ProWein 2017 | Grow Your Wine Business With Digital Marketing

Editor's Notes

• #2: ZSOLT: If you are working in the wine business as a professional, from next week your perspective about selling wines and driving engagement with customers will be different. Good morning ladies and gentlemen – my name is Zsolt Keszler, a wine enthusiast & digital marketing specialist. For 20 years I worked in the Information Technology sector guiding large and mid-size corporations transforming their businesses – focusing on sales, marketing and customer relationship management. Believe me, 20 years is a long time: it is enough time to grow a lot of grey hair, to get 4 boys in the family and to get into some serious hobbies, like wine. It is also enough time to help you recognize patterns at companies, how things go wrong, work inefficient or how certain trends in the market simply get overlooked due to the daily operational buzz. When my wife started her wine trade business I got sucked into this fascinating world and could not help but recognize that what companies in other industries seem to handle as standard working habits, here, in the wines business cannot be taken for granted. Today, I invite you or a 45 minute journey into the fascinating world of wine and digital marketing – 2 topics that for many of us seem to be on the two ends of the line: life, nature, fun on the one end while technology, industry and process on the other. For this journey, I have the pleasure to introduce my co-pilot for today, Caro Maurer, the first woman in Germany to receive the prestigious Master of Wine title. Caro is a journalist, worked as a correspondent in New York and Los Angeles and staff editor for the German edition of Forbes magazine and Die Welt. She is a freelance wine writer sharing her time between the daily newspaper in Bonn, and the two magazines of Der Feinschmecker and Fine. She works as a wine educator for the Weinakademie Austria. Caro and I know for some time already and I asked her as a wine professional to help me and all of us better understand trends and changes in the wine world which have impact on marketing and sales. Let’s start with a view at the global wine market! ZSOLT: Caro, could you please share your views about this?
• #3: ZSOLT: Caro, could you please share your views about this? CARO: The wine world is a dynamic one – and a very complex one Yesterday: The definition of quality was the decision of the wine producer Today: Consumers with a more sophisticated understanding of product value developed their own demand for quality. The control of the definition of quality has shifted to the consumer The consumer is expecting more from a bottle of wine: not only good taste but experience, sensation, health, sustainability… Success as a wine producer requires an understanding of human behaviour and product choice New wine producing countries emerging: China now on position 4 New wine consuming countries emerging: India on its way Wine consumption in other countries such as the Europeans are declining Wine production is still higher as wine consumption Markets are changing: Brexit, currencies, emerging markets, global warming Big brands versus small family driven wineries – how to survive in this surrounding New brands being brought onto the market every day: Brand versus land New channels to buy wine have changed the market over the last 15 years Hence, the wine market is getting more competitive and more complex every day
• #4: CARO The wine world is a dynamic one – and a very complex one Yesterday: The definition of quality was the decision of the wine producer Today: Consumers with a more sophisticated understanding of product value developed their own demand for quality. The control of the definition of quality has shifted to the consumer The consumer is expecting more from a bottle of wine: not only good taste but experience, sensation, health, sustainability… Success as a wine producer requires an understanding of human behaviour and product choice New wine producing countries emerging: China now on position 4 New wine consuming countries emerging: India on its way Wine consumption in other countries such as the Europeans are declining Wine production is still higher as wine consumption Markets are changing: Brexit, currencies, emerging markets, global warming Big brands versus small family driven wineries – how to survive in this surrounding New brands being brought onto the market every day: Brand versus land New channels to buy wine have changed the market over the last 15 years Hence, the wine market is getting more competitive and more complex every day
• #5: CARO The wine world is a dynamic one – and a very complex one Yesterday: The definition of quality was the decision of the wine producer Today: Consumers with a more sophisticated understanding of product value developed their own demand for quality. The control of the definition of quality has shifted to the consumer The consumer is expecting more from a bottle of wine: not only good taste but experience, sensation, health, sustainability… Success as a wine producer requires an understanding of human behaviour and product choice New wine producing countries emerging: China now on position 4 New wine consuming countries emerging: India on its way Wine consumption in other countries such as the Europeans are declining Wine production is still higher as wine consumption Markets are changing: Brexit, currencies, emerging markets, global warming Big brands versus small family driven wineries – how to survive in this surrounding New brands being brought onto the market every day: Brand versus land New channels to buy wine have changed the market over the last 15 years Hence, the wine market is getting more competitive and more complex every day
• #6: ZSOLT: From a marketing and sales perspective I am always looking at metrics that can characterize the market. Two of these I found very relevant is how many professional winemakers are out there and how many wine labels are on the shelves globally at any point in time. Interestingly enough, it is impossible to dig up reliable statistics for these figures – only estimations exist. Professional winemakers are estimated around 150k on various forums – a lot depending on how you define professional, of course. There are also around 200k wine labels in the US on shelves but how about the rest of the world? Is that 500k or 1m? No one quite knows. One thing is sure though: the choice for the consumer is enormous. And these figures translate into a fierce competition. CARO: Zsolt, do you see any fundamental changes from a technology perspective that have a significant impact on the wine business?
