazon entering the US wine market, I think we can all feel the change coming. We haven’t talked about it much in our writings over the past year+, but our main advisor/investor in our Tastevine wine project is on the board of directors of the recently merged R-NDC (Republic National Distributing Company). From our experience, change is ready.

We have learned so much having an inside viewpoint on the true nature of the industry, from the struggles, to the perceptions, to most importantly the arrogance that all parties use to mask their fear of change. Everyone knows where the industry is going and really wants to come together to bring about change, but no one is ready to compromise. As the direct movement continues to gain momentum and breakdown barriers, wholesalers continue to feel backed into a corner, forcing them to use their brut force and FUD tactics to make everyone else feel the stress that they do. Wark’s line is priceless tho –”Now, they whine like a little girl who just soiled their Sunday dress and run off crying to daddy asking him to put down his tools and stop doing his job, so he can clean the mess the little girl made all by herself.”– lol. Read the rest of this entry »