Before I attended SES San Jose, I went to Napa Valley for a couple days to do some wine tasting and check out their many vineyards. While I was there, I was pleasantly surprised to see that a few wineries were starting to use social media for marketing and branding. I also noticed that the wineries that were tapped into social media marketing seemed to be the nicest and had the best customer service.
I didn’t do much research before heading to Napa, so my strategy involved driving down the road while my boyfriend pulled up Yelp reviews of nearby wineries on his iPhone (this resulted in a lot of sudden blurts of “Turnrighthere!” and me going “Aaghghhhhh” as I abruptly yanked the steering wheel to make the turn in time). When we’d come across a winery with decent reviews, we’d stop. It proved to be a very web 2.0-y way to do wine tasting, as we relied entirely on user reviews to determine where we’d go.
I thought I’d highlight the three most memorable wineries from our trip. These wineries all had the same things in common:
- They provided excellent and friendly customer service
- They were very casual, warm and inviting
- They were somewhat social media savvy and were utilizing SMM to some degree
I’m not sure whether the friendlier businesses are more likely to adopt social media marketing or if it’s vice versa (they’re friendlier because they’re marketing socially and need to “be nice”), but either way I definitely noticed a strong correlation. In comparison, at one winery I went to the employee bitched about how she doesn’t understand Twitter and complained about Twitter and Facebook to other tasters while steadfastly ignoring me and my empty wine glass. Hmm, not understanding the appeal of social media while simultaneously providing poor customer service? Methinks you just answered your own question!
Anyway, here are 3 examples of wineries that utilized social media for marketing, branding and customer service.
St. Supery Vineyards
We stopped at St. Supery after checking out their mostly positive Yelp reviews and were really impressed with their wine and their friendly employees. I bought a couple bottles and signed up for their wine club. (Yo Chris, can I expense that? I am blogging about it, after all… ;P)
Twitter Presence
Before our trip Jason had come across the Twitter profile of Rick Bakas, who is the Director of Social Media for St. Supery Vineyards. Rick has mentioned via Twitter that if you tweet at him and mention that you’re going to be visiting St. Supery, he’ll give you a complimentary private tour.
Rick has nearly 30,000 followers, which allows him to leverage his large audience and retweet information from St. Supery’s Twitter account and get the messaging out to more than the winery’s 2,300 followers. The winery itself does a good job with their Twitter account, having uploaded a pretty background image and tweeting a wide range of things (wine updates, information about their winery, great food pairings, responding to followers and engaging with their audience, etc).
Facebook Presence
St. Supery has a nice Facebook page set up and has so far attracted nearly 2,000 fans. They update the page with recipes and wine pairings, videos, and invitations to their fans to come visit them. On their page is a note that says “Visit our tasting room and mention you saw us on FB or Twitter. We’ll give you and a guest a complimentary tasting.”
Hagafen Cellars
We actually came across Hagafen after reading a Yelp review for a nearby winery that suggested people go to Hagafen instead because it’s much better and friendlier (ouch; you can’t ask for better publicity than that). We checked out the winery and were blown away by the hospitality and casual yet warm environment. They gave us lots of tastings and even let us taste a couple wines that weren’t on the list, and they were one of only a few wineries that refunded the tasting fees when we bought some bottles of wine. We were also given a couple of complimentary wine glasses as a thank you for stopping by.
As for their social media presence, well, I’ll let this picture speak for itself:
Free wifi AND they embrace social media marketing? I think I’m in heaven! Their Yelp reviews are mostly positive, and they definitely pay attention to their Yelp profile as they constantly update it with announcements and deals:
Twitter Presence
Hagafen has a Twitter profile, and although they currently only have about 50 followers, it’s nice to see them diving into a new marketing medium and updating constantly. They offer free tastings to their Twitter followers and post updates about the winery and share news and publicity. I’d like to see a more personalized Twitter background and some more engagement with their followers, and maybe some less commercial tweets mixed in among their promotions, but I get that they’re still learning and applaud them for making an attempt.
Facebook Presence
Like their Twitter profile, Hagafen’s Facebook page exists but is a bit anemic. They have nearly 50 fans and have updated the page with images and company information, but there’s certainly some room for improvement. Still, considering they don’t have a Director of Social Media like St. Supery to oversee their social media marketing, I’d say that they’re off to a good start for a mom and pop, small family-owned winery.
