Welcome back to our Sell More Beer 101 blog. So far, we have established that to stand out from the crowd, you need an excellent beer and outstanding knowledge of your product and we’ve discussed how to build the foundations of a winning brand. Feel free to read 'Sell More Beer 101 Part 1' before you continue with this one.
Here’s the next instalment of our ‘to-do list’ to make your tipple top of the pile
Don’t rely on the bars and restaurants to sing your praises on all of the various social media streams available just because you sell to them. They will be busy enough with special events, promotions and fighting for business with their competitors. But shouting into the void of the internet about how awesome your beer is won’t do that much either… so what should you do?
Just be, well, social. You can do this by:
It has never been easier to get your beer in front of millions of people, but this comes with the added complication that a lot of other beers are already working the system. To be heard in the noise, you need to have something special that will catch the attention of your target audience.
For many independent businesses, this can be their connection to their local community. Testing your messaging out on a focused target audience is essential. This is something you should have an idea of from when you created your brand and who you are selling your beer to currently.
You can do this in various ways through each social channel. Here are a couple of examples to get you started:
Find the hashtags that your audiences are using and following. At a basic level, you should add your local area, product name and slogans.
You can see this in action with sales-i customer Beavertown Brewery’s Twitter account. They make sure to #Beavertown posts and separate out their unique antics with #teambeaver
As a more relaxed platform with unlimited characters, you can extend your posts to include links to partners and promote your products.
With a focus on local, Facebook is great for hitching your wagon to local events.
Who are your top advocates? If it isn’t you and your employees, why not? You have missed an essential step in developing your brand, as good PR begins at home.
Each of these will ensure that you spread your social influence through each of your customers and competitors’ audiences as well as your own..