Marketing is one of the strongest ways in which wineries, brands, and producers build awareness and also sell more of their wines. Well, in any industry for that matter, marketing has ruled the art of awareness and selling. For as long as we can remember, marketing has consisted of TV adverts, newspaper adverts, magazine adverts, and for the past few years, social media awareness has also become a major way to market your wines successfully.

However, with technology expanding day by day, every year comes with new trends that users end up getting attracted to and persuaded by in terms of marketing. What this means is that users will end up purchasing products and gaining & spreading awareness through new platforms and new marketing strategies put in by brands. As we bid 2019 goodbye, we’re going to be welcoming 2020 with a plethora of different technologically advanced marketing tactics.

So if you’re looking to have a successful marketing strategy to boost your brand, here are 5 wine marketing trends to look out for in 2020.

1. Customer experience

According to Marketing Insider Group, 2020 will be the year of the customer. It’s been a long stretch of marketing tactics, trying to convince people to buy your wines and spirits, or work with your brand. However, 2020 is going to see a huge shift in that sector. Wine marketing isn’t only going to be about getting consumers to grab your wine off the shelves, or building consumer awareness - instead, it’s going to be the year of offering customers an experience to keep them coming back for more.

With the internet being such a huge part of everyone’s world, customers aren’t going to sit down and wait for you to tell them how great your wines are. Instead, they’re set to doing their own research and making their opinions based on that. However, if you do offer customers an experience, something that they can engage in, and something that will keep them hooked onto your brand - then you’ve hit the right marketing spot. 73% of people say that customer experience plays an important part in their buying decisions (PWC.com). 

Let’s look at this from the customer’s perspective. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes, and think of it this way - if you want to pick up a bottle of wine, would you pick the one that you’ve seen adverts about? Or would you go for the brand that offers in-store tastings, and packaging deals, and other sorts of experiences for you as a customer. Of course, the latter. So it’s all going to be about what you as a brand can offer the customer, and the experiences they can take away from you.

2. Personalization

Over the years, technology has played a huge part in helping with the advancement of personalization - which is something that people are always looking for. In fact, a study conducted by Epsilon states that ‘80% of respondents indicating they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences and 90% indicating that they find personalization appealing’. 

Personalization helps your customers to connect with your brand. For example, remember the “Share a Coke” campaign that Coca-Cola started in 2014? It took off immensely, and one of the main reasons for this was because of the personalization that Coca-Cola offered their customers by replacing its logo on 20-ounce bottles with 250 of the most popular American names. This urged consumers to go ahead and find their names on the bottles, which created a social media craze with the hashtag #Shareacoke. Once that took off, Coca-Cola then expanded the campaign from 250 names to a 1000 names. Currently, Coca-Cola’s online store lets you customize your names on their bottles, which once again, has proven to be a huge success for the company.

[Share a Coke campaign]

Similarly, offering customers something personalized with your wines can help in building awareness of your brand. Some of the things you can do to give your customer a personalized feel is:

• Offer personalized wine bottle labels where consumers can customize the labels on wine bottles that they purchase. 

• Offer a customized blend if it fits in your budget and you have the resources available. 

• Offer customized gift baskets for people looking to give your wines as a present. For example, you can have a bunch of food pairings that go with your wine, which you can offer the customer while they’re creating their hamper.

The things will help in marketing your wines as consumers will raise awareness on social media, and within themselves - giving your brand a larger reach. 

3. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

People love interactive content, especially when they have everything visualized in front of them. People are looking to have everything right in front of them these days, as it makes things much easier. Moreover, if that particular VR or AR feature provides information and shopping options that the customer is looking for, then you’ve hit a homerun with your marketing features. 

For example the LOGO app. The LOGO app is a wine database app for consumers. So how it works is, you can scan the label of the wines and an image comes out, and the winemaker explains the wine to you. There’s also a tech sheet included which is accessible just by a click.  Along with that, videos of the winery and chatting with the winemaker will also pop up. The LOGO app also has our faces pop up and talk about the wine - and eventually we’ll have all winemakers do it. It’s a place for both consumers and winemakers to find out everything about a particular wine, along with videos of the respective wineries - which also show the process of wine making. It’s also a good way to market your wines as consumers will be able to interact with your winemaker, and be able to find out all about the wine they want. 

Read more about the LOGO app

4. Voice Search

According to a survey conducted by PwC, 61% of those aged 25–64 who already use a voice device and intend to use voice search more and more in the near future. 

Once again, this boils down to the simplicity of things and how people want things to be easier as time passes by. Consumers are already using voice search to look for the things they want, and this is only going to increase in 2020. For example, if a consumer is looking for a wine online and they say “Show me wines from Bordeaux”, and your wine is one of the first to pop up, then the consumer is going to be inclined to grab a hold of your wine.

So, a good way to get your brand placed in the ‘voice search’ region is by strengthening the SEO of your website and social feeds. This will make your brand build awareness. 

Here’s an easy way to start strengthening your website’s SEO

Find out what consumers are searching for that is somewhat similar to your brand so you know what words to use to optimize your website. 

Once you’ve done your research and found out the keywords to use, put them in the source of your website.

So for example, if you have a Riesling which is $9.99 and you’re looking to get that off your website and store racks, then make sure your keywords look something like “Rieslings under $10” or “wines under $10”, “white wines under $10” and things of that sort, that the consumer is most likely to voice search for. Because with voice search, they’re most likely going to go with the first few options that are presented to them. 

Have your websites submitted in online directories so it’s easy to pull out when people search for a product

Make sure your sitemap is getting crawled

All in all, you have to make sure that your website is search optimization friendly, where it pops up in front of the consumer as they use voice search to find what they’re looking for.

5. New communication channels

For as long as you can think of, we’ve all been using emails for our businesses. Whether it’s a newsletter, or any sort of ‘help’ communication - emails have been the best way to reach out to someone if you’re looking for something. However, this is going to change. People are going to prefer to use other communication channels such as chatbots, and as they connect with Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and Whatsapp - it will become even easier for customers to use. So of course, it’s not going to be ‘bye bye email’, but it’s definitely going to be ‘I’ll see you a little less email’.

[USA Wine Ratings Chatbot via Engati]

If you’re looking to implement chatbots to expand your wine marketing, the following are a few you can try your hands on:

• ManyChat

• MobileMonkey

• Intercom

• Engati

In the end, 2020 wine marketing is all going to boil down to making it easier for consumers to be able to access your wines.