Wine Marketing Guide: 17 Easy Steps to Selling Your Wine with Internet Marketing

WINE MARKETING GUIDE

17 Easy Steps to Selling Your Wine with Internet

Marketing

GABRIELA ANTUNES

http://www.canelamarketing.com/

https://twitter.com/canelamkting

https://www.facebook.com/canelamarketing/



17 EASY STEPS TO SELLING YOUR WINE WITH INTERNET MARKETING | 2

Table of Contents

1. Customers Don’t Care About You ...3 2. Copywriting is Not “Writing” ...4

3. Do You Dream About Your Ideal Customer? ...5 4. You’re in the Business of Solving Problems...6

5. Seducing Customers with Benefits...7 6. Your Prospect’s Purchasing Path ...8

7. The Minimum Viable Offer...9 8. Blog to Win Business ...10

9. Giving Your Web Copy the ‘Size 14 Fire Engine Red High Top Michael Jordan Basketball Shoes’ Remedy...11

10. An Easy Brain Hack to Overcome Copy Block ...12 11. Clear vs Clever Copy...13

12. How to be a Snob. Or a Jerk...14 13. The Tesla Guide to Call-to-Action’s...15

14. Selling Made Me Sick...16 15. Make it Easy to Say Yes...17

16. The ‘Dollar Bill’ Hack for Cold Emails...18 17. The Ego vs Value Check...19

About...20



1. Customers Don’t Care About You

I know it sounds harsh. You have talents and skills. You were put on this earth with special gifts to share so you started a business. Maybe you’ve spent months developing a new feature or service offerings. You sell wine, so that’s what you need to write about. Right? No. The hard truth is that nobody is interested in you, your company, or your wine. Why not? People are only interested in themselves. To sell your wine, you need to address your prospective customer’s self-interest. Your business exists to help your customer:

● save time ● reduce stress ● make more money ● work less and have more leisure time ● be happier, healthier, more productive

The question is, how do you convey this in your web copy? One quick way to clean your copy is to check for pronouns that convey, I’m all about me and replace them with pronouns that say I’m all about you. I/We/Our says I’m all about me. They say I can’t be trusted. To make your copy convey trustworthiness, use You/You’re/Your. You/You’re/Your says I’m all about you.



2. Copywriting is Not “Writing” You were lied to. Your grade school teachers told you great writing was creative and grammatically sound. So you believed them. You also believed you’d learn copywriting after becoming a grammar ninja. Right? This is a self-sabotaging story. You don’t have to be a talented writer to compose a great headline, blog post, or web copy. Take the idea of crafting copy according to the Chicago Manual of Style out of your mind entirely. The point of copywriting is connecting with people. But somehow we are attracted to creativity and cleverness. Get away from this fuzzy thinking: 1. Write like you talk. Keep things conversational. Keep a curious mind. These are more powerful ways to connect. 2. Let go of your inner grammar ninja. Studying grammar rather than putting ourselves out there is something we do out of fear. We fear judgement from mean-spirited critics. The cool thing about judgement is that it has more to do with the other person than it has to do with us. 3. Nurture a desire to help people. Rather than cultivating your creative writer, focus on writing copy that helps solve people’s needs. Focus on writing that addresses your customer’s objections and self-interests. Your business depends on it. 4. You are human. You will never be 100% prepared to do meaningful work. Accept the grammar errors.



3. Do You Dream About Your Ideal Customer?

Imagine you’re going on a date. You’ve decided to take your date out to a fancy meal, the most well-reviewed Italian Trattoria in town. You love pasta and this place makes their pasta in-house everyday. It’s the right move. You meet your date in front of said Trattoria, greet one another, and walk inside. Your date turns to you shyly and comments, “I hope they have something other than pasta on the menu. I’m allergic to gluten.” Now what? This sounds like an amateur move, but it happens all the time. Even with businesses. They highlight features and talk about themselves without thinking about their reader. They send email blasts about reduced prices while their customer wants a painless delivery option. You can rave all day about fresh pasta, but if your date is gluten intolerant, you are wasting your time. Before you consider how you want to sell your wine, think about who you want to sell to first. What makes them tick? Keeps them up at night? Gets them motivated? If you don’t know these things, how the heck are you suppose to create content that is meaningful to your customer? How are your customers suppose to trust you? Get to know your customer like you would a date. Start a casual conversation about their weekend, ask questions about where they go for info, what they do for a living.



Get intimate but not creepy.

