It’s a dream of many aspiring entrepreneurs to get rich, buy a vineyard, and chill with a glass of their wine on the porch. Sadly, dreams come to an end when reality kicks in. Wine is one of the fiercest business competitions and much harder than your everyday job. But we are not here to discourage you; despite the fierce competition, we want you to know that you can achieve whatever you want with the right strategy and willingness of hard work and patience. Because if being successful was that easy, everyone would have excelled it by now.
The finance capital of the country, Mumbai has several small wine businesses with huge competition. To grow your business under such circumstances needs you to think out of the box and build a unique strategy to attract clients and distributors. Firstly, make the list of all Mumbai wine shops, arrange them in order, and case studies their marketing strategies as much as possible.
The marketing strategies to grow your wine business
The wine business has two major areas, one where numerous local stores sell wines from various brands, and the one where people grow their vineyard, and make their own wines. Here is a list of effective marketing strategies to grow your individual brand to a high level.
1. Create a brand story and use humor
To stand out among the competition and to build your set of rules, come up with a fantastic brand story. Don’t worry if it sounds cliched. You are expressing yourself and reasoning why your brand is different or unique. Don’t be determined to sound too specific or professional, make use of humor in your storytelling that can amaze the customers, and who doesn’t love a pinch of fun anyway? If not unique, make sure your story or the brand has some specialty which you could later show it off proudly.
2. Create a brand database
Creating a database sounds too obvious, but it’s crucial to match your brand with the establishment you are trying to target. If your wine is positioned as a classy drink, you can target the famous and big restaurants, hotels, resorts to have a better chance at success. The segmentation of your database is the key to match your overall brand position.
3. Promote your brand by cross-marketing
To grow big locally is a big deal and you know it. That is when the cross-market promotion comes to the picture, and it is another savage tactic to promote your business. If you want to attract the local audience customers, communicate with other nearby local businesses and support them. Please encourage them to promote and support your brand too. Customers are savvy when it comes to time and money, and when other businesses showcase your winery, you can reach a new audience with spending less money on marketing.
4. Offer free samples
There are great ways of leveraging a location to increase revenue, and most of the people follow the same thing. Instead of going with the flow, you can try something else to set yourself apart from the crowd. Create a workshop or an event and invite amateurs winemakers to your class. Provide free samples to the people and talk about your specialty or uniqueness. Free samples prove to be more productive, as people mostly purchase after trying the sample. Such events not only sell your product, but you get a chance to know your audience.
5. Work on feedback to sway potential clients
Many people often overlook customers and peer reviews. The feedback given by people can help you persuade your potential clients. Leaving a comment for the product has become a trend, and people tend to review and rate the product based on their experience. You can find several online websites where people review the wine, and when you receive high ratings and good reviews, you can get your name included in the list. Understand the power of their reviews and work on it efficiently for your business.
6. Train employees for profitability
Training your employees determines your success level. All your employees have to be on the same page and know the accurate prices, discounts, bonus stock, and anything else that could turn profitable for your business. Develop and maintain a culture of loyalty and honesty for the business.
7. Find the right distributor
Finding the right distributor is much more crucial for your business than you think. The distribution process is a big deal, and it goes from importing to marketing, Public Relations, and traditional and digital media. Many people are involved in completing the process, and you need the best and most trustworthy ones for the business. Establishing and maintaining a solid relationship with them can help you in the future, as they have an extensive network and can reach such people.
8. Best use of social media
Not having accounts on social media channels in this digital era would put you way behind your competitors. With the right social media strategies, you can compete with others on a high level. Post consistently on your social media accounts as it’s another way to create your brand awareness and to attract and know your audience. Reach out to the influencers (with more followers) and mini-influencers (with fewer followers) and collaborate with them to get more audience.
You can use online marketing tools like PosterMyWall to create curated social media content for your promotional campaigns. Choose from a wide variety of social media graphics and customize them to fit your purpose. You can even publish them directly to the platform!
9. Optimize and analyze your result
The precise tactics, as mentioned above, can only help you when you implement and track the result. When you apply a strategy, the outcome can help you decide whether to continue with it or not. There is no harm in predicting the result and if it does not reach your expectations, tweak and try again, until it gets beneficial. Learn from your mistakes, and they would lead you to success.
The wine business is a space filled with crowded retailers, and they have their set of collection of imported brands. And your products are not going to sell themselves. They require marketing strategies. You already knew what you were into when you started this business. It would help if you used the tactics mentioned above to get the customers attracted towards your brand.
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