MyLocalWineStore» Wine Internet Marketing

New Book Interview on VinVillage’s Wine and Dine radio show

Bruce — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 01:06:54 +0000

Lynn Krielow Chamberlain interviews Bruce on VinVillage’s Wine and Dine radio show. You can listen to the interview care of VinVillage or read the transcript below.

The first half of the show talks about publishing on Amazon and the politics of wine distribution. After the ad break we get talk about the book which is where the transcript starts. LKC stands for Lynn Krielow Chamberlain, the host of the radio show. BM stands fro Bruce McGechan, me the author of How to Sell Wine Online.

LKC: You’re listening to Wine and Dine on VinVillage radio. My name is Lynn Krielow Chamberlain, host.

Well we just left off this conversation which is very political and emotional for some people. And Bruce I’ve sent an email to Tyler Colman a couple of times when he first started his Dr Vino blog. He joined me and he’s really become quite well known on the national blogging stage and we’l try and twist his arm to come back on and continue the conversation for people who are, I guess, producers. Gosh almighty it such a sticky subject and its so sad we can’t order wine and have it so easily shipped.

I don’t really know exactly the laws of delivering wines within the European union, is it easier to order wine and have it shipped across country lines in Europe?

BM: I think in almost every other country it’s easy to do. Either absolutely within the law or there is a pragmatic way to do it without the authorities being angry with you. It is the morality of alcohol I think that is the issue that goes right back to the Prohibition.

LKC: Morality and it’s not been a part of the cultural institution of the US. Its just not part of the history of the US in a way that is in Europe, Australia and NZ. You would think it is not too different to the US, but anyways.

But let’s go back to talking about the book now. Is it okay if I talk about how you have broke it down into parts?

BM: Let me give you a segue into that. There is a difference between sending books and sending wine. I have a large part of the book about why a local wine retailer, and this is aimed at the 5000 odd wine retailers in the US, its about why the local wine retailer shouldn’t get so disgruntled about their situation with the online wine competitors coming to market and the wineries going direct – and that is the freight.

The freight of wine is very very expensive. It is a large item, compared to a book, it is a heavy item compared to a book, and when you try and ship it over a long distance from the winery in Napa Valley for example to NY, that’s an expensive bit of freight. So what the winery in Napa Valley should do is freight it up in terms of cases and pallets of wine and send it to a distributor, and hopefully a wine store in New York, and let the wine store take care of the expensive freighting and fulfillment, and I guess distribution. And that’s a far more cost effective way to freight.

That’s why I think local wine retailers have a serious advantage in the market because they are buying in bulk and splitting it out in to single bottle lots, and allowing the wine drinkers to around the States to drink one bottle at a time. Essentially the wine drinker pays for their own freight, they drive to the wine store. They pay for their own fulfillment, they take it off the shelf and take it back home.

Wine drinkers like the buying experience. I’m sure many of your listeners like going into wine stores and browsing the stores. But they’re also taking care of a big cost that internet retailers usually have to pay for. Amazon doesn’t care, it doesn’t cost them much. For a wine retailer, for an online wine company, it’s a significant barrier to selling lots of wine in faraway states.

LKC: Let me ask you in Part III where you’re writing about traffic and how to increase traffic to your online store, even though you say to offline shop, how do you build awareness? In your book you teach people, so much of the future is online. So how do you bring people to your site and learn about the wines you are selling, or the beer you are selling, or whatever … the olive oil, that you’re selling?

BM: There’re a few parts, it’s the classic wine marketing funnel really, it’s getting people into the top of the funnel, what you and I call ‘traffic’. It’s through making sure the search engines can find you, and the search engines see links from trusted sites, and therefore rate your website as being a trusted authoritative source for your particular varietals you’re choosing to sell, and regions.

And then there’s the matter of saying look I’m a trusted source within my local area, my local town, its called local search engine optimization. Then there’s what I think everyone knows about nowadays: ‘Google Ads’ or ‘Google Adwords’, and banner advertising on other sites like wine bloggers sites. So you’ve got your search engines whether its paid, or non paid also called organic.