• #7: CARO: Zsolt, do you see any fundamental changes from a technology perspective that have a significant impact on the wine business? ZSOLT: Over the last 20 years there has been a fundamental shift that impacts most human beings around the globe: technology has become part of our every day life. Especially, communication patterns have gone through a dramatic change. Back in 1999 I was designing mobile networks and back then this technology was unique and not affordable for many. Look at the figures today. More than half of all people around the globe have a mobile phone. About 50% of those are smart devices – devices that give them far more than just the ability to enjoy telephone conversations. Devices, that connect them to their friends many other ways, help them search for whatever information they need and share experiences with the rest of the world. We have become connected, more than ever before. November 2016 was the first month since the birth of the internet when globally mobile and tablet internet usage exceeded the desktop usage of internet. There are of course regional differences: in India 75% of the usage is already today via mobile devices. Developing regions often benefit from the latest technology: it is easier and more affordable to go live with the latest technology. We are different than we were 20 years ago – and the change does not stop here. With all our devices getting now connected to the internet, the IoT has become a reality. (Regional differences: US: desktop 58%, mobile 42% India: desktop 25%, mobile 75%)
• #8: ZSOLT: Being connected brought about other changes as well – we got to learn the expression, Social Media. Social media fundamentally turned around many things: human interaction: depending on whether we are Baby Boomers, Generation X or Generation Z, we live part of our life online. We chat with our friends, share reviews about places we visited, wines we tasted and experiences we had. successful brands now drive interaction with their prospects and customers: we participate in polls, sweepstakes and love to be rewarded in front of others for being a loyal customer we also pay a price for this which for some of us can be pretty high: our professional and private life are not separated any more. We use apps to find a good restaurant, look for new job opportunities, share experiences in a hotel. We use social media to identify prospects for our business and evaluate brands. You have colleagues marking you on FB as “friends” and whatever you share then on social media as a private opinion may have an impact on your life in ways you are not aware of. Posting has become a norm of today. it also impacts how we make a choice for what we wish to buy: we used to read forums (we still are), we now look at groups of people sharing an interest and try to get their opinions: the big numbers can’t lie.
• #9: ZSOLT: You can of course say you are not part of this but take this: you are the decreasing minority. Figures here are staggering. 1.65bn active users on Facebook – 1 in every 5 minutes spent on looking at a mobile device is spent on Facebook. Facebook itself says that the average user has access to 1500 posts per day but only looks at 300. To make sure these 300 posts are more interesting than the rest, FB uses thousand different metrics in a very complex logic: how close you are to the friend, how often you clicked on type of post, whether you stopped in your scrolling to look at a post, talked to people you are friends with on Messenger and also what bandwidth you are using when using the app. Video is the next big thing that is growing like hell. So, a quick poll here: How many of you are FB users? How many of you are Youtube users? How many of you are on LinkedIn? How many of you have kids who than 6 and less than 18 years old – stand up, please Now those of you whose kids do NOT use social media of any sort (Whatsapp counts, too), please sit down. Thank you – huge respect to all these people still standing: they are the parents who have to get to learn Snapchat. Advice: ask your kids to explain how it works :) CARO: So, Zsolt, how do you think this impacts the sales of Consumer goods?