4. You’re in the Business of Solving Problems Yes, you sell wine. But you can’t just talk about the features of your wine, you need to address the hassles you prevent, the headaches you cure, and glitches you avoid. Addressing problems gets your prospect customer excited and makes him pay attention to the solution you offer to deal with the objection in his mind. That’s why your business exists. To do that, reformulate problems into benefits. Here’s what you do. Take out a sheet of paper, and list on one side all the objections your prospective customer might have about your wine: A. quality of product B. pricing C. delivery Then, on the other side, list ways you can resolve those objections and turn them into opportunities: A. offer a bottle of new vintage pre-market release on the house B. investing in no heachaches with toxic chemical free wine C. prevent glitches in delivery Resolving an objection from the start does more than build confidence, inspire respect, and reflect your integrity. It removes a conflict in the mind of the consumer that must be resolved in order to buy from you. It’s the real reason your business exists.



5. Seducing Customers with Benefits

So what? Remember your obnoxious adolescent self saying that? It’s been awhile. But when was the last time you implemented the so what? attitude in your copy? You have a fast cooling system in your cellar? Double doors on the North and South facing sides of your bottling room? Only 10% alcohol in your wine? Wine in a litre bottle? So what? These are features, facts about your business, about your wine. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking these features are benefits your customer is interested in. That’s a fake advantage. A real benefit addresses your customer’s real interests. Be honest about what, if anything, does your product or services provide your customer. To find real benefits, use the so what? attitude in your copy: You produce or sell a wine that has 10% alcohol and comes in a litre bottle. So what? The unique packaging sticks in the minds of your customers. So what? Customers will remember to buy your wine so you can expect to sell more wine. So what? By selling more wine, you’ll offer customers more options. So what? More options creates offerings bettered aligned for customers.



That’s a real benefit! Having more options truly interests your customers.

6. Your Prospect’s Purchasing Path Imagine you are on a journey. Travelling by foot and at the end of the path is your final destination: a waterfall. At the beginning, you are just gaining awareness of your surroundings. You stay curious, getting to know what routes and turns are available to you. Midway, you reach a fork in the road. Do you take the sunlit, dirt path to the left or the shaded, leafy path to the right? Looking at your map, taking the path to the left is shorter, so you go that way. Finally, you reach your destination and since you had taken the sunlit path, the waterfall is exactly what you need to cool off. You take a dip. Your prospect travels down a similar path to making a final purchase decision. And your content helps inform her considerations and actions. Take a look at your content. Is there a clear path that drives your visitor to click the purchase button? In most cases, prospects are still at the awareness stage or at the fork in the road. Help her along with helpful tips, hacks, and easy steps.



7. The Minimum Viable Offer I’ll admit: Coming up with the “right” mix of content offers freaks people out. How many offers are needed to convert? How much text and images should each offer have? By focusing on the “right” mix, we torment ourselves down an exhausting path. Instead, create the minimal number of content offers needed to connect and convert your prospect or a Minimal Viable Offer. The idea behind a Minimal Viable Offer to just get something up on your website. You won’t know what content has the most hits, clicks, and highest conversion rates until something literally exists in the digitalsphere. This will also eliminate the anxiety associated with creating a “right” content offer mix. Consider: Blog posts are informative and helpful in nature. They give your prospect language for a problem they are having. Naming a problem helps give you control over it, which helps to establish trust with prospects. Downloadable checklists, guidelines, and ebooks are quick, tangible take-aways that can be applied immediately. By giving a prospect instant gratification, you are making it easy for them to trust you and therefore say yes to you. Live, virtual or recorded demonstrations, a consultation, workshops, or case studies are offers that drive a prospect to call you to help them.



8. Blog to Win Business I mean, come on. To get found, drive traffic to your website, and become a trusted advisor in wine, you need to blog 3-4 posts a week. That’s a part-time job! So how do you keep going? Where do you find inspiration? What do you write about? Here are some ideas to find stories that resonate with your customers: Idea #1 The Email Cut + Paste. Do you answer the same question over email again and again? That’s a blog post:

1. Scroll your inbox archive 2. Look for patterns or frequently asked questions 3. Cut + paste

Idea #2 The Wine Room Gold Mine. If you answer questions like these in your tasting room, consider using them for blog posts: How much sangiovese is in this blend and why? Or what do you pair this wine with? What type of wine is best for a holiday party? What are you drinking this winter? Idea #3 Write about someone else in your industry. Tell a story about some of the other people in the industry. Or stories that showcase a complementary service/product. Or share a new development and how you discovered it. Focus on telling stories about subjects that will interest your prospects. Idea #4 Amazon and Yelp Data Mining. Check out what your customers say Amazon and Yelp. You’ll find gems like questions they have, comments they make on a dish, and even their opinion or recommendations on a book they read. This is fair game for blog posts.



