Marketing is an essential tool for any wine brand that wants to both keep its customers and win new ones – if you don’t tell people how great your brand is, another brand will tell them how great theirs is.
Instagram gets better engagement than any marketing platform, and is easy to succeed at for those in the know.
Jordan Winery, Blossom Hill, and Frog’s Leap Winery are three brands that are very much in the insta-know and this is what they have to teach you.
Recommended related reading: Top 20+ Best Instagram Wine Accounts
[/content_box]Jordan Winery: Getting the right blend with its video content
Marketing has to strike a fine balance between selling the benefits of a product, and providing valuable content – customers tend not to appreciate the hard sell. California wine brand Jordan Winery gets the blend of product benefit and content value on its Instagram account just right, and it does this by publishing a variety of videos.
For example, Jordan Winery’s IGTV has a video where the founder, John Jordan, talks about how his mom is redecorating the winery’s bathroom, showing the brand’s human side – a marketing engagement tactic that has real legs with millennial customers.
Scroll down to December 2018 and you’ll find a brilliant take on Christmas content, with a funny visit from Santa being used to plug one of brand’s USPs – that it’s eco-friendly.
You also get a clip of Jordan Winery’s Marketing Director, Lisa Mattson, announcing the brand’s November photo contest winner.
Find Jordan Winery on Instagram.
While many brands treat Instagram as a marketing tool first and social platform second, Jordan Winery approach it the other way round. As a result, Jordan Winery’s Instagram account creates a real connection with its followers, giving it real legs (and reach).
Blossom Hill: Employing targeted hashtags to get max exposure
Putting your brand in front of more people is crucial in marketing – you have to get your message out there, or all your content will go to waste.
Hashtags are one of the simplest ways of putting your brand in front of the right people at the right time, and it’s also a great way to jump on trends and current events.
UK wine brand Blossom Hill appreciates the value of hashtags and uses them to great effect on its Instagram account.
Blossom Hill is an expert at engaging with topics while they’re hot, often uploading a quick post to Instagram that includes targeted hashtags. A perfect example is its Galentine’s Day campaign. Galentine’s Day started life as an episode on U.S. TV show Parks and Recreation, where character Leslie Knope hosts Galentine’s Day party for her female friends the day before Valentine’s Day.
On 13 February 2019, Blossom Hill published a post on Instagram with the hashtags #GalentinesDay, #TogetherLetsBlossom, #DrinkPink, and #WineWednesday. Doing this associated Blossom Hill with a hashtag with over 500,000 posts, giving its marketing a huge reach boost to spread the brand’s name.
Find Blossom Hill Winery on Instagram.
Galentine’s Day has moved beyond the small screen and become an annual event for “ladies celebrating ladies”, and it’s great to see the brand tapping into this zeitgeist.
Shying away from hashtags is a mistake many companies make when marketing their brand on Instagram. By having an awareness of the hot times for topics, Blossom Hill is able to expertly exploit the marketing power of Instagram and get access to people it may not normally reach.
Frog’s Leap Winery: Using UGC for more engaging marketing
Engagement is one of the key metrics of any marketing campaign, and Instagram has the best engagement rates of any social media platform.
User-generated content not only gets great user engagement, it also takes some of the leg work out of your marketing. U.S. brand Frog’s Leap Winery understands this and uses UGC (User Generated Content) expertly on its Instagram account.
Frog’s Leap Winery regularly shares content from its followers and customers on its Instagram account. The wine brand also publishes UGC from other wine brands, helping it to build a community within its industry.
Each time Frog’s Leap Winery uploads user content it tags the author to give them a shout-out. Giving users a shout-out gives them an incentive to share the post with their own followers, effectively turning them into micro-influencers and brand ambassadors.
Images posted on Instagram get 23% more engagement than those uploaded to Facebook, while UGC gets 28% more engagement than brand posts.
Some brands use their social channels as a dumping ground for their own content, ignoring the people that make their accounts a valuable marketing tool – their users. By making UGC a vital part of its Instagram strategy, Frog’s Leap Winery gives its followers what they want and saves itself some of the legwork of creating its own content.
In a perfect word your brand wouldn’t need Instagram marketing — your customers would simply know your company provides the best wine around. But life’s not perfect. Marketing exists to help brands both big and small stay in touch with their existing customers and build relationships with new ones – if you get it right.
Instagram is the most engaged platform for marketing and it’s easy to excel at it – for brands who know the tricks of the trade. Now you know which Instagram marketing tactics have legs, head back to your account and start running some posts!
Recommended related reading: 2018 Top 40+ Wine Influencers: Who to Follow on Social Media?
This Guest Post was Written by Kayleigh Alexandra exclusively for Social Vignerons.
Kayleigh Alexandra is a writer for Writer zone and Micro Startups, your online destination for everything startup. We’re dedicated to spreading the word about hard-working solopreneurs and SMEs making waves in the business world. Visit the blog for your latest dose of startup, entrepreneur, and charity insights from top experts around the globe @getmicrostarted.
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