Tequila Branding
If you are a start up tequila brand on a tight budget, how can you still be perceived as a player in your field when you don’t have deep pockets?
This Beverage Trade Network article shares several ways to optimize small marketing budgets to support your retailers and build your brand.
You might be implementing a lot of these strategies, already. Yet, when it comes to the most cost-effective way to generate brand awareness, exposure and loyalty–Social Media–chances are, you’re so lost that not even GPS can help you.
Say Hello to My Little Friend
Social Media is your friend–or, at least, it can be. Let me explain.
Social Media (SM) levels the playing field for small, start up brands and craft labels that don’t have the enormous war chests like the Big Boys. But…
The secret to using it effectively is not to be on all the SM platforms. You can’t be–and you know why.
You’re too busy selling, trying to get placements, forging key relationships with distributers and mixologists, putting out fires, and educating your customers.
And what about those that don’t know about you, yet? How do you reach them in a genuine manner without spending hours in front of your Facebook page that you could be using to pitch the next account?
And how do you do damage control when someone has spread misinformation about your brand? Online reputation management (damage control) carries its own unique challenges as we described in Ambhar Tequila–The Recalibrating of A Brand, that not every company is prepared to deal with. Few, like Ambhar, do so successfully. Most need to call in a professional and pay dearly.
Value Added
Nico Martini is a former professor who taught Digital Marketing Design and Self-Branding Through Social Media and is the founder of Hypeworthy. Hypeworthy manages, among other things, social media, public relations, digital content creation, and online reputation management. We caught up with Nico at the speakeasy, The Last Word, during the San Antonio Cocktail Conference where he was a featured speaker.
Here, Nico gives us the following tips on balancing the score, whether you’re a spirits brand, a budding mixologist, or just trying to launch your own plumbing business.
Not only should you add value to your customers’ lives, but as Nico further recommends, represent yourself and your brand accurately and honestly.
Eso No Me Ayuda
Perhaps you’re just too good at what you do but you feel that word-of-mouth just isn’t traveling fast enough. You have no patience for Pinterest, no tolerance for Twitter, and no stomach for Instagram, so you decide to bite the bullet and hire someone else to deal with your social media headaches.
Or…
You’ve just figured out which popular SM platforms you should have a presence on and how to use them when, like the deluge of tequila and mezcal brands lately, another one pops out of nowhere claiming to be the “next big thing.”
You could…
Choose one of the myriad of other PR firms who profess to know all there is about social media, but when you look at their own Facebook or Twitter pages, they have less active followers than you do.
On the other hand, you could seek a competent individual with impeccable references like Tequila Aficionado Media’s own Lisa Pietsch, who specializes only in niche marketing of spirits brands, as well as bestselling book authors.
With a keen sense for accurately marketing to, and targeting these segments, Lisa teaches online classes on Social Media geared to these specialties a few times a year.
Unlike most every PR firm, she, like a handful of other social media mavens, practices what she preaches with real followers numbering in the thousands in just about every SM platform that counts.
Who Got Time Fo’ Dat?
Whether you choose to hire a reputable outside service like
Hypeworthy that deals with businesses from a variety of industries, or your cousin’s niece who communicates to her friends on three different platforms at the same time but isn’t old enough to drink, decide who will do the best job of representing your brand and transmitting that image to your customers.
Shop around for the best marketing bang for your buck. You can’t afford to leave your branding–your image–to amateurs or charlatans.
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Learn all about tequila from field to glass and then get paid to share your love of agave spirits with others! Buy Them Both Now!
