The Grapevine

Wine Shop Marketing – Cooking Up a Contest

February 22nd, 2017

If you keep ’em friendly, contests and competitions can generate a lot of buzz for your shop and a lot of excitement amongst your marketing audience. [level-members]

There are a near endless number of ways to to run contests that will help  you accomplish your marketing goals. The one big idea to keep in the back of your mind as you craft your contest is relevance.

Yes, I’m sure you can generate a flurry of activity if you auction off a new Tesla or even an iPad, but those items aren’t related to what you do in any real way, so too high a percentage of the activity you generate will be one-time activity. You’ll attract people with no interest in wine – folks who are only interested in the prize.

So, giving away wine makes more sense – or food and wine pairing dinners or wine tastings. But how should you have your audiences compete?

Again there are a multitude of options. If your marketing focuses at all on wine as an accompaniment to food, you’ve got some great options right there. You can run a recipe contest – your followers/subscribers submit recipes, you recommend pairings, and everyone gets to vote. (Signing up for your email newsletter in the process.)

You publicize the winner, recommending pairings at various price points, and repeat quarterly …

If you’re up for more of a challenge – and a larger payoff – you can create a charity event in which you invite some of your best customers to create a dish they love. You provide a pairing to accompany each dish and invite the public to attend for a small donation to your favorite local charity. Great PR for the charitable donation, great rapport-building with your best customers, and you may even win some new customers.  [/level-members]