Build It And They Will Tweet?

The past year I have followed quite a few blogs of independent consultants and various online marketing service companies. It seems the single message that is being broadcast is ‘Get with Social Media While You Still can’. A lot of these services and consultants are pushing the urgency to get on board or you will loose out. I agree with most of what is being said, but I feel jumping on board because you can versus jumping on board the right way are two very different things.

Having consulted for many small and large businesses, I find that just jumping on the Social Media band wagon because “everyone is doing it and if you don’t you will be left behind” is not a good way to conduct business, and can ultimately lead to failure, for both the business and the consultant.

Social Media is changing the way we can build relationships with customers today, but creating a few Social Media profiles to connect with customers and sell your goods will not work. First, you need to know who your customers are. You need to have a clear understanding of How you engage with your customers, then look at each Social Media tactic to see if it fits you your long term marketing strategy.

Many companies created a website because everyone was doing it, but have had little or no traffic. From that standpoint, small businesses get the attitude “I tried it and it didn’t work”. What they didn’t do, is create a long term strategic plan that would incorporate their website as part of their overall marketing. They were sold on ‘build it and they will come’ idea, and it failed to deliver. I believe that most small businesses are using this resistant thinking with Social Media, feeling that they were promised the world with their website and it didn’t deliver, so what is different about Social Media?

What I am talking about here is strategy. The point I am coming from is that a website, Social Media/Web 2.0 and the company newsletter are tactics. They are the way to keep connections with your customers. But first, you need to know who your customers are.

I have engaged with a few local wineries recently, and found that they are struggling with Social Media like most small businesses. They feel the urgency to get into newer technology, but don’t really know where to start.

Let’s take a deeper look the average Washington winery – it is a small winery, makes handcrafted wines, may sell only 2k to 20k cases; it may sell 25 percent wholesale thru a distributor, 25 percent direct distribution, and 50 percent retail thru its tasting room.

For each of the product distribution channels, there are different interactions. Wholesale thru a distributor the winery competes with other wineries in getting the distributor to get their wine on the shelves for customers. In direct distribution the winery works directly with the retail outlet. Each of these methods the winery has to depend on what the retail outlet knows about their customers, and sometimes it can be a crap shoot.

At the retail channel – the winery has direct contact with the customers, but only if the customers come into the winery. The other option for retail is if the winery has an estore on their website or sells wine thru a fulfillment center on another wine site, but then they need to know how to get customers to go to the website.

Each of these methods of distribution have different customers. Wholesale – customers may go to a wine shop, a grocery story or specialty shop and find a huge selection of wine. They then either have a favorite they are looking for, or will be looking for something new/different. When looking for their favorite, the only thing important is knowing what store carries their bottle. If they look for something different, it is usually based on a recommendation by friend or acquaintance, the wine shop steward, a review or article.

Customers that come in the tasting room are different, they are their specifically for tasting that wine. There is face-to-face interaction – initial time to engage a customer and develop a relationship. A winery can get to know the customer, the wines they like, if they like newsletters and/or tweets, etc. It is easy to suggest to the customer how to keep in touch, actually find out what the preferences of each customer are, and cater to those needs.

The marketing strategy for wholesale is to get the word out so customers know what stores to find the wine – and that is thru the distributor, co-op advertising, maybe a review, TV/radio ads or a listing thru printed media. The problem for the winery is that they may never get to know these customers, unless the customers have an easy way to reach the winery. It is real hard to develop a relationship unless the customer engages first. If the printed media and advertising doesn’t include the various ways to get in touch with the winery, then the winery can’t engage. If the winery already has printed labels, business cards and brochures, and can’t control what the distributors push to the stores, it can be very costly to have everything reprinted just to say that you do social media.

On the retail level, the marketing strategy is to inform customers of the tasting room hours, winery tours, and so forth. Customers may be local residents, or seasonal travelers. Each needs to be reached from different mediums. Locals from the local papers, tour brochures, community event bulletin boards, word of mouth, and so forth. Seasonal travelers from wine magazines, national tour books, national advertising, etc.

Two different product delivery strategies, two different customer relationship strategies.

Another thing to consider, is how a winery keeps in touch with customers overall. If a winery primarily engages with a newsletter once a month or quarter, then using Twitter/Facebook making daily or weekly tweets may be overkill and could actually offend some customers. So they need to give the customers the choice on how to be contacted, as well as have different strategies for newsletter and tweet delivery. Each tactic needs to be strategically considered in the larger marketing plan, which should incorporate all marketing, such as TV and print advertising, press releases, tour guides, reviews and articles, etc. They also need to have segmented lists, so that tourists are not blasted with ‘join us at local events’ if they don’t live in the area, and locals or wine club members are not blasted to ‘join the wine club’. For a small vintner that wears many hats in the business, this can be very overwhelming indeed.

The good news about all of this, if a straight forward plan is laid out, any small business can successfully utilize Social Media in developing customer relationships, which ultimately lead to sales.

The key to making any marketing method successful is to plan the strategy, make specific goals, determine who the customer is, determine what tools and techniques need to be used, determine how to measure the performance, take action by testing, then tune the techniques to get optimum results. It doesn’t matter if it is Social Media or print advertising. I think most businesses would ‘get it’ if they were approached on this strategic thinking rather than ‘hurry before its too late’ idea. My clients have, anyway.

If you are ready to ‘Get On Board’ Social Media, contact me to see how a strategic marketing plan can help.