Then you’ve got the new kids on the block I guess, Comparison Shopping Engines – Snooth and wine-searcher. They are the two biggest ones along with Google Product Search which is the shopping tab or filter that you see on a Google search results page. So that covers Traffic Lynn.
The next stage is Engagement and I hear you talking a lot about social media on Wine Radio and you’ve had some great guests. That is the Facebooks and Twitters, and the foursquares, the Yelps of the world, Yelp being y-e-l-p. They are fantastic resources to show your community of wine drinkers and wine customers that you really know your wine knowledge, and you really can provide them with advice and information that they wouldn’t otherwise get, and you do that by interacting with your wine customers in various ways. So that’s what I call engagement and the second last part is what I call conversion.

That’s when your wine drinkers come to your website it is really easy to buy wine, that you don’t make it hard by having all these forms to fill in to complete the wine purchase. That customers feel safe with their credit card.

And the last part is good ol’ email marketing. It’s still there it’s an easy way for all of us to receive information that we want to receive. Perhaps the kids in their twenties are using alternative ways like Facebook but still people in their middle age, like myself, still like to receiving the odd email from their favourite wine store and winery, and we shouldn’t discount that one yet.

LKC: Yes, I totally agree. It seems like nowadays that wineries need to hire someone, if not full time at least part time specifically to devoted to all of this new ways of corresponding and engaging and build awareness. It’s so different nowadays even than 10 years ago.

BM: It’s not only different from 10 years ago it’s different from 5 years ago. So 10 years ago we saw the shift to Google with people searching for information on the internet by using the Google search engine results page. But 5 years ago Facebook made that appearance and now a lot of people prefer to stay within the same Facebook environment.

So things keep moving and I think the next big thing is location based services – so foursquare, yelp, scavenger, I hope I get the spelling right bit I think it is s-c-n-v-g-r. What that’s about is gaming, there’s quizzes, or you go to Napa Valley and check-in to a few tasting rooms, and at the end of it you get a reward of some type. It might just be a badge you can put onto your cellphone or it might be a discount form the winery. It’s an example of where things are going and I think, where we were really surprised by Google 10 years ago, and likewise with Facebook 5 years ago, some time in the next few years we’re going to be surprised with the likes of foursquare and scavenger making it’s rise into the wine drinkers hands.

LCF: Oh heaven, Bruce McGechan but this has been so fascinating you can never stop learning thank you so very much for joining us today from New Zealand on Wine and Dine. Learn more on line at VinVillage.com.

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My New Book Shows you How to Make More Money, with Fewer Customers, Without Discounting

Bruce — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:30:34 +0000

I describe how a hypothetical wine store stops discounting, refocuses on very profitable customers, by sharing the store owner’s passion for wine. The store starts with 1467 customers, it drops 259 customers and turns a financial loss of -$46,374 into a profit of $214,354.

However its revenue increases by $300,000. You can see the wine retail store financial spreadsheet that I use in the book here.

My imaganiery store owner has had a larger discounter open up next door. He has tried to match the prices but has quickly found himself in a hopeless financial position. This book follows him as he creates a business plan and an internet oriented marketing strategy to refocus on the most profitable customers.

The key word and the key theme of the book is ‘refocus’. The retailer goes back to his most profitable customers, customers who also share his passion for wine, and are willing to buy lots of high margin wines. The customers who were shopping at the store for discount reasons only, shop elsewhere. Let someone else cater their price oriented needs, this store caters to high value wine enthusiasts.

This store shares its passion for wine with wine passionate customers. This store stocks a wide range of artisan wines, not the limited range of sub standard plonk that a supermarket stocks. This store can be experienced online, because that’s where it’s best customers are most of the time.

This Book starts with the Wine Customers

I use the Project Genome wine drinker segmentation extensively in the book but I also look at an academic study, my own research and some social media research.

It then covers the competitors online and offline. Again I use various types of internet research to show how you can do this yourself.

An extensive analysis of the local wine retailer market opportunity comes next. The illustrative wine retailer is described including downloadable spreadsheets and a marketing plan (note you can use these for your whole retail business not just the internet marketing part). In essense he focuses on a niche market, a market that discounters, liquor chains and supermarkets struggle to compete in.

How to measure internet success is the last chapter in Part I. In particular the use of Google Analytics and its new assisted conversion report. I also go over the issue of multiple attribution (which this sounds boring but is essential to understand!). Each of the internet marketing chapters finishes with a section on how to measure it’s success, and how the illustrative wine retailer is doing versus these his marketing plan.