9. Giving Your Web Copy the ‘Size 14 Fire Engine Red High Top Michael Jordan

Basketball Shoes’ Remedy Imagine: You are looking for a new pair of basketball shoes. You open a new Google tab and searched for those exact terms, basketball shoes. What do you think Google will show you? Thousands of options! What a hassle! Now plug in the specks you have in mind and run another Google search for those search terms: Size 14 Fire Engine Red High Top Michael Jordan Basketball Shoes. The second search will get you closer to your end purchase. Why? The more specific or wordier search terms made it easy for search engines to help you locate the exact pair of basketball shoes you have in mind. This is exactly what your customers do when they search for an answer to their problem. They plug in their own questions. Wordy phrases. Key terms. And they scan for those terms they searched for in your web copy. So take time to know the language and vocabulary your customers use when they ask questions. Those are the keywords for your web content.



10. An Easy Brain Hack to Overcome Copy Block

You know the feeling. It’s soooooo annoying. You’ve worked your butt off. Your new blog post is almost done. You only need to write the headline or wrap up the finishing thought. But you can’t do it. Your anxiety bubbles, your head get hot and your tummy is churning. Your inner critic is having a party: Hey, this is scary stuff. You can’t finish that. You’re not a copywriter or a blogger. No one will read this. That voice isn’t easy to ignore, is it? The thing is, that voice isn’t you. Fear isn’t you, it’s something else. An annoying companion? When your inner critic starts its, “that looks scary” rants, try this hack:

1. Check your vitals. Are you breathing hard? Is your heart racing or slowly thumping?

2. Breathe. Take long 5 second inhales and exhales. 3. Greet it. Don’t deny it’s existence. Denial makes it more

annoying, ironically. 4. Put it in its place. Say: Hey, thanks for caring, but I got this. This

work is my job, not yours. 5. Write. Focus on getting just one bit of the content you are creating,

just for that day. The title or the opening sentence or the main idea. That’s it. Just for today.



11. Clear vs Clever Copy Tone. It’s a dull word to say. But your copy is wrapped in tone. Tone is the quality of your voice, the attitude conveyed in your words. So, the question is, should you be clear or clever? The thing about tone is that it stays on webcopy forever. Through good times and bad times, people will find your copy online. The other thing about tone is that it is the crux of building trust with customers. Think of the one sarcastic email newsletter or the newcomer to your blog, who reads your sarcastic post. So, without context, how are things like snark or smart-assery accurately conveyed? Does your smart-assery convey trust? It may for a split second give someone a laugh. But all snark is basically mean. Mean doesn’t build trust. Man, it surely doesn’t convert! So, stop being a smartass. And simplify your message. Revise statements like 7 Things Your Amateur Friends Do at Tastings and convert it to 7 Habits to Avoid at Wine Tastings. Copywriting isn't an artistic endeavor, copy isn’t poetry and it surely isn’t creative writing. Copy needs to convert visitors to customers. It needs to sell. To sell, don’t be clever. Be clear.



12. How to be a Snob. Or a Jerk We all do it. We do things like jargon drop or use complicated words. These things make your reader glazed over. They also make you sound like a snob and a total jerk. Jerks don’t seduce. They aren’t persuasive. We want to be genuine. Genuine seduces. So just give it to them. S-p-e-l-l. i-t. o-u-t.

AOC = appallation of controlled origin Legs = wine streaming down the side of the wine glass Bouquet = wine snob speak for how a wine smells ABV = alcohol by volume

Or, use small words. Forget utilize/employ/and you guessed it...leverage. Instead use well, use. Using small words and spelling things out for your customer is being helpful. You want to be helpful when you write copy. Being helpful builds trust. It enchants. And it persuades your audience. It saves your readers time, energy, and keeps them on your page. That’s the point, ya?



13. The Tesla Guide to Call-to-Action’s

Imagine going 0-60 in three seconds . Your Tesla has an insane launch mode. Your body gets sucked to your seat, the banana in your hand goes ballistic, and the world zooms by. V-roooommmmmmm. It’s crazy. Because you blink and you’ve covered lots of ground without knowing it. How about your website? Imagine someone arriving at your homepage. In a hurry. She quickly scrolls up and down. Impatient. She doesn’t know who you are. She hasn’t a clue what you do. How do you get your call-to-action noticed? With bland words? Dull colors? With an insane launch mode? Haha. Heck no. Make it stop hurried people in their tracks. Make it big. Make it bright. So your customers don’t zoom by in three seconds.



