MADE IN PIEDMONT WINES BACKSTAGE!!!
The common thread throughout this blog is social media & results (our results, check daily), insight into website visits, opportunities that arise for free, insight into the Flanders-Walloon market. For practical reasons I have left out the foreign markets and given this has to do with previously living in Piedmont, going out with US and other clients as a wine guide and is not social media related.
The social media landscape is a tangle AND I also have to figure it all out, do it, evaluate and adjust. Me and my business partner, I'll speak in "we" terminology from now on, have employed an independent marketing manager to guide us on this far from obvious course.
First, let's situate who our customers are. The 55 to 75 age group is 80% present. With the exception of 2 women out of 1358 customers, they are all men. Today's customer "lives" on their iphone or android device, so to speak (completely different from 10 years ago). Surprising but very honest: they have a very short attention span when they go on socials. It's score within seconds or just wiped out. So even the retirees who should have plenty of time, leave within 1 second if the content of the message doesn't hit them right away. Audiences today are hugely selective. New, where we ourselves will start from this weekend, is video that offers 78% more score online. Of course, this requires much more time because everything has to be subtitled.
One by one I name the social media channels we use with their results. Short but powerful:
Channel that mainly appeals to a slightly less young audience. However, they are the most loyal viewers. No advertising budget of 500 € at your disposal? In that case, better not start. It is absolutely a waste of money, the meta ads analysis under 500 € are actually worthless. Targeting at Facebook is difficult. As a wine merchant you select "wines" but then you are in the category of all wines in the world, not as in our case wines from Piemonte region, Italy.
So after 3 month we stopped using facebook, the sales from facebook ads was not even 0.50%.
Used to be for a very young audience but they have shifted to less young audience. Disadvantage of Instagram, everyone comes to your page who even wants to follow you but they are not buyers. Here reels are making the solution, back that video setting. Since you are followed internationally, at least in our case, your content has to be in English.
Again, no more paid advertising. It is free but growth is very slow in terms of potential to get sales at a certain level we need.
Very important to make reels is to analyze the structure of the videos of other high scoring companies. Toppers are eg San Carlo dal 1763 instagram page (in Italian), Vip Room Riccione (Italian), Love Luxury but also especially US localized instagram pages. Sooner or later this know-how will come to Belgium and you'd better pick it up while everything is still fresh.
We do not participate. Getting the message across in that limited number of characters is impossible. There are no advertising solutions here.
It's best to choose a maximum of 3 communication channels. Pinterest is not on our list.
You Tube
This will be the channel for the future! At the moment not yet a paying presence. Very many possibilities with long content videos, very much space to convey message with text. This is what we are going to bet on! We have already done 5 years ago but then because of few visitors did not continue. Now we want to, of course in a different way compared to five years ago. All videos featuring our wineries will go online between July 1 and July 31, 2025. Our channel You Tube is called Madeinpiedmontwines. A lot of work with editing, switching on logos, translating texts. So the output must be very big and revenue generating to perform all this work.
E-mail marketing
By far the most active channel. Also important the email addresses are your property. If some platform decides to quit, you lose everything. Important post on every same day of the week, same hour. Through Inspectlet (free tool and also paying tool for more than 30 views per day) you can with strict privacy of the customer really follow the mouse of the visitor on the screen. There is no name of the customer (logical!), but the country, the software he goes online with. As a result, we found out that 98% of our customers go online via mobile. So you better make sure your website is adapted to mobile server via Iphone or Android. Of course, they realize a 5-minute visit of the customer online reduced to barely 40 seconds. If a potential customer types in the search engine a name of a wine that you do not do at all (unfortunately in our searches for Amarone wine etc...) you can literally see what happens.
Google Ads
Today our resort after the very poor results with Facebook & Instagram. Here you really need to start focusing with campaigns very specified. Problem for us - mentioned above - is that potential customers look up Amarone wine, Trento Adige wines and Sicilian wines. So do they really not read the name: Made In Piedmont Wines? Surely it should be obvious! That designation in English was chosen because we still have very many international buyers. So for US, Denmark etc... you can't score with WijnuitPIemonte.
AI OPPORTUNITY
The founder of Mindvalley namely Vishen Lakhiani, quite specialized in promotion of AI tools predicts that those who are not on board with AI will disappear from the market. Doubtful, of course. This is really only the territory of my business partner who himself has a company in the IT world. In a pinch he knows everything, AI is not "my piece of cake". Searching for my alter-ego came up with a four-armed solution!
And then the market situation Flanders versus Wallonia
Extremely striking results. The Flemish market is awash with wine merchants. The end customer has a hard time finding his way unless he is clearly aiming for a niche like we are doing with Made In Piedmont Wines, so wines from Piedmont, Italy.
Literally in almost every village there is someone "working with wines." Where you used to need an SDEN 3, now you need a good laptop, a very thorough education in marketing & sales, AND a website built according to the rules of marketing.
Knowledge of all the tools that market your wines is essential. As long as you don't do any wine tastings (a prerequisite in Flanders), you won't be missed when doing online research. Even then, someone can be so in-depth that he or she can perfectly fake his wine knowledge. Important for Flanders is your history with wine, your evolution, your mission and values. You have to be able to "brand" yourself in these fast, volatile times when the end customer is looking for authenticity.
Everything but everything is about me Karina Imschoot with my own story to "burn" from next week. To do this, we hired a French photographer who came here from South-West France in our private setting in Méan. Notabene with the motorcycle, to switch to a new photo shoot after 12 years ago when lived in Tre Stelle Barbaresco.
Results are not in yet but have already seen digitally on his camera the photos and are PHENOMENAL. Why choose this man? Is the Godfather of Photography, can think along masterfully, my ideas he transformed technically into an extremely exceptional image. Most photographers do it that way: just put yourself in that corner, smile at the camera, etc... This was just different on so many levels!!!
Back to compare Flanders - Wallonia
Most people in our neighborhood drink wines of maximum 8 €, only French wines. No idea how a wine merchant can survive here. It is therefore constantly different operators.
Both in Flanders and in Wallonia, according to the recent figures that reached me, about 89% are buyers of wines from the supermarket, 10% at a specialized store, 1% buy online. So it's a battlefield every day to get only a few of those 10% buyers at a specialized wine store to switch to online.
If Piedmont ever gets off the ground here, it will take at least 10 years.
Example: in our village wam a new owner after three years of vacancy due to departure of previous wine store. Neighbors have already come to give me his card six times. Then finally went to our main village. Very nicely decorated, not like the previous owner all cartons on and next to each other, and incredibly surprised but that wine merchant had six Piedmontese wine bottles. Found the Nizza better than the Barolo (ola ola) and did not know that the Barolo is based on the noble Nebbiolo grape. He spent all of May highlighting Piedmont, trained a maximum of sommeliers with Piedmontese wines and what is the end result? Not a single Piedmontese wine sold since he put it in the range. It's been 6 months since the first wines arrived.
Since I prefer to see Piedmont grow, even though I have no direct sales, I offered this man to assist him during tastings. Rejected, ah yes, people are going to take your picture and then they end up with you and not me.
So if you are in the wine business, you have to have a very strong passion and know-how, be driven and notice opportunities. Otherwise, you won't survive this battlefield!
Now we are ever curious to hear your stories!!! Feel free to surf me an email at sales@madeinpiedmont-wines.be with subject "blog" or you can also reply via social media.
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