Sonoma State Wine Business Insitute posted a nice 10-minute video on digital marketing. The last year showed us that folks will buy wine through this type of marketing.

SSU Wine Biz – Digital Marketing in an Altered Landscape

So why should a bean counter, moi, care about sharing marketing ideas with you? It’s because your bottom line is directly related to your top line. I hate to break it to you, but your revenue is not directly related to the quality of your wine. This means: if you make better wine, you will not necessarily sell more wine. Sorry.

I am sure you can think of wineries that make mediocre wine (in your opinion) yet have a strong business, and at the same time, you can also list wineries that make dynamite wine (in your opinion) yet struggle to sell it. The successful wineries have a marketing and sales program that finds folks who will buy the wine that they make. Furthermore, the cost of those programs is such that the winery makes a net profit on the sale of the wine.

Are you able to make a connection between the cost of a marketing program and the sales that it generates? That’s where useful financial information comes into play. Over a hundred years ago, marketing pioneer John Wanamaker said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” The main reason we recommend the DTC sales channels be split into different segments (tasting room, club, website, events, etc) is because you will use a different marketing program to stimulate sales in each segment.

If you can calculate the cost of your marketing program with the sales, you can start to identify which half of your marketing is working.