Part II- Traffic, looks at SEO, local SEO (yes I think it is so important I split it out), Advertising, and Comparison Shopping Engines. Some SEO fiends will find my thoughts on duplicate content and siloing controversial, I welcome you to explain your own views in the forums (more of about the forums below).

Part III – Engagement, has chapters on Social Media Objectives, Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Mobile Apps, and Location Based Services. Once again I have a special section on Local Social Media. The reason I keep splitting out ‘Local’ is that I think wine retailers have a real advantage in being local.

Part IV – Conversion, covers how to choose an eCommerce provider and what features to expect from your wine eCommerce website. Mobile and Social (Facebook) eCommerce follows and finishes with Landing Page Optimization.

Part V – Repeat, covers Email Marketing and admits that all the other internet marketing strategies also help with repeat custom. Lastly there is a Conclusion.

Out of Date?

Yes, parts of this book went out of date as I was writing it. For example Facebook Deals got ditched and a new study on Local SEO made me completely revise this chapter. Every technology related book has the inherent disadvantage of capturing only a point in technology time.

With this in mind I’ve completely opened up my website to all comers to discuss the various internet marketing topics – see the Wine Internet Marketing Forums. I’ll also post revisions to chapters as time goes by to keep the book up to date digitally if not physically. If you see something that is out of date and has not been updated by myself, please post your feedback on the forums and I’ll write an update post.

Where to buy it

It can be purchased directly (as at 3 November 2011, it ships from the South Carolina), Amazon from sometime between 7 November and 15 November 2011, and other book stores in January 2012. A kindle version is likely to be published in the next two months.

Here are the Table of Contents: HowToSellWineOnlineTableOfContents

Feedback

I’d love feedback – negative and postitive. Feel free to write that below, in the relevant forum, or as an Amazon review.

Wine and Technology – vintank’s 12 predictions

Bruce — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 05:07:25 +0000

Vintank has just produced a new wine marketing technology report called To-and-Fro.

It contains an eclectic review of what vintank has been up to over the last two years. They also hinted at some new stuff they’ll be publishing shortly including a new iPhone app review, another big wine internet report, and a Social Gaming app call VinPass.

But their 2011 Predictions were the most interesting and controversial, here’s what they were.

Wine Internet Predictions 2011

1.Wine eCommerce continues to grow

Wine e-commerce is the fastest growing DTC channel for wineries. This focus will continue to grow and many wineries, even the largest enterprise wineries, will see tremendous growth in the channel and will reinvest for greater returns. Expect better customer service, more innovative marketing and promotional activities, and interesting spins on winery direct e-commerce.

Agree – eCommerce is the fastest growing channel for most industries so it’s not an unsafe prediction .

2. Wine Social Media meets Wineries

50% of US wineries (3000+) will be participating in social media in some capacity (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, other).
10% of US wineries (600+) will become proficient in 2011 in leveraging the medium for increased branding, customer engagement, customer service, customer acquisition, PR, and more.
0.25% (15) will start basic SCRM (Social CRM).

Agree – that more wineries get their heads around social media. Still I think the traditional “make it and they will come” approach will continue to prevail.

3. Wine Sales Websites

The implosion of wine flash sales will start in 2011. Sites like winestilsoldout.com, winaccess, winewoot, cinderallawine, gilt.com, ruelala.com and lot18.com.

Disagree – the death of discounting just ain’t going to happen. The likes of Groupon and Facebook Deals is actually giving the discount/coupon even more momentum. The easiest thing to do is discount rather than provide greater service and selection so it’s the fall back position for many a marketer. I do agree that wineries will be less interested in liquidating stock at low prices as the economy recovers and wine demand comes back but there will be no implosion.

4. Wine Social Commerce

We will see a wine social commerce platform emerge in 2011. Some wineries might even experiment with it.

Agree – though I think snooth should be doing this better. Or cellartracker or even wine-searcher. They already have big communities and could add functionality to their site that encourages engagement rather than just price comparison, reviews or search.

5. Winery Mobile Apps

Mobile apps have been mostly consumer facing and provided little if any value to wineries. In 2011 that will turn (heck, they need to make money). Wine apps will become more social in 2011.