Castello di Amorosa
When looking for possible wine tours, we came across a website that listed Castello di Amorosa as a must-see so we booked a wine tour because castles of any variety (stone, brick, bouncy, etc) are awesome. The website did not disappoint:
The wine tour was highly entertaining and the castle is pretty incredible. It took 14 years to construct and was completed a few years ago. Our tour guide, Joe, was very amusing and cheesily charming.
Twitter Presence
Castello has a Twitter profile, but it’s the weakest of the three by far. They’re not following anyone and have only 20 followers, and so far they’ve only updated their profile with tweeted pics of the castle.
With such a beautiful property and interesting backstory, I’m sure they have plenty of great things to tweet about and share, so I think their Twitter profile has huge potential for success.
Facebook Presence
Swing and a miss here; I wasn’t able to find a Facebook page set up. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to set one up, so hopefully they’ll put one together in the near future.
Yelp Presence
Castello’s main strength is their Yelp page — at the end of the tour, after having charmed and entertained us for the past couple hours, Joe the tour guide encouraged us all to go on Yelp and review the tour and the winery. He said that the vineyard’s owner, Dario Sattui, reads the Yelp reviews every day. I loved how Joe gave a positive customer service experience and leveraged the great mood he helped create by asking us to review the winery on Yelp. Clearly this tactic is paying off — the winery has twice the reviews of other wineries we checked out and has retained a solid 4-star rating. Also, the fact that the owner checks the reviews on a regular basis goes to show that Castello understands the power and importance of user generated content and reputation management.
Like Hagafen, they also update their Yelp profile with specials and deals:
Closing Thoughts
I probably visited about a dozen or so wineries, but the above three stood out to me because they thought outside the realm of the traditional wine tasting experience and incorporated new marketing strategies. Not only is this appealing to younger generations who are being raised on the Internet, web 2.0 and social media, it also indicates the strong relationship between social media marketing and customer service/friendliness. These three wineries were by far the nicest and friendliest, and they also were the three with the strongest grasp of social media marketing. Although their strategies aren’t perfect and they still have quite a bit to learn, I think they’re doing a great job of standing out among the competition and using the Internet to grow their fanbase and strengthen their branding. And that, folks, is how you experience wine tasting in Napa Valley the social media way.
And you can even find other SEO's lurking around St. Supery. That has to make them tops!
I know! It's the place to go for SEO networking.
Hey Nate!
Rebecca told me she saw you – so cool (and what a small world!)
Cool post! Also, Murphy Goode recently had a contest where they hired a blogger based on videos and fan voting. I think they are also active in the same social media channels, http://www.murphygoodewinery.com/, but then that's Sonoma county.
You should've tried some of the poorly rated ones too to see if they were getting hosed by Yelp reviewers. The worst that would have happened is a hangover!
Nice post – looks like it was a fun time. Regarding this part:
–"Rick has mentioned via Twitter that if you tweet at him and mention that you’re going to be visiting St. Supery, he’ll give you a complimentary private tour."
Did you tweet him? And if so, did he give you a tour?
Jason had mentioned that he follows a guy who does marketing for a winery, but we didn't realize he worked for St. Supery until after we had visited it.
So, I assume you're going to do Part 2 in Oregon Wine Country around the time of SearchFest 2010?
When you come back to the Okanagan in the spring I'll take you guys on a wine tour. There are soooo many amazing wineries here!
I'll happily take you up on that offer!
Great publicity for the 3 highlighted wineries, esp with coverage on 10e20.
If anything, it's proof for great ROI (and foresight on their part) on the social media spend.
Great if you went to Supery and others but how long will the product stick with you after you leave?
Well I signed up for St. Supery's wine club so I'll be a repeat customer. I've already recommended the Castello wine tour to my family and friends the next time they're in Napa, and I'm probably more likely to buy all three wineries' wines if I see them at the store.
This is an excellent article, and a valuable contribution to online marketers in the wine industry. Thanks for sharing!
