Word of Mouth for a Winery

Case Study: Tehuacana Creek Vineyards, Waco, Texas
Challenge: Create greater awareness in the surrounding communities, generating increased traffic to the tasting room.
Idea Wanted: New ways to generate word-of-mouth about the winery.
The Background: Tehuacana (Tuh-waw'-cun-uh) Creek Vineyards is a small, family-owned boutique winery located a couple of miles outside of Waco, Texas. The owners are a Doctor and his wife; she is the vineyard manager, he is the winemaker. They planted their first vines in 1997 and built a winery and tasting room this year so that they could begin selling their wines. Their biggest frustration is hearing: "I had no idea there was a winery in Waco."

Attempts to market the business led to a wasted effort in the local Travel Host magazine, investing $1500 for a $35 return. The winery has built an email list with 1000 names, which they use to announce new products and promote events. The owners also have some association with the local chapter of the Wine Society of Texas. There is also a large, local wine festival in October, which attracts close to 1200 people.

The TCV tasting room is open from 1-5pm on Fridays and 11am-6pm on Saturdays. Because of the owners' religious convictions, the winery is closed on Sundays. The goal is double the traffic to the winery on Saturdays.

Advice: TCV has some solid assets in place: 1000 name email list, relationship with local Wine Society, and a Local Wine Festival. The key is to leverage those assets into a word of mouth campaign that will cause some conversation within the local community.

The owners also need to leverage the uniqueness of their business into more conversation through local media outlets and civic organizations. TCV is the only winery in Waco, and it can make for a fun and unique afternoon, even for locals.

Our Ideas:
1. Launch a referral campaign using the email list already in place. Email a coupon to the email list worth a certain percentage off the first purchase from the TCV tasting room, then ask everyone on the email list to forward the coupon on to 10 friends. The friends receive the discount too when they use the coupon in the tasting room.
But add another twist: The coupon is also a registration slip for the original forwarder. When the friend brings the coupon into the tasting room, the original forwarder's name is signed to the coupon. Everyone who refers X number friends to the tasting room automatically receives a gift (case of wine, logo shirt, etc.)

2. Email the current list with a graphic of a "Charter Member" membership card and hold a special Charter Members Party in the Fall, featuring wine and entertainment. Include a guest pass to bring another couple.

3. Contact the Wine Society and offer to host an event at the winery at cost.

4. Offer to do a wine column in one of the local community publications. There are two in Waco, The Wacoan and Waco Today.

5. Host a Business After Hours event for the Waco Chamber of Commerce. Or just join the chamber and conduct a ribbon cutting. The Chamber will publicize the event for you and do a write up in the quarterly chamber publication.

6. Contact the local morning talk radio host and invite him out to the winery. Offer to do a weekly wine tip for him.

7. Secure a spot at the Wine Festival and offer sample shots of your wine, pass out flyers with tasting room hours and a map to the tasting room.

The Lesson:
Many times businesses have several assets with easy access that are just not being fully utilized. Look at new ways of utilizing assets like an email list.

Local clubs and civic organizations are always looking for speakers and things to talk about. If you have a unique product or service, or you are making a visible impact on the growth of the community, make connections through social groups and organizations like your local chamber.

If you have more advice, please comment below.
Want your free marketing idea? Fill out this form and submit.For more small business marketing advice, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot. Our website is: http://www.themarketingspot.com/

Note: Our next post on The Idea Spot will be Thursday, September 6th. (Vacation)

Welcome Inc. Readers

Many of you are visiting this blog for the first time because The Idea Spot was recently featured in an online article at Inc.com.

First, if you want a free idea, please go to the online form at our company website and submit a request. We have received many requests during the past week, so we cannot guarantee that every submission will receive an idea. We can usually only post one case study per week. Those requests we cannot feature on the blog, will usually receive at least an email reply with some ideas..

Here's how the process works: Our team at The Marketing Spot will review request forms submitted and choose one for a case study. We will then most likely contact the business to ask a few more in-depth questions. Each Wednesday morning we then lock ourselves in the Idea Vault and brainstorm ideas for the request. We then turn those ideas into a report and develop a case study, which is then posted on The Idea Spot.