• #10: CARO: So, Zsolt, how do you think this impacts the sales of Consumer goods? ZSOLT: consumer products can be classified into two major types: search products and experience goods         - search products are those for which consumers can easily obtain attribute information before purchasing like a train ticket         - experience products are those whose main attributes cannot be assessed by the consumer without direct experience consumers are more likely to use online shopping to purchase search products than to purchase experience products (refer to source) Word of mouth (WOM) information has a stronger effect on people who are purchasing experience products  Statistics and research suggests that recommendations for an experience product are more influential than the recommendations for a search product (refer to source)   Conclusions: SoMe and Internet Forums are key platforms where recommendations for products are shared digital Word of Mouth significantly impacts sales (use Amazon as an example) - question to the audience about how many are looking at evaluations of a product before they purchase it ZSOLT: Caro, an exciting question of course is which type of product wine is? NOTE: There is a 3rd category, the so called ‘Credence goods’. These are products and services, such as vitamins or frequent oil changes, whose value can never really be known with certainty.
• #11: CARO: Wine is again a unique commodity: a product for all senses The sensory aspect of wine taste and aroma are only one component Factors such as bottle and label design are equally important motivators of human preference in wine selection Wine: see, smell, taste – a direct experience Wine is consumed in social situations Consumers expect wines to be healthful and produced in an environmentally sustainable manner CARO: Zsolt, we established so far that          a) the wine business is very competitive and this competition is likely to be more fierce in the coming years         b) there is a fundamental shift in our daily life in terms of how we interact with others         c) wine is an experience product         So, how does this impact Wine Marketing and Sales in your view? 
• #12: ZSOLT: Jerome McCarthy created in a conceptual framework in 1960 for the marketing mix one has to consider for successful support of sales (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) It has evolved since further: 5P (+People) and 7P (+People, +Physical Evidence, +Process) - let’s stick with 5P for now  Word of Warning: we cannot analyse all 5 or 7 Ps today - will focus only on the 2 most important ones that I think should drive the marketing strategy for wineries We have to start with People - and there is so much to talk about them.
• #13: ZSOLT: If one picture can tell thousand words, then this is the one I picked. Who do you think they are? Young people, sure. They are a generation. A generation that disrupts the wine business. The millennials!
• #14: ZSOLT: What do we have to know about millennials? They are 20-35 years old They are digital natives – also known as the selfie-generation They live and breathe technology, they are fully mobile Extremely active socially – are omni-present on social media At the same time they grew up during the latest financial crisis, so they understand value very well when making a purchase decision. They search, they check, they listen. They are the generation who go to the shop, try on the shoes and clothes and they they buy in at home or while waiting for the bus. On the internet. They are flexible, change is their nature – they want versatility, choice and they love new stuff. So, why are they relevant for the wine business?
• #15: ZSOLT: They are becoming a very influential generation – according to the Wine Market Council in the US the faster growing wine consumer segment is the segment of the millennials. They are now moving into becoming regular wine drinkers and they are indeed a huge group of prospects and customers.
• #16: ZSOLT: Speaking more closely of Europe, Germany, France, Spain and Italy have significant millennial populations. So, a large customer group but what makes them really exciting for this discussion is not necessarily the size of this generation. Much more their social and buying patterns which seem to show dramatic differences to Baby Boomers or Generation X.
• #17: ZSOLT: Do you still remember the graph I showed you about connecting to the internet? Can somebody still quote what proportion is the mobile vs. desktop based connection to the internet globally? Yes, about 50%. Now forget that figure when you talk about millennials. They live differently, they communicate differently. Their primary connecting device is mobile. They have to get access to information in an instant.
• #18: ZSOLT: They are information hungry because they want to make informed purchasing decisions. And for this they use different platforms. Guess which platform they use most for getting background information – you bet, Social Media.
• #19: ZSOLT: It does not stop here though. If you look at what drives their purchasing behavior then you find that Price is the no.1 factor. They love rebates and discounts but definitely not at the expense of Quality. They are very well aware of Brands and they follow these for Value and Engagement what they get from these. They still love to go to the store and see it there for themselves but as I implied earlier, the actual sales conversion often happens online.
• #20: ZSOLT: So, this concludes the People part at least for now – millennials, a word we all have to learn for the coming years. CARO: So, could we have a look at the 2nd P, Promotion? ZSOLT: Sure. But before I would uncover some interesting statistics about the topic, Caro, working in the wine business you are exposed to a lot of communications from wineries through multiple channels. How do you see their communications practices?
