The Grapevine

Marketing Wine for Weddings

June 15th, 2016

Put wedding in front of any word, and whatever you’re talking about immediately triples in price. [level-members]

As tempted as you might be to jack up your prices, the real opportunity is in selling wine to brides- and grooms-to-be who may be on a budget and throwing a DIY kind of wedding. (They’ll have a tougher time bringing wine in if they’re springing for a caterer or paid hall. Booze is typically a big profit center for those folks.)

Weddings are certainly something you can make a focus of in your marketing efforts, though I would broaden your appeal from weddings to parties/affairs in general. Fundraising galas for non-profits, holiday office parties, graduations, birthday bashes as well as weddings.

The key is to offer value and not just the lowest price. (You never want to compete on price.) And value can take a lot of forms: free delivery, providing corkscrews, advice on stocking the bar beyond the wine, even help training amateur mixologists might be an option for larger orders.

The point is to add something interesting and different to the bare product. Everyone else is selling the same thing. It’s hard to stand out by being “better” – that means different things to different people. But you can stand out by being different and providing value at the same time. [/level-members]