My name is Jay Ehret and I founded The Marketing Spot in October of 2001 to work specifically with locally owned medium-sized and small businesses. I have developed a marketing model that I call the 4-Spot marketing process featured here in this post on our other blog: The Marketing Spot.

The Marketing Spot is a marketing consulting firm in Waco, Texas. We offer three different services: We are a marketing director for hire by contract and handle complete marketing functions for companies that need more than just advice, we offer marketing coaching for smaller businesses that want to market more effectively but don't have the need for a full-time marketing director, and we conduct seminars and online learning for small and micro businesses.

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Business Card Mistakes

This is not the business card blog, but Seth Godin recently had some thoughts on business cards in his blog. The subject is worth revisting.

Seth cautions:

"Don't buy those color business cards with your face on them."

As stated in an earlier post, I disagree. I believe your should have your picture on the card. I think Seth is trying to avoid the "cheese" factor, and you should too. After all we put our picture on the website (Seth has a picture of the top half of his bald head) why would we want to avoid putting a picture on a business card.

Just have your picture professionally done and avoice the cheese factor.

For a free marketing idea for your business, fill out this form at our website: Idea Request
For more small business marketing advice check out our other blog: The Marketing Spot

Advertising a Seminar

Case Study: The Research Coaches, Chicago
Challenge: Increase attendance at upcoming live seminars in October
Idea Wanted: Creative, hopefully free, ways to advertise the event.

The Background: A successful research firm has branched off into a research coaching firm and is holding two live seminars in October. Most of the budget has been used for the venue and an email campaign of 25,000 emails being sent to businesses in the Chicago area.

The seminars are titled: "Know Your Customer" and presented by Ed Erickson, owner of the company. Attendees will learn segmentation, how to identify their customers, and what their customers want. The promotional material promises that the seminar "...will provide you with no-nonsense practical tools to better understand and serve customers," and that you can take what you learn in the morning "...to increase sales and profits by the end of the day."

The targets for the campaign are:

• Small to mid-sized business owners, managers, marketers
• Entrepreneurs planning to start a new business
• Consultants who serve the small business community

Advice: After reviewing some promotional materials for the seminar, we felt that publicity was not the only thing needed to attract attendees to the seminar. We felt the four page promotional brochure needed to be condensed and needed to have more impact.

With little or no budget left to advertise the seminar, what we are really talking about here is public relations: getting free publicity. The way to get free publicity is to offer something of value to get the free publicity you want. Distribute a press release with some valuable information to small businesses.

Our Ideas:
1. Distribute a press release to all area media outlets and local publications. This press release will feature "How to leverage sales data into new customers" or valuable information such as a "Top five questions to answer about your customers." At the end of the press release, promote the Research Coaches website and upcoming seminar. Without valuable information, a press release is unlikely to get publicity. Use this press release generator tool to format your press release.

2. Distribute the press release through free internet press release sites. Here is a list of free sites. Media outlets often search the internet for story ideas and articles. In addition, Chicago is a huge metropolitan area and business owners that might be interested in this seminar would have a propensity to spend time on the internet searching for ideas.

3. Launch a new blog titled "Customer Mining" or a title that relates to a common theme from the seminar. Have daily or frequent entries to the blog demonstrating authority on the subject. Don't be afraid to give away some of the material from the seminar. With each blog entry, countdown to the next seminar and provide a registration link. You can also make reference to the blog in your press release. Blogs are free to create, but take time and effort to maintain.

4. Re-work the promotional material for the seminars. We didn't feel it had a compelling call to action or exciting visuals. One visual we brainstormed was to use an enormous sea of people with a few, select people glowing in the crowd. The caption is "Can you see your customer? Yes you can."

We also recommend making the titles of the sessions more dynamic, and even possibly renaming the seminar from "Know Your Customer" to "Find Your Customer"

The Lesson:
Free advertising is about getting publicity that you can't pay for. This means the information you offer has to be of value to the recipients. Don't just send press releases. Think of the value angle and turn your press release into a news story.

