Social media has become a powerful marketing tool for the wine industry in the last decade. I remember when I was working for a wine industry technology company when social media was first introduced and we had to to explain to our winery clients they would have to start tweeting about wine. A few head scratches and denials later, the wine industry embraced social media as a way to engage their existing customers and gain new ones.

Along the way, we have learned there is a right and wrong way to add social media to the marketing mix for your business. I focused on the top basic mistakes made that are made by novices and experienced alike.

Are you making any of these mistakes?

Top Social Media Mistakes-Planning, Content, Images and More

Mistake #1 – No Plan!
Social media started out as a way to personally communicate with people. It’s spontaneous by nature, but as a business, you should have a plan for MOST of your social media activity. I say MOST because you will...

Congratulations! You have a new wine club member! They hopped on your bus for your winery journey!

Now what?

Do you give up on reaching out because you got them in the club? Do you leave them alone until the next club run?

Absolutely not!

This is one of the most critical steps in your wine club marketing program. If you mess this up, you could be leaving a vast sum of money on the table.

Don’t believe me? Check this out these statistics…..

It is 10 times more expensive to acquire a new customer compared with selling something to an existing customer.Repeat customers spend 67% more than new customers.

Treat your wine club members like royalty. Seriously. A 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%.

But this is where I find wineries fall short. In all my years in the wine industry, wineries still tell me they are afraid to reach out to wine club members other than to charge them for wine because...

I kid you not! This is a real Yelp review I found while I was visiting winery sites and clicking through to Yelp reviews. This small California winery may be losing business to their tasting room because their website is outdated and hard to navigate! In this instance, the couple decided to visit anyway. They didn’t purchase anything, but was their experience already tainted because they judged the winery immediately by the website? Over a year later, the site is still the same and they do appear to be in business.How many other people looked at the site and made a pass to another winery that had a better website experience?

We all judge on first impressions. Does your winery website, which is the “hub” of your online presence, make the best first impression? Does it turn people away?

Industry experts have been pointing out that many wineries are spending more money from dirt to bottle production, but when it comes to bottle to glass..they give up! I concur...