Keeping your audience informed about your products, services, or brand is essential to stay relevant within the wines and spirits industry. Today, companies are spending about 10.5 percent of their revenue on marketing activities, such as SEO, videos, blogging, PPC ads, and more. While these strategies effectively generate the desired results, many brands do not take advantage of integrated marketing campaigns to reach a wider audience. In addition to your everyday marketing techniques, you can use public relations, earned media, and third-party endorsement to boost your return on investment and gain maximum exposure. This lets you create an integrated marketing plan that works to deliver your intended message through different channels and assets. Read on to learn more!
Public Relations
Public relations (PR) allows you to keep your customers informed about your services, products, or company. Whether you’re launching a new product or opening another location, PR activity enables you to put your message in front of a broader audience. You can use different media channels, including owned, earned, and paid, to engage your customers.
With public relations, your company can easily manage the owned media you share with the public to achieve the desired objective. Examples of owned media you can create are videos, webinars, case studies, and blog posts. In this case, journalists and customers get access to accurate and verifiable information as provided by your company.
When done right, public relations offers several benefits, including:
- Enhanced online profile and reputation
- Healthy, long-term customer or business relationships
- Improved brand value
- Optimal product/service visibility
Additionally, your PR message can be targeted to your customers, investors, or suppliers to achieve specific objectives. People will trust you more when your company’s name appears on trusted and reliable news sites and publications. The message should aim to educate and inform your audience, change people’s perception of your products, and encourage your visitors to take action.
Over time, public relations help you build a positive attitude towards your products and services, thus boosting sales and revenues.
Earned Media
As a result of your public relations efforts, more and more people become aware of your brand and products. This includes bloggers, influencers, and journalists. Such third-parties eventually create content about you or your business without you paying for it or asking them to do it. This content is what’s known as earned media.
Earned media is a form of publicity, but you don’t pay anything as you would in advertisements. There are several examples of earned media, including:
- Product review on a third-party websites
- Newspaper articles
- Tweet or Facebook posts
- Business mention on a news site or trade publications
- Customer reviews
- High SERPs rankings
- Appearance on a TV news segments
Bear in mind that you don’t have control over what people share or post about you or your company.
People naturally share information with all the people they’re connected with online. The information can be good or bad, and customers use it to make their purchasing decisions. Therefore, improving your reputation through delivering quality services, creating shareable content, and interacting with your customers can create a positive buzz around you.
The more positive news people share about you, the better.
Third-Party Endorsement
Third-party endorsements occur when someone other than your staff or company publicly approves or supports your products or services. This means that they have used your products or services and are satisfied with the results or experience.
While third-party endorsements effectively earn customer trust, some marketers have resorted to paying influencers and bloggers to get a positive review. Instead, you should find a happy or satisfied client to share their successes or experiences with your service or products.
Customers and journalists are more likely to believe the reviews, stories, or experiences of actual customers. So, if you can get third-party references to share their positive experiences willingly, you’re likely to gain more exposure and coverage.
Endorsements might even be the trigger reluctant clients need to make a purchase. They instill trust and confidence in your target customers, allowing you to convert visitors into customers quickly.
Making them Work in Unison
The success of your marketing campaign depends on how you can get these strategies to work in tandem. Several other factors complement these strategies, including customer service, product quality, and brand reputation.
You have to deliver quality products/services and offer excellent customer service for you to earn “earned media” and get endorsements. Basically, you should aim to deliver products that provide solutions to problems that affect your target customers. Also, a majority of your customers should be contented with what you’re selling.
You can then work with your PR team to deliver information about your brand and products. Some of the effective strategies you can use include:
- Creating powerful content for your products
- Collaborating with influencers
- Building media relations
- Attending events
- Leveraging social media
When developing your PR strategy, be sure to set clear, reasonable goals, and have a target audience in mind. You should also create compelling messages for your PR campaign and find the right tools to use.
You can then start monitoring social media and search engines for mentions and reviews, which you share with your audience on social media. Bear in mind that you can also use endorsements as testimonials on your website.
Final Thoughts
Running a wines and spirits business requires effective marketing and communications to convince customers to try your products. This is particularly true if you’re making your own products. Luckily, a refined and integrated marketing plan can deliver the right results for your campaign.
By incorporating public relations into your marketing plan, focused on earned media and third-party endorsements, you improve your chances of capturing the right audience. It’s advisable to focus on sharing valuable information about your brand and products to educate your audience. Most importantly, show how your products provide value or benefit your customers.
Your marketing and PR teams should also work together to deliver a common message and simplify your communications for effective targeting.