The other key component to your press release is your authority. Why do you deserve publicity on this subject? Anything you can do to increase your authority, increases the value of your press release. Are you president of a related organization? Have you been recognized for your expertise in this field? If you have a history (such as the blog we recommended) of being an authority on this subject, you are more likely to get some media play from your press release.

If you have any other suggestions, please comment below.

Want your free marketing idea? Fill out this form and submit.
For more small business marketing advice, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot
Our website is: http://www.themarketingspot.com/

More on Business Cards

Then of course, there is the contrarian approach to business cards, where you do none of what is described in our previous entry on business cards, yet you achieve greater impact.

Exhibit A: John Moore, Brand Autopsy









Know of any other great business cards? Send them to us.

Business Cards

Marketing Idea: Maximize the marketing potential of your business cards.

Here is some useful advice from Karen Saunders' blog about business cards.

1. Choose some cover stock with some meat (thickness).
2. Create a focal point to attract the reader's eye.
3. Have a strong, clear logo.
4. Don't include too much text, use white space for balance.
5. Use a highlight color sparingly, don't overdo it.
6. Make sure the color is appropriate for your business type.
7. Don't use more than two different fonts on your card.
Thanks Karen!

More Tips: Business cards are a great way to market your small business and an inexpensive way to gain a competitive advantage. Your business card says a lot about you to potential customers. It's the first message that communicates how you take care of your business.

8. Put your picture on the card, don't be a faceless company.
9. Use both sides of the card so you can say more about your business.
10. Print your mission on the card, or say something important about what you do.

Sounds like a lot to fit on a little business card, which is why you should use both sides of the card. This can get expensive if you are using a local printer, so consider using an online printer.

Two printers that offer reasonably priced, quality business cards are:
VistaPrint
48 Hour Print

With each of these you can upload your logo and picture and create a card. You can also use PhotoShop or another graphics program that allows you create a pdf file of your card to upload. You can get 500 quality business cards printed on both sides for under $60.

Now that's cheap marketing!

To get your free marketing idea, fill out this form and submit.
For small business marketing advice and musings, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot

To contact us, see our website: www.themarketingspot.com

Branding a Bakery

Case Study: Independent, one woman bakery in Central Texas.
Challenge: Create a brand that will give the business an identity.
Idea Wanted: Brand the business so that it gets more business.

The Background: This small, independent bakery has been in business for four years. It is named for, and run by, the owner; a young Italian woman who came to the states to go to school and ended up starting a business.

She gets the largest slice of her business from making wedding and special occasion cakes, although she also bakes gourmet cookies and pastries.

Her frustration is, that while she has a core of loyal customers, she is still not widely known in the community and not many people know exactly what she does. Her lone effort to market herself is through an email list she compiles from customers who come into her store.

Advice: Create a brand for the bakery by first developing a brand promise and then a signature slogan that crystalizes the image of the business for consumers.

To do this we took the business through our brand promise development process:

• First, identify the top three values under which you operate your company. Her top three values were: family, honesty, passion.
• Second, develop a mission (not a mission statement) for the business. Her mission was to heighten the experience of any event where her cakes were served.
• Third, create a vision of the business when it fulfills that mission. Her vision was to be the baker of choice for special occasions in Central Texas.
• Fourth, write the brand promise based on your values, your mission and your vision

After the brand promise is developed, craft a signature from the brand promise that vividly communicates the brand to potential customers.

Our Ideas:
1. Brand Promise: To create memorable cakes for events that people will remember and talk about long after the event is over.
2. Signature: "Creating Cakes that Create Memories"

The Lesson:
Brands need to be built on the truth. There is nothing more true than your values, because they are what they are. Take the time to articulate your mission (your purpose for being in business) and your vision (the eventual destination of your dream). Going through this process guarantees that you end up with a true brand, not one concocted by a marketing spinmeister.

You will also find that if you are willing to do the tough thinking, it's actually easy to build a brand about which customers can become excited. Your dreams are big and exciting and so is your brand. Your big, exciting brand will also be sustainable because it was founded on the truth.

To get your free marketing idea, fill out this form and submit.

For small business marketing advice and musings, check out our other blog: The Marketing Spot.

To contact us, see our website: http://www.themarketingspot.com/