Agree – mobile and social (and local) will be the big trends of 2011.

6. Wine Data Cleaning Continues

We predict that you will see wine label scanning tools get to 65% in 2011. Wine apps are sick of dirty data or data that are only used to drive traffic to other peoples sites. Expect to see more attention on wine data from the tech sector in 2011.

Unsure – it seems so obvious to the wine technology industry that this should happen and yet despite some courageous attempts the uptake by consumers seems slow. I hope vintank is right but I fear they are just too optimistic about all but the wine lovin’ early tech adopters out there.

7. QR Codes

QR codes will gain a significant foothold in the wine industry in 2011 with many wineries printing them on back labels and marketing materials.

Agree – label recognition aside this is the best way to connect a consumer to information about your wine in-store.

8. Wine finds Social Gaming

The social gaming outlets will improve the level of engagement opportunities wineries will have with their consumers as well as give a clear indication of consumer purchasing patterns. This will all start with the launch of the first social game for our industry, VinPass.

Agree – and I’m very curious about VinPass. There does seem to be plenty of ways of making a fascinating subject an interesting game.

9. The Wine Writer: if you can’t beat them

In 2011 you will see the emergence of professional wine writers entering the digital space. The ones that take the time to understand digital will elevate in mass awareness. The ones who don’t will be inundated by what they call “mob mentality” and constant barrage of public criticism that will chip away at their credibility to this and the next generation of wine consumers.

Agree – the newspapers are slowly going bankrupt as are many of their related cousins e.g. Yellow Pages. The only possible exception to this is the iPad, kindle type subscription models but its early days for this business model.

10. Like vs pts

In with the new…types of reviews. The Facebook “Like” function is a game changer in more ways than this one slide can demonstrate. We predict more etailers and online platforms will start using new systems for recommending wine. Three of the most influential review sites are facebook, cellartracker, and twitter.

Maybe – it makes more sense but again I’m skeptical about the wine consumer’s willingness to uptake something new. Perhaps a better prediction will be that the start of changes in the systems of recommending wine will start in 2011 in earnest. Then in about 5-10 years time it finally takes hold.

11. Wine content creation

There will be a new push in content curation for wine sites in 2011 due to the flood of wine information on the internet.

Agree – if wine consumers continue to move away from traditional magazine subscription models to blogs and online free magazines then there will be demand for savvy curation. Can it be supported by advertising though?

12. CRM

CRM will actually start to materialize in 2011 and the industry will begin leveraging it for the benefit of DTC sales.

Disagree – though only because I think CRM has had it’s time and has got as far as practically possible. In my mind CRM is all about trying to manage the customer rather than engage with them in an authentic way. Perhaps vintank meant more the integration of social media monitoring into existing CRM system? In which case I agree.

8 out of 12

Is how much I agree with vintank, which ain’t bad. It’s going to be an interesting year.

What’s your thoughts? Feel free to disagree.

Are you on a “Burning Platform”?

Are you on a “Burning Platform”?

Bruce — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 20:21:05 +0000

“There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a “burning platform,” and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times – his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a “burning platform” caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a “burning platform,” and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.”

This was written by Stephen Elop the new CEO of Nokia as reported in Engadget on 8 Feb 2011. It is part of a remarkably frank internal memo to employees that has been leaked out to the tech media. See Engadget for the complete memo.

The key part to me, and perhaps also the relevant part to you, is this paragraph,

“The battle of devices [mainly smartphones] has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.”

Which is the approach I agree with

But from a wine store perspective.

Rather than being a wine store, a retailer, a wine expert, a marketing expert, a capable tech user, a good sharer of info and knowledge: in wine forums, wine blogs, on facebook and twitter … a good wine store is a mixture of all these and more.

It sits astride the new wine ecosystems that are spreading around the world and around the internet – but bringing the best of those back to your local customers.

Wine stores and “burning platforms”

To go back to the Nokia CEO’s analogy, many retailers are sitting on burning platforms.

Of course eCommerce is a step in the right direction but its not enough.

Wine consumers are also using various internet services, before deciding where to buy wine from. They are using mobile apps, social media and local internet based information to make their choices about what and where they’ll buy wine.

Then they’ll walk into a wine store (only about 8% will buy online).

Will it be yours?

