Reach out and touch someone, but make sure they care

It is reasonably easy to stand in a crowded area and yell about something, a new product, a great service, or a really fantastic wine. Probably very few people will hear you and even fewer will be interested in what you have to say. $25 billion dollars are spent each year by the global wine industry in the sales and marketing department convincing people to buy wine. Ads in major publications may work for a few large wineries and retailers that have something for everyone. But for the majority of the industry, a more targeted approach is necessary. It’s the whole scalpel vs. sledgehammer argument. How do you get the most bang for your marketing dollar? Online marketing is a very cost effective way to target audiences with specific messages tailored to their desires, but there are many pitfalls to be aware of.

The larger the circulation of the media, the higher the ad rates and the less targeted your marketing dollars become. Large sites may cost upwards of $30 CPM. That is $30 to show your ad on 1,000 pages. From that you may end up with only 200 different people seeing the ad. With typical response rates of less than 2%, you need to spend a lot of money to sell a small amount of wine. Social Media Marketing (SMM) needs to be carefully considered as well. MySpace has 80 million users, but if you spend a lot of time creating a page and then no one sees it, then it’s just a waste of time and money.

How many people actually reach your site from a social media site as compared to targeted marketing campaigns? And how many of those make a purchase?

Comparison search engines (Snooth, Wine-searcher, WineZap et. al) are a great way to drive traffic to your site too. Just like everything in marketing, though, unless you are tracking your conversions of traffic into sales and then following those customers over their lifetime, you cannot hope to measure the effectiveness.

On the other side of the coin are small wine related sites that have very targeted audiences and higher focus. Think more about targeting and relevancy, rather than reach, when looking at these sites. Regional wine blogs are a great example. A typical CPM could be as low as $10. You are able to make many assumptions about the users of these sites – where they live, what they are interested in (wine), and what attitudes they have expressed in comments on the site. These types of sites focus on wine in your region more than anything else – and although their user volume may be low the fact that they are “under the radar” for the average media buyer works in your favor. There is no reason not to leverage them to gain some new customers - getting the attention of your audience is already done. All that’s left for you to do is find a creative incentive to move the users to act.

Philip James, Founder - Snooth.com

Philip James is the founder of Snooth, the world’s largest and most comprehensive wine database, featuring millions of reviews and hundreds of thousands of wines. Snooth has over 250,000 monthly users and makes it easy for wine lovers to find better wine, seamlessly purchase wine, and enjoy a community.

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