Every winery wants to increase sales. At the end of the day, increased wine sales comes down to your customer journey.

A customer journey is the way your customers interact with your brand from start to finish: It’s everything your customer experiences from the moment they discover you to the day they become your biggest fan, and beyond.

We can understand this journey in four stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision and Loyalty.

First, a potential customer becomes aware of your brand. They see you on Instagram, notice an ad in the local paper, tagged along on a wine tasting excursion and stumbled upon your tasting room, searched for something on Google and found a blog post you published the month before.

Getting a customer to the Awareness stage is hard work! Marketing and traditional advertising take time, effort and money. And yet, the Awareness stage is only the beginning of the relationship.

In this blog post, we’re diving into this essential first stage of the customer journey, so you can create a wine marketing blueprint around your customer journey – one that turns leads into raving fans.

The Customer Journey Map (above) helps you visualize all the interactions a customer has with your product. This way, you can identify the strongest opportunities for you to engage that customer and move them along the customer journey, towards becoming loyal customers.

To bring potential customers into the Awareness stage means raising brand awareness and making it easy for your ideal customers to find you.

Here are a few ways to do just that:

Location first

How do people find out about brands? They start with location. They ask friends, either in person or on social media. 81% of shoppers research online before setting foot in a store. If someone is looking for a winery, they’ll likely start with something like this:

Customer journey winery

And then what happens? They’ll probably end up here:

Customer journey winery

Will your winery show up on a Google search?

What about reviews – Are there any? Are they good or bad?

Make sure all your online listings are up to date so that when someone looks for you, they’ll find you. Add photos and videos to invite potential customers to take a look at your brand and become aware of what you offer.

Invest in online ads around your specialty (tours, etc.). Create unique wine experiences that you can feature online such as hiking, chocolate pairings or dinner.

Attract a local audience by making it easy for potential customers to enter the Awareness stage.

Add value

Of course, it’s not all about location. Maybe you’re trying to expand your audience with a wine club, or make loyal customers out of tourists who return just once a year.

Value creates awareness by attracting customers and engaging them in a way that resonates.

The #1 secret to creating awareness through social media: Add value.

As a rule, the content you post on social media should be 80% value, 20% promotion. This increases engagement, which increases your brand’s reach. That’s because valuable content is what social media users prefer.

Inform, inspire, entertain, engage: These are all ways you can offer value to your audience on social media and throughout your marketing.

Getting potential customers into the awareness stage brings them into your customer journey. Success here comes from consistent digital marketing and unforgettable branding.

In my next post, I’ll talk about the second stage of the customer journey: Consideration.

 

Looking for help maintaining consistent branding and marketing?

We offer a monthly digital marketing service just for that. Contact me, Rebecca, for more details.