Or are you on a burning platform? One which relies on foot traffic, old media and word of mouth alone to get their foot in the door. Even one which only relies on SEO and poor websites.

If so it may be time to take the 30m plunge into freezing waters.

Photo courtesy of: WA Today.

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Google 2010: end of empire, hail the new order

Bruce — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 21:50:43 +0000

I started 2010 being Google’s biggest advocate.

They had the majority of consumer attention, sophisticated advertising systems, and an incredible product development process that has seen the development of Google Maps, Docs, Checkout and Talk. Previously whenever they turned their attention to a particular area they seemed to quickly dominate it.

Until, until…

Google Buzz fizzled, Checkout is proving problematic, their search results seem dated (I even tried bing the other day! – but it was worse), their advertising is often not providing good ROI, they seem to be more interested in corporates (Commerce Search), their mobile app is just a web browser… okay okay, enough grumbling.

Perhaps Google remains as talented as ever but I’m just finding better ways to interact with the wider internet community.

Social media like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook of course. But also by going directly to websites that I know are good regular performers like Mashable and Huffington Post. And, because I use my iPhone, this is via apps not browsers (which means Apple is my “home page”).

Then there are my favorite blogs, podcasts, mobile apps… the percentage of my time in front of the Google search page (and computer screen) has just collapsed.

Unless I’m researching for information then Google is still the best place to start.

So what does this mean for your business

Since the mid 2000s you could expect to make a reasonable return on Google SEO and Adwords marketing expenditure. With the increase in competition, and the explosion of Social Media, Mobile and Local services this is now not necessarily the case. Or at least it is much harder.

Just like me, your customers’ time has been moving from Google to other web pages as well as other devices. Attention has dispersed and an internet marketers job has become more complex, more multi-faceted – and frankly more interesting.

Especially for a local business

A local business is at the heart of the three changes we’ve seen in 2009-10: Social, Mobile and Local.

For example:

Social – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Groupon
Mobile – Apps, Yelp, Foursquare, Twitter
Local – Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook Places

Indeed Groupon seems so successful because it fits into all three.

Here’s a Venn diagram from Screenwerk that shows this intersection:

Over the last 12 months I’ve been partitioning out the various internet marketing topics. But in reality they all intersect in a very human mish mash of the social, geographic and technology worlds.

It is almost as though the internet started out as being the whole world then became

the world where your friends are
the world where your friends are nearby
the world where your friends are nearby, on your mobile

The full circle has taken us back to where we all were before this started. Hanging out with friends, generally within a 20 mile radius.

Sure we spend lots of time criss crossing the internet super highway, but we still prefer to spend most of our time talking to local customers, friends or family.

Which is completely sensible of course. Technology is to serve our human needs, not a programmer’s business plan.

So where to from here?

Time to go back to 2 miles. Forget the superhighway.

Time to say hello to the customer you see walking down the street, not the theoretically possible customer 500 miles away.

Time to talk to them in the ways that suits them, the mobile in their pocket not the PC on their desk.

It’s time for me to rethink my service. To take it away from Google and put it yours’ and your local customers’, hands.

So that’s what I’m doing in 2011

First I’ll be opening this website to you. I’ll be starting a forum so you can discuss your ideas with other like minded wine retailers on topics that are important to you. I’ll even let you make blog posts yourself should you have such a desire.

Next I’ll be actively working with eCommerce providers to attach internet marketing systems to their software. No more standing on the sidelines and using third party systems, if I can’t find what I need in the marketplace I’ll commission it myself.

At the same time I’ll be revamping the marketing systems to, you guessed it, Local, Social and Mobile.

Here’s what the new service will look like:

Mobile

Wine Retailer Mobile App
Foursquare
SCNVGR

Social

Facebook Page and Commerce
Sharing to friends and followers e.g. Twitter, Check-Ins
Blog (from a social engagement point of view as well as Google SEO)

Local

Yelp
Foursquare
Facebook Places
Wine Retailer Mobile App in-store QR codes
Google Places (OMG I mentioned Google )

Plus eCommerce of course.

Time to move on. Google RIP, or perhaps just a pugnacious island not an empire …

How have you seen the internet and/or wine world change in 2010?

Images courtesy of: Screenwerk, Lord Nelson, Rule Britannia