As we post more and more of our lives online, social media is becoming an important way for many companies to do customer marketing. Traditional brewery teams may tend to put social media promotion on the back burner, which is understandable behavior. Because social media marketing can be a confusing and overwhelming channel, its benefits aren’t immediately apparent.
Social media is the first place people learn about a brewery, which is why it’s important to give your audience an experience that will delight them from first sight. Social media requires a low (almost free) entry cost and direct access to customers. It is more like a friend of the brewery, bringing new customers to the brewery. Craft breweries often rely on quality products with unique brands to build their image, and of course, stand out on social media as well. Having a coherent social media marketing strategy is crucial if you want to keep your brewery up to date.
Gain insight into your customer base
Social media is a great way to gain insight into your customer base. You can see your customer base on social media:
- What type of beer do they like best?
- Which type of brand do they find most appealing?
- Are they following your marketing?
Social media can help you answer all of these questions. Plus, you can tell your brand’s story through images, partnerships, videos, and human interactions to get more compliments and attention on social media. You also need to think a bit more about how your product is different from other products on the market, this is not something that can be achieved with a simple article, but over time will bring your product to a wider range than the drink itself things are linked together.
Engagement
Engagement is one of the most valuable yet elusive marketing concepts. People typically spend an average of two hours a day on social media, making social media one of the most effective ways to reach customers. Engagement on social media means that users interact with your brand in any way (likes, comments, shares, etc.). These interactions help get customers to visit your bar or buy your products on an e-commerce site.
Keep a clear head
For customers who use social media, the information that is most remembered is the most recently exposed information. If your customers notice your brewery regularly posting on social media wondering where to go and where to beer, you are likely to be at the top of the list. For this reason, it’s a good idea to post on each platform once a day, and posting more frequently can increase your visibility in the minds of your followers.
Strengthen brand awareness
A consistent social media presence keeps your brand consistent across the internet. In today’s virtual world, brands that don’t exist online simply don’t exist. If your social media is spotty or inconsistent, it can work against you, especially if you’re competing for business with other breweries that are active on the web. Great Notion Brewery is one brewery with a great brand presence on the web. They sell 90% of the DTC through a fun app, and every beer has hidden games and characters, an advantage not all breweries have. If you don’t have the resources to create an app or branded game, consider your online aesthetic and design style as a cost-effective alternative.
Improve e-commerce sales
If your brewery sells beer directly to consumers, social media can drive leads for your e-commerce platform. Posts on social media can drive followers to leave social media and make purchases on e-commerce platforms. Great Notion promotes their character illustrations on their Instagram account, which correspond to stories in their proprietary app. Of course, you can also link to your e-commerce site via social media to convert engagement on social media into online sales.
Take advantage of limited releases
Limited beer releases are a great way to boost sales and get customers to interact with your brand. Social media can help hype and sell more limited-edition beers. Customers have a strong desire to take advantage of limited releases or discounts for short-term deals, be sure to highlight the time sensitivity of these deals in your post to maximize sales.
Influencer activities
If you have a strong presence on brewery social media, you’ll be well-positioned to take advantage of a highly lucrative form of marketing: Influencer activities. Influencers are powerful because they build on pre-established trust and audience, then connect and sell to them. Breweries can run influencer marketing campaigns of any size and budget, for example, you can do this by partnering with smaller influencers (with a small but loyal following) who will share photos and content in exchange for gifts or free beer. You can help drive beer sales with an influencer program that directs future travelers to the brewery.
Authenticity for sale
You might think you need a huge marketing budget or great graphic design skills to make your social media presence connect with your audience. But that’s not the case, brewery social media is already full of overly polished and produced corporate content. People prefer to see authenticity in brands they care about. While some breweries have high-quality video production and flawless graphics, some of their most popular content may be the videos they shoot on their iPhones. If you’re not sure how to make your social media presence more realistic, try using simpler techniques with less post-production.
Targeted marketing activities
Craft breweries post and share a lot of relevant content on social media. Whether or not the content is ethically questionable, the messages are essentially the hope that the beer can be sold to customers. This means you can run a very targeted ad campaign on a very small budget, helping you convert traffic into clicks and sales. To be able to publish high-quality promotional posts, you need a mature, consistent brewery social media feed. When you have a predictable social media feed, you can run small paid ads on social media sites like Facebook or Instagram. These ads can promote your beer to people who might buy it and drive traffic to your e-commerce site.
Stay connected with your community
Maybe you have relationships with distributors or some individual customers, but do you know a wider customer base? Did you know they love your brand? Or why did they choose your product? With social media, you can chat directly with all your customers and it’s completely free. Plus, you can also stay engaged with your community on social media by taking informal polls, creating Instagram Stories, or setting up informal contests to encourage your customers to post your beer and tag you.
Know your competitors
Just as social media can help you gain insight into your customer base, it can also help you understand what other craft breweries are doing. Social media is also an easy way to see what other breweries are releasing as well as their strategies for engaging with customers on social media. You can use this information to run targeted advertising or try to start your own social media marketing campaign.
Make social media marketing a necessary challenge in brewery operations. Short-term staffing shortages can make things worse, but if you have room in your budget, you should try to find dedicated marketing professionals to beef up your brewery’s social media marketing efforts. If not, then you need to pick out the constraints and think about them to find a solution. You can make your social media more collaborative by asking everyone on your team for input. You can set a daily posting or sharing goal for social media and work to slowly build your following. Investing in a brewery’s social media can help increase brand awareness and close better sales.