One of the often overlooked direct sales tools is the telephone. While many associate telemarketing with the intrusive dinner-time calls from our local newspaper or random healthcare brokers (ugh - I learned that lesson recently!), the opportunity for a winery to reach out to key customers and engage in a person-to-person conversation is nearly always overlooked. Think about it - your customer list is made up of folks who are either on your wine club (loyal to your brand), came to your tasting room (interested in your brand), or found you through another event (again, interested, assuming they freely gave their contact info of their own will). Bottom line: they're interested. And if you already have their interest, it’s much easier to provide a purchase opportunity for them while engaged in conversation.

While many view telemarketing as a skill set that is either learned or trained into, your phone outreach should be easy: a friendly connection, no different than that of the hospitality staff and their welcoming of guests into your tasting room. Since we know your outreach will be to consumers who are already engaged with your brand (Wine Club members), or who enjoyed their experience in your tasting room well enough that they were eager to request more information, the openings don’t have to be hard. It’s the sales pitch that follows which can be challenging. No one likes asking for a sale, but if framed in a way which supports and demonstrates knowledge about your customer, it can be an easy process.

The following are a few examples of both reasons to call, and sales opportunities to include in the conversation. It’s not an exhaustive list by any means, but I’m willing to bet your winery has an opportunity to use at least several of