5 things wineries should consider about online advertising

Where you put your marketing dollars depends a lot on your particular business and customers. If your best customers are boomers nearing or in retirement, you’re not going to reach them on Instagram. If people generally travel from out of town to visit your place, then geotargeting your specific region may not be the best idea. Online advertising for your winery should be focused on your best customers, based on clear goals with a plan to track your results. 

So here are five things to consider when spending your marketing dollars on online advertising for your winery.

And if you haven’t checked it out already, make sure you Avoid these 4 Key Mistakes Wineries Make in their Digital Marketing.

Spending your marketing dollars on ads is risky but has a huge upside if you’re careful.

#1: modernize your website

Your winery needs a mobile-friendly, modern website before you put any money into driving traffic to the site.

Much more than a pretty face, your website should be considered your number one sales person constantly advertising your brand to potential customers. Here are a few must-haves that should not be overlooked:

• A clean, simple design that scales across computers, tablets and phones.
• High-quality images that make your location look incredibly inviting.
• A series of landing pages that tell your narrative story and help with search results.
• Use newsletter signup forms to gather customer information in order to regularly engage with your fans.
• Use modern SEO tactics like optimizing your metadata, researching short and long-tail keywords, and readable URLs.
• Test and measure as much as possible.
  • Where are visitors coming from?
  • What do they do on your site?
  • What is the most effective way to drive newsletter signups?

#2: Identify your best customers 

Are most of your customers men or women? What is the age of your average customer? Do you cater mostly to locals or to out-of-town visitors? And most important of all – who is your most profitable customer?

Once you’ve identified your target audience, now it’s time to put an advertising strategy in place.

#3: Start with small, targeted experiments

We always start with a series of targeted experiments across a number of sites to identify both ad content and channels that perform the best. Online advertising for wineries should begin with a focus on small, targeted audiences and grow the reach as you find what works best.

The last thing you want to do is spray and pray – it’ll just be a waste of time and money.

#4: pick channels
based on your target customers

Google ads should be on just about everyone’s short list. Keywords, demographic targeting, geotargeting to specific regions, and the pure breadth of Google’s reach make it a must for most advertising strategies.

After that, it depends who you’re trying to reach.

Millennials – Instagram and mobile

Boomers – Facebook, Yelp and media sites like CNN and USA Today

Travelers – Travel sites like Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and Hotels.com (you get all of those in one shot by the way, since they’re owned by the same parent company). Airbnb is another interesting channel – they now allow you to promote your local ‘experiences’ on the popular booking site.

Locals – Geotargeting by ZIP code with Google and Facebook and mailers.

Want to promote your beautiful video? Youtube and Facebook

It all starts with understanding the goals and the reach with each advertising channel.

#5: Pick the right seasonal times to go big

We’re here to help

All of these strategies take a disciplined approach to digital marketing, and we’d love to help. Ready to get serious about your digital marketing strategy?

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