• #21: ZSOLT: 15 months ago there was a book published by researchers from the Geisenheim University, who conducted multiple researches about the social media use in the wine business. In particular, they looked at some key factors, such as how the various digital channels are utilized by wineries in the US and in Germany. Why these 2 countries? Well, the US of course has always been in the forefront of using digital technology – California is the not only the home of excellent wines but also the home of Silicon Valley – the incubation house for new, innovative digital ideas. Germany, however, is famous of engineering and also an important wine producer. The study uncovered some pretty fundamental differences for channel use. In the US, practically every single winery has a website and is active on Facebook. The majority uses Twitter to share news and engage in conversations with the customers and there is a growing use of video as a communications method. Don’t forget that video is the next big thing – even Facebook is now putting videos before any particular content. In Germany, the figures are quite different – Twitter is scarce and video is still at infancy stage. Hard to tell immediately why that is but the fact is that content should always be compliant with EEE – Educating, Entertaining and Engaging. It appears that SoMe at US wineries are more part of the strategy and also individuals use it more frequently and as part of their every day job.
• #22: ZSOLT: An even more interesting comparison was the analysis of how wineries engage with their customers and prospects. Social media is the absolute winner in the US – wine being a social product itself that most of us enjoy in a good company is a great fit for SoMe communications. The 90% ratio hear means that there is an ongoing conversation between most wineries who utilize SoMe and the end customer. Traditional mails are down to 38% - sending catalogues hoping to get mail-in orders are definitely not the mainstream. And e-mail: don’t write it off just yet – with the appearance of E-Mail Marketing Automation tools e-mail is back as an important engagement method: its purpose is to channel traffic to other platforms, typically websites where the conversion in form of purchase can happen. Looking at Germany: very different. SoMe is down to 34% - remember, this is not about posting what happens at the winery – it is about conversations. Ever come across those websites where after 2 minutes of browsing a small window appears with a human being behind it who asks if they can help you? Now THAT is engagement. Postal mail is still prevalent and the preferred way of communications. An e-mail is still rather low, but growing. In any case, even the e-mail practices are pretty questionable: sending Outlook or Gmail emails with a single picture attachment – well with any good spam filter these are landing in the spam boxes. So, these are fundamental differences!
• #23: ZSOLT: So, if we were to summarize the findings it appears that there is a GAP in how German wineries do Promotion compared to what the next generation of customers need. Although the study compared German wineries against their US counterparts, I would say most of Europe still functions this way. I do not have any comparative studies but being part of a wine trader family I see how Spanish, Italian and French wineries do their Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer communications and that is not that different, I reckon. It seems that promotion efforts for many in Europe do not consider the digital era and the demographic shift of wine drinkers Most wineries still share and communicate information that is important for THEM and not what is relevant for the consumer and this brings them into broadcasting mode I claim that this is not the right direction for any winery that wishes to stay competitive in the market. Social media is not about broadcasting only, one way communications only. That is not the engagement what millennials want. CARO: So, Zsolt, what do you think kept so many wineries so far away from making a move into this direction?
• #24: CARO: So, Zsolt, what do you think kept so many wineries so far away from making a move into this direction? ZSOLT: What are your hints, Caro? CARO: Mixing PR & Marketing ZSOLT: Right. That is clearly one. I am advising a winery in their strategy and one of the organizational changes we made was to move the head of marketing to a PR role – because that was what she was doing so far. We can’t forget what is the ultimate goal of marketing: sales through the brand. Not just the brand itself. The next one is clearly simply missing the global change in the audience. It is easy to stuck with existing communications practices – change is always painful. Right next to it is the lack of experience. Now some of you can say don’t preach me that it is difficult to post on Facebook… Sure it is not – but to drive engagement you need a lot more. You need to have relevant content there. You have to know what to post and some say even when to post. For this you need to try different strategies, analyze the results and adjust. It is an iterative process which include data analytics. Not the everyday job of a winemaker today, for sure. Technology is a wonderful thing but it can get very complex – and complexity always comes along with Cost and Effort. There are many things happening on the tech front that makes it now much easier for wineries to connect elements without an IT expert – cloud technology is meant to support exactly that. But you need more that that: you need to understand exactly the business logic of the marketing and sales of a winery to create a well working system – just because a Customer Relationship Management system today is pretty easy to connect to an E-mail Marketing Automation tool, it will not work properly unless you know WHAT you want these components to do together. Finally, we are all humans: fear from new things is an all-natural, all-human thing. But what worked yesterday may still work today but will be obsolete tomorrow. CARO: Ok. So with that in mind, what do wineries need to cover this gap and address the new groups of consumers?
