by Curt Prins (originally found on www.craftbrewingbusiness.com) Craft brewing is exploding in America. You, faithful CBB readers, know this. Per the Brewers Association last month, Americans now enjoy beer from more than 3,000 breweries with another 2,000 coming. This level of choice makes building a sustainable customer base challenging for craft brewers. Since 99 percent of craft brewers have limited distribution and budgets, most promotional methods remain financially out of reach, and are largely ineffective on a local scale. Unlike traditional tools, mobile marketing can have a huge, quantifiable impact on building awareness, generating taproom traffic and earning customer loyalty for craft brewers. And you don’t need the marketing resources of MillerCoors to impact your bottom line. In fact, most mobile marketing tools remain inexpensive, easy to use and simple to scale up. Having worked with many craft brewers, here are some quick suggestions: Start simple, with your websiteYour site is how people find out your taproom hours, who stocks your beer and what’s coming out of your tanks. It’s your information foundation. If your goal is to drive distribution sales or garner more awareness at beer fests, you won’t get far if people can’t access your information easily. Since people don’t walk around with laptops, make sure your site is optimized for mobile devices — both smartphones and tablets. If you fail to take this step, most of your mobile visitors will likely never return, your social media efforts will fizzle and your other marketing investments will be wasted. Many of my clients have found that mobile traffic to their website continues at double-digit growth and often exceeds that from desktop browsers. This step can’t be skipped. Focus on the beer fans and forget the restI’ve seen many of my craft brewers decrease their spending on traditional marketing tools like print ads or eliminate them altogether. That’s counter to typical marketing logic. Despite the blazing growth of craft breweries, big brewers still control 92.2 percent of the market. While that figure is eroding quickly, a majority of American beer drinkers still remain in the clutches of the big players with their massive national marketing budgets. And that’s OK. Keep in mind that you are brewers, not missionaries. The general public might not be ready for your over hop-ed IPA, but there are communities of hopheads out there craving for what’s next. And they’re easier to find than you might think. Focus your efforts on those who are as passionate about craft beer as you are, and unless you have wide distribution, it’s best to focus on cultivating a loyal base of beer fans nearby. This is where mobile, or more specifically, Social-Local-Mobile (SoLoMo), marketing excels. Mobile devices generate the bulk of social media sharing — 75 percent from Twitter and 51 percent of Facebook referrals — per comScore. And much of this sharing is local. Also, 94 percent of smartphone users have searched for local information, according to Google. Despite these facts, don’t waste your time building or buying social media followers. This happens naturally. With social media viewing rates at a paltry 2 to 5 percent, the value of tweets and Facebook posts is overblown. Just ensure that you’re optimized for local search and social sharing, then move onto their more powerful tools.
The strengths of Google, Facebook and Twitter lie in their mobile ad platforms. You can target by keyword, location and even demographics to reach local beer fans on their smartphones. When they Google a particular beer, tweet about an IPA or just see what their friends are up to, you can be prominently placed on their mobile devices to build awareness and drive traffic to your taproom or your beer fest booth. Unlike traditional marketing tools like advertising, you can spend $20 to test a mobile campaign and either scale it up or shut it down in real time depending on the results. For one brewer in particular, we tied mobile ads to locations close to the bars and stores that served and stocked their beer through a new distributor. The ads were a success and led to the fastest growth in craft beer sales that this distributor had ever seen in its 30 years in business. Mobile is not technology, it is behaviorDon’t focus on the technology because people are not mobile phones. People use their phones to snap pictures, answer quick questions and remain connected with loved ones. They also look for cheaper prices on big purchases, scan checks to save a trip to the bank, and find the nearest Chinese takeout place — and if it’s any good. These are all habitual actions, not technological advances. They become second nature after a few uses. When was the last time you told someone to “just Google it?” Focus on what customer habits you want to cultivate first — filling seats on slow nights, generating more growler refills or getting a holiday sales bump. Then align the mobile tools you need to achieve those objectives. This will save you from wasting money where it’s not needed. Leverage mobile trigger tools to convert your taproom or beer festsAfter optimizing and promoting, beer fans have arrived and are enjoying the fruits of your craft. Most brewers think that a great beer is enough to drive loyalty and keep them coming back. It isn’t. A great product combined with well-trained staff won’t necessarily guarantee a return visit or a purchase at their local beer store. With more than 3,000 craft brewers in America, it’s a drinkers’ market, and you need to leverage two mobile tools to convert people from first-time visitors to frequent regulars. When they’re onsite, get them to join your email list, or more importantly, your text messaging (SMS) list. It won’t be easy. After their social security number, their mobile number is the most valuable number they own. When was the last time you told someone to “just Google it?” Focus on what customer habits you want to cultivate first — filling seats on slow nights, generating more growler refills or getting a holiday sales bump. Then align the mobile tools you need to achieve those objectives.Offer the right incentive like a free pint or exclusive access to special offers to drive opt-ins. Ensure that your signage, servers, and even your coasters feature a prominent call-to-action for them to join your SMS list with ease. And if you’re worried about abuse or list churn, most platforms offer controls to combat fraud and typical retention rates remain at 97 percent within a week of joining. Don’t forget to create separate SMS lists for your VIPs, beer clubs and other groups. Contests, especially when you’re at beer fests, are also great at building lists. A client of mine donates a beer for life membership every year to raise funds to local charities. That annual raffle still drives the most people to opt into its general SMS list. Use messaging to keep customers coming backBuilding your SMS list won’t happen overnight, but you should see a noticeable impact quickly. Using minimal incentives, like a free pint, you could build a respectable list of 500 people within three to four months. Even my smaller brewery clients have built lists over 1,000 within a year. You don’t need to wait until you have a large list to start messaging those who’ve opted in. It might take a few months to find your mobile messaging groove, so start right away. When possible, align your beer releases on slower nights and use your SMS list to fill your taproom. Promote your attendance at local beer fests for your fans who will likely be there — drive them to your booth with special swag to reward their loyalty and promote your brand at the event. Build a growler SMS list and promote special pricing to help reduce inventory. While you don’t want to send out more than 3-5 messages a month, one of the most effective uses of SMS I’ve seen is a brewpub client who created a separate list tied to the annual beer week in her state. She promoted the list via the local press, social media and other means to quickly build a list of over 250 beer fans. She then sent out a daily text message promoting the special offer of the day to drive her busiest week of the year. Keep in mind that it’s a drinkers’ market — simply brewing great beer isn’t enough to garner success and the loyalty of beer fans. That said, you can easily leverage these mobile tools to grow your brewery. Be sure to concentrate on the behavior of customers and not the technology to build a foundation and focus on beer fans. Once they start arriving and buying, offer a little incentive to get them opted in and keep them coming back. Curt Prins is a Minneapolis-based mobile strategist focused on beverages, CPG and retail. Harkening back to his college days in inner-city Detroit, he’s on a personal quest for more craft brewed malt liquor.
