You’ve created a wine that you can be proud of: The grapes were just right, the fermentation went as planned, and there’s now a great product sitting in your bottles, ready to be enjoyed. How do you get the word out? This is not a trivial task. You could have the most delicious wine on the planet, but if no one knows about it, it won’t sell. More than that, consumers need to know about you—not just the wine in the bottle, but the brand that created that wine. This is where wine marketing becomes critical. And while larger wineries and big brand names can throw a lot of money at their marketing departments, smaller wineries have to be more clever with their marketing dollars. Fortunately, building a base of loyal customers doesn’t have to break the bank for your business. In fact, the best thing to do is to go back to the basics. Here, then, are the six fundamentals of wine marketing, and how implementing them can grow your customer base while giving y

Q1 is a time for review in the wine industry. How did 2021 take shape? What do the trends mean for 2022? As various industry reports are being released, we thought it would be fun to take a look back on 2021 ourselves. Being a team of fulfillment specialists affords us a privileged point of view here. We can speak to wine sales and the DTC channel having seen it up close, on the ground. We see the actual orders going out the door to customers.  And what we see is this—the industry has gone through some substantial changes, no doubt about it. The “necessity is the mother of invention”’ principle is prevailing, which makes us  optimistic about what the rest of the year has in store.  Here are three trends to watch in 2022: Tasting Rooms Have Evolved, and Will Continue to Do So One of the biggest changes wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic was its effect on tasting rooms. We’re not talking about tasting rooms closing and re-opening; we’re ta

Steve Randazzo is the founder and president of Pro Motion Inc., an experiential marketing and event marketing agency located in Missouri. He has also been a leading expert helping Fortune 1000 companies that traditionally rely on trade shows and other events to adapt to the non-contact “COVID Economy.” We spoke with Steve recently about in-person and online experiences, and how wineries can approach them no matter what their budget. You can listen to the full interview here or read the abridged version below the key takeaways: Key takeaways from our interview: Experiences are better able to cut through the clutter and sustain our attention. Tasting rooms were the traditional way wineries built those experiences but with tasting rooms still limited in what they can do, wineries need to pivot to new types of outreach, events and experiences. Experiences can be virtual, too! New ways to reach customers were created during the pandemic, and the most successful brands will be th