• #25: CARO: Ok. So with that in mind, what do wineries need to cover this gap and address the new groups of consumers? ZSOLT: I see that what they need has 6 essential pillars: A mobile first strategy – anything they do on the internet should be easy to access and follow from a mobile device They need a strong social footprint – not on ALL channels (you can’t be there on all) but on all RELEVANT channels They need a sales conversion platform: a webshop. Yes, this one is touchy because some may be selling all their wines to distribution but direct sales is the future – this is a topic worth of a separate workshop. They should connect their offline and online communications and Manage customer data in an integrated fashion and They have to link these items properly together – think of linking the process, not just linking information technology components
• #26: ZSOLT: As the ratio of mobile access to the internet continues to grow, the digital landmark of the winery has to be optimized for ANY device that is used by visitors to access it. The user journey has to be very well thought through and conversion optimized. SoMe presence is needed where it matters – it may well be that Twitter is not the first thing for many but relevant content is. And content is not just your content: it can be someone else’s that you curate. It could be you own customer’s content: think of photo competitions or sweepstakes: these are all ways of creating engagement and people just love it For the e-commerce platform it is vital to be able to administer it by a normal user: you should not be an IT expert to add a new product or create a new package. It has to support advanced search, it has to support search engines and should come along with reporting and analytics capabilities. Integration capability here is vital – sending customer, purchase and other type of information to your order management or CRM systems are vital. Integrated communications is all about coupling online and offline marketing: if there is a wine tasting event you are participating to – you should be able to share your opinion there, sign-up for a promotional offer. The label can also be used for cdriving interest into digital channels. You also can’t avoid SoMe advertising – simply posting your content will reach on many networks only a very small part of your audience – advertising is key. But you have to have a great customer journey designed: are you advertising to sell or advertising to identify prospects? Both are needed: today’s leads will be tomorrow’s customers. All communications, unless it is pure PR, should be conversion optimized: get customer data or sell! Customer Data Mgmt is where many companies fail – this is the most important asset for wineries. The more consistently you keep track of customer data, who they are, what they purchased, when they purchased, how they paid, what they did with your newsletters, etc., the more you know about them. The more you know about them the more you can customize your offers. I have been working with a winery with whom it took 4 months to clean the customer database. Once we established their CRM we could run a FLOP campaign end of last year – targeting all of their customers whose annual order performance was behind the previous year. 40% extra revenue from the segment. Finally, what makes this working is the integration of components: it has to be clearly understood how the components shall be linked together across a business logic. Coming from IT I can tell you: its not the platform that matters. It’s the business logic that matters. Stay away from building your own server farm – use cloud. Most components are available for a monthly fee and you can pay as you grow. CARO: This all sounds pretty comprehensive. Can you show an example how this is supposed to work?
• #27: CARO: This all sounds pretty comprehensive. Can you show an example how this is supposed to work ZSOLT:
• #28: ZSOLT: What makes this unique is that all this can be built from pretty standard components. It is not a complex technology integration any more. There are cloud-to-cloud connectors like Zapier and IFTTT which make it pretty easy to implement at least part of this logic. But you have to know the logic. CARO: So, where should wineries start? How do you go about building this?
• #29: CARO: So, where should wineries start? How do you go about building this? ZSOLT: SALES MODEL: Selling direct or indirect Sales channels Domestic or export SWOT analysis MARKETING PRACTICES: Online and offline marketing SoMe marketing Search engine marketing Event marketing Budgets Traceability SOCIAL MEDIA FOOTPRINT: which channels frequency and type of communications what type of content CUSTOMER DATA MANAGEMENT: Where and how is customer data stored how is it kept clean How is data analyzed, segmented Who takes care of this CONVERSION: Customer data collection and sales conversion User journey Events and conversion Traceability of marketing efforts ORGANISATION: - How is the marketing and sales team constructed How are responsibilities set Who is managing social media How is online and offline marketing work coordinated The result is typically a set of Low Hanging Fruits. Wineries do NOT have to engage is huge projects but you can get started pretty rapidly with some basic changes: building a proper Social Media footprint, having the right content is a potential first step. Running events with conversion in mind is next. E-commerce platform on top is a logical evolution. Either way, every single winery needs a custom digital marketing strategy roadmap that defines the steps, their priority and timing.
• #31: ZSOLT: If you are working in the wine business as a professional, from next week your perspective about selling wines and driving engagement with customers will be different. We have a special promotional offer at ProWein – for wineries signing up during this and the next 2 days we will do an initial assessment free of charge. More information available at my supporting colleague, Bernd. Thank you!