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The article below as originally found on www.craftbrewingbusiness.com, written by Chris Crowell and published on 8/7/14. It examines the particular case of 10 Barrel Brewing Co's recall and paints an excellent picture of a why Liability Insurance is a MUST for Breweries... "10 Barrel Brewing Co. conducted a voluntary recall of two of its beers, Swill and Beer #1 from its number series, after discovering that some of the product may be experiencing secondary fermentation in the bottle, causing over carbonation. As a precaution, 10 Barrel Brewing removed all inventory of Swill from its wholesalers and retail shelves and asked that customers immediately dispose of any Swill already purchased. “Swill is brewed with a completely different process than any of our other beers, isolating this issue to only Swill,” the company noted in its recall notice. “This recall does not affect any of 10 Barrel Brewing’s other products and we’re completely confident that all of our other beers are of the highest quality.” 10 Barrel also added this: Consumers: if you have any Swill in your home, please do not open it, attempt to transport it, or return it to your retail store. Dispose of the product by following these steps: (i) Before disposing of any bottles of Swill, please put on protective gloves and eye wear; (ii) Place all remaining Swill bottles in a closed box and place immediately in a secured dumpster or trash container outside. “We take the utmost pride in producing an extremely high quality product and continuously striving for new and innovative beers to send to the consumer. Unfortunately in this instance, despite a rigorous testing and brewing quality-‐check process, we didn’t hit the mark,” the company stated. So, what was the problem? Apparently it stems from an enzyme the team was using that was meant to break down complex starch strains and reinvigorate early fermentation in some of its sour beers." Hopefully, 10 Barrel Brewing Co. was insured, because if anyone DID get injured by their over-carbonated beers, they could be on the hook for a lot of money. To learn more about Liability Insurance and other coverages we can provide your brewery, contact us for a quote BY CLICKING HERE. Hired & non owned liability coverage on automobiles covers the liability for automobiles that you rent. Liability coverage covers the bodily injury or physical damage to a third party for by the vehicle that is under your care/custody/control. Liability is different coverage than physical damage coverage for an auto (hired/non-owned). Physical damage coverage covers the damage to the actual vehicle you are renting. The cost to add this coverage is approximately $500 annually for $50,000 in physical damage coverage. If you only rent occasionally (during the harvest season), we recommend you take out a physical damage only policy on the rented vehicle. Managing workers' compensation insurance costs can be tricky. You want to protect your employees while still keeping premiums as low as possible. Of course, avoiding accidents is the surest way to save money on coverage. But if an accident does happen, and they inevitably do, you need a carrier who will be there, working to get your injured workers appropriate medical treatment and managing their claims so they can get back to work quickly and safely. Workers compensation is a “no fault” system where employees that are injured on the job and in the course of employment. Failure to meet your workers’ compensation coverage requirement can leave your business exposed to both the full costs of workers’ compensation claims (through litigation) and additional regulatory penalties levied by the states, which can be severe. Part Two of the workers compensation policy, Employer’s Liability, is often overlooked, yet a very important exposure for businesses to consider. Employer’s liability fills the gap between the narrowness of the workers’ compensation policy and exclusions in the commercial general liability policy. Employers liability protects the employer from the employee, family member, or another entity seeking damages from the employer. In order to seek damages, the person must prove: 1) there was a duty owed to injured individual; 2) the duty was breached by the employer; 3) an injury occurred; and 4) the breach of duty was the proximate cause of the injury. The cost of workers’ compensation insurance is determined based on a business’ risk classification rate and its individual payroll. This is where Regnier Insurance can be an invaluable partner. We help our policyholders contain the costs associated with workplace injury or illness through our Claims Management, Managed Care Services, and Loss Control. To learn more about Workers' Comp and how to get a free personalized quote, send us an e-mail at info@regnierinsurance.com or call us at 512-448-9928. |
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