Are you going to continue to do Virtual Wine Tastings? For some of you, a Virtual Tasting is another customer service tool. Congratulations on adopting this technology and recognizing that everyone now knows how to Zoom.
But if you sell a tasting kit paired with a presentation, consider creating a channel for this activity. Many wineries have lumped the sales from these tastings with their Website or Online sales. If you do that, you are missing out on some critical metrics.
Even if most of your sales are in the DTC channel, you still want to monitor the revenue among your DTC sales channels because each channel requires a different marketing strategy to generate a sale. What are your marketing programs for each DTC sales channel?
- Tasting Room – Outreach in the community; A good sign on the highway
- Wine Club – Conversion of tasting room guests
- Website – Email campaigns
- Virtual Tastings – Google or FaceBook ads
There are as many different strategies as there are wineries. Sure, there is some crossover … someone saw a Virtual Tasting ad and ended up driving to the tasting room instead. Or a Somm recommended your wine, and they immediately signed up for your Club. You may never know all of the moving parts, but the top-line revenue of these classes gives you feedback on how successful your marketing activities have been.
The Virtual Tasting channel is essentially a customer acquisition activity. However, your team needs a different skill set. They need a different kind of bubbly presence. And you will need some new equipment or even a dedicated corner of the winery. Maybe you need to hire a consultant with a background in YouTube marketing.
I recommend that you create Virtual Tasting kits that are different from other bundles that you sell. Record the sales of these kits in the Virtual Class. Yes, these are all likely to come through the website, so you will have to do an extra step to identify them. If you are a Silver Club member, give me a holler in the Forum, and I will walk you through those steps.
As usual, I don’t recommend that you class the expenses for the Virtual channel, but you could if you wanted to. (As a disclaimer, I never said: “don’t class expenses.” I only said, “don’t think that you have to class expenses”).
I think that Virtual Tastings were one of the fantastic new things that started during the Shut Down (almost as good as the bread baking renaissance). I predict that many wineries will latch onto this new sales channel and become a vital tool for their growth and success.