14. Selling Made Me Sick Does selling make you sick? For a long time, the idea of selling made my stomach churn. Couldn't someone else do the selling for me? I thought selling required me to be pushy, to trick people to buy something. I associated selling with dishonest, sleazy behavior. But I've learned that’s total baloney. Selling requires you to:

● develop a strong interest in your customers ● create offers that solving their problems ● communicate your offer with clarity

Doesn’t that sound fun? No sleazy stuff there. To run a successful business, be yourself. Being genuinely curious is my favorite selling tool. It helps me maintain a conversational tone for writing sales content. I just simply imagine chatting over a glass of wine with someone like you, thinking of the questions you have. And then I answer them in sales copy. That's also how I write for my copywriting clients. And you know what's nuts? Since I've learned how to write copy, I enjoy selling. That's because I know I'm only helping people get want they want and need. It’s as simple as that.



15. Make it Easy to Say Yes You know the scene. You need to rid yourself of some remaining cases of sagrantino and sangiovese. You know what to do. In fact, you do it all the time without a flinch. Let’s say you pour sangiovese at your tasting. When your prospect takes a sips you say, and how about trying sagrantino, as well? Why is this the go-to method work like a charm, everytime? Let me tell you a story of a salesman who went door-to-door selling hammers. His method of selling was different. He brought a piece of glass and smashed it using the hammer, in front of a customer. Boom! Instant gratification. The most important thing you can do to turn a prospect into a customer is to make it incredibly easy for that prospect to commit to a purchase, regardless of how small that purchase may be. In the case of the hammer, the salesperson simply demonstrated the benefit of the hammer instead of talking about its features. In the case of you and your wine, all you did was pour a glass of wine. I know this seems oversimplified but it’s a power move that often goes unspoken. The customer nods his head to more wine because he already committed to the original purchase. Once a commitment is made, the tendency is to act consistently with that commitment.



16. The ‘Dollar Bill’ Hack for Cold Emails Want to learn a sales hack today? Give first, ask second. It’s called the reciprocity principle. To gain people’s trust and motivate engagement, give first. It’s human nature to want to give in return. Famous copywriting expert Gary Halbert would tack a dollar bill at the top of his direct mail campaigns. People inevitably took the dollar and placed an order. How can you implement the ‘dollar bill’ hack in your cold email? Make a solid investment into the recipient of your email. It might take 30 minutes of research to check his social profiles and blog but it’s worth positioning yourself to give authentic first, and ask second:

Can you tie a thoughtful one-liner about him into your email?

Is there a question he posted on Twitter that you can answer?

An honest compliment you can give?

Is there a feature, resource, or stat that would make his life easier? If so, plug these into the title of your email and plow ahead with your ask.



17. The Ego vs Value Check

It’s an easy mistake. We don’t mean to speak ego, it often has a way of creeping into our copy. Pulling together your content with a smooth focus and helpful tone is tough. To cut out ego and add value: 1. Scan your web copy. Your homepage, landing pages with forms, blogs, and even your newsletters, anything that you click send or publish. 2. Pick a line of copy & ask: what value does this bring to my customer? How about the text on your homepage that talks about your upcoming events? Does that info better serve your customer in an email newsletter? 3. Convert ego copy to value copy. Text that describes and lists benefits you’re offering, to whom and why, offers value to your customers. 4. Make your own Ego vs Value Checklist. Pull out elements of ego/value by scanning several websites. Then I dropped them on a list to check my own copy against. It’s easier to objectively analyze someone else’s work rather than our own.

❏ family or wine history [ego] ❏ yourself [ego] ❏ a slogan [ego] ❏ position statement [ego] ❏ how your services solve problems/improves situations [value] ❏ specific benefits customers can expect [value] ❏ why customers should buy from you over your competitors [value] ❏ can be read & understood under 5 seconds [value]



About Gabriela Antunes is a wine copywriter and marketer. She helps wine companies win customers with persuasive web copy and engaging newsletters. Gabriela on a mission to stamp out fakeness, and make boring, faceless wine businesses sound more human.

Copywriting & Consulting Services Would you like to turn your website into your best salesperson? Would you like your content offers, blog, web pages, or newsletter to be more persuasive? And more engaging? Need someone to analyze your page and make it sell better? Email: [email protected]

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GABRIELA ANTUNES

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Wine Marketing Guide: 17 Easy Steps to Selling Your Wine with Internet Marketing

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