Leverage recorded video content before and after virtual events to reach new audiences and educate key contact groups!
May 26, 2020 – Sandra Hess, founder of DTC Wine Workshops
We have helped about 400 winery teams get setup with Virtual Winery Experiences since mid-March. A lot of time and effort goes into delivering a virtual winery event so be sure to develop a marketing plan that puts this valuable content into action. Here are Top 5 Things you can do NOW to up your Virtual Experience Game:
- Start with a Virtual Marketing Content Calendar to serve meaningful content to appropriate audiences. What is most interesting to your members, repeat customers or first-time customers? Map out effective call-to-actions and offers that are trackable when distributing recorded content to consumer groups. For example, can you offer wine bundled with a private virtual tasting as the call-to-action after watching a recorded virtual event? Limited time offers and access to advance level educators, winery owners, winemaking team members, etc. will help convert new audiences at a higher level. Leverage these offers in email and social media campaigns. Once you have established key content themes for your connected consumer audiences, move on to your other contact groups. Serve content to your employees, referral partners, sales team and distributer reps. Be sure to map out your calendar by “contact group”.
- Once your contact groups are defined, take time to develop “Top 3-5 Key Learnings” from each recorded event that appeals to each audience. For example, if the winemaker shared interesting facts about latest releases, winemaking style, future focus, etc. this educational content will go a long way to educate sales and distributor teams. In some cases, key stakeholders may have joined a virtual event and shared important future journey stories and this information can be quite relevant to members of the hospitality team and referral partners.
- Create a Virtual Event Library within your winery website and tag by topic, date and key learnings. Decide if some content will be password protected based on access rights (member only events, private tastings, etc.) Weave in top key words and phrases to maximize SEO and SEM efforts. PRO TIP: YOAST is an excellent search engine optimization plug-in that allows eCommerce and marketing teams the ability to define meta tags and key phrases for each page and post.
- Collect Ratings/Reviews from your consumer audiences who attended a Private Virtual Tasting to use in marketing campaigns to reach new audiences. Time is the #1 commodity when wine enthusiasts make decisions about which virtual winery event to attend. Was your virtual tasting “interesting”, “educational”, “fun”, “inspiring”, etc.? Appeal to new audiences with key themes in customer ratings and reviews. Screenshots of the wine educator hosting the virtual tasting experience can go along way in marketing campaigns.
- Be sure to reach new audiences during the live event if hosted through Facebook Live or IGTV. This is where a member of the marketing team or a digital marketing consultant can work behind the scenes to make a big difference in spreading the word about the live event to a variety of consumer groups while the event it taking place. Instant message interested audiences a link to register for the next virtual winery event. Create value for each virtual winery event and require registration. Not only does this ensure your DTC team will collect age verification, this will allow the marketing team to invite new social media contacts to explore wines, make reservations to visit, register for an upcoming virtual event, etc. PRO TIP: learn how to use Facebook and Instagram Sign-Up Forms to make the data collection process smooth. Don’t require more than name, email, age verification and location in virtual event registration form. Once a transaction is completed, then continue to build at the CRM record with notes, preferences, etc.
I hope that you find these best practices to be helpful as your DTC team builds new consumer engagement strategies. To learn more about how to develop Virtual Winery Events with Clear Give/Gets, contact DTC Wine Workshops team HERE.