One major point for all businesses to consider when forming a social media strategy – you don't have to do all the heavy lifting yourselves (e.g. build a fan base or follower count of 30,000+). Instead, motivate your customers to share their positive experiences in their social networking circles. Therein lies the true benefit of SM.
Case in point: A simple sign
… posted in Hagafen Cellars was enough to generate positive Yelp reviews, and brought in some wine tasters.
Thanks again for the nice write-up,
Rick Breslin
Drive Thru Interactive
Definitely agree with you — the social media signs were enough to pique my interest and stay memorable, and I'm sure it did the same for other young people/social media savvy folks.
Great idea Todd! We've got some special wineries in the region.
Great post…and nice to have the new company in the SM world with Hagafen and Castello di Amorosa …other (earlier, formidable) pioneers: Twisted Oak Winery, Hahn Estates…
So I, myself, am a wine taster as well. Been looking around for new types that I havent come across or have heard of before, and I thought I'd pass this along to see what you thought about JM Fonseca Twin Vines. Its a new wine, well, at least I havent heard of it in the past. Wanted to know if you've heard of it, and if you have and have tried it, what you thought about it. The URL is too messy to put up so I shortened it down.
http://tinyurl.com/meko65
Holy music, Batman!
Thank you for the kind words about our tasting room and social media presence. I would like to point out that our fan page is separate from our main FB account page–which has close to 200 friends, some of which are in the industry (as you will find with just about every winery's friends) but most of whom are consumers who friended us as a result of tasting our wines in the tasting room or at a trade show or because of the various digital breadcrumbing we do (additions to sig lines, mentions in articles, etc.). I think you'll find that for a large enough business–one where job categorization and diversification are possible–keeping up a clear brand presence that is smoothly interacting with consumers and encouraging exactly the kinds of re-tweets and status updates and comments mentioned above is a task that is easily added into the company's management and customer service structures. However, for a small winery–there are TWO of us plus a two-day bookkeeper in our back office–creating the more robust presence that social media really require is tough. Twitter in particular is so in-the-moment that to keep our authenticity (meaning, avoiding pure selling tweets) and also keep up a steady flow of interesting, non-repetitive tweets is simply not that easy. A small business requires people who can do ten things at once, and there is never enough time to do everything as well as we would like in the ideal. We strive to keep our interactions with consumers as relaxed and un-pressured as possible so that the experience of tasting our wines is not one fraught with anxiety or ambivalence, as it is in so many tasting rooms. If that means our social networking is not as robust as it could be, we will take that as a trade-off because it still allows us to put our emphasis where we think it matters most: getting consumers to taste and enjoy our wines and want to bring that experience back home with them. I understand how social media can allow for that extension, but as with many of the other marketing channels we use, the pragmatics of the size of our company become a major factor.
Josh Stein
Brands Manager and Assistant Winemaker
Hagafen Cellars
"We strive to keep our interactions with consumers as relaxed and un-pressured as possible…"
You definitely achieved that when I visited. I like how you talk about making sacrifices and focusing on what's more important — you have a nice, small social media presence but work with the time and staff that you have and are willing to sacrifice a huge social media account in order to provide a solid in-person experience and run your business smoothly. I totally respect and admire that!
Nice to see some places that "get it"!
Thanks for the the post – sounds like a great trip. Its great to see the wineries using social media to relate and connect with their target audience. As a business social media can provide a platform for opening discussions, and sharing your views and options. In this way social media sits really well with wine tasting allowing you to discuss and share your favorite wines with other interested parties.
I totally agree, Mandy!
Cool – been a few years since we were in the Nape Valley. Actually, it was in the days when decent Napa Valley Cabernet was still affordable.
One of my favorite places ever and it was interesting to read how some of the wineries are embracing social marketing.
Nice report – thanks!
Cool article! Well, I think that Social Media is a many-sided marketing tool which is available to help businessmen to achieve their target audience.
hey test the water some work some dont. People get the idea that when you promote a blog you need to be on all social sites just do the ones that work best for you and build up from there.
wow who would have that that wine and social media went together
They go together like bacon and anything that would taste better with bacon.
Great to read a review of wineries using social media by someone outside of the wine industry. Next time, tweet out that you are coming to Sonoma County and see what happens.
That's a nice way to make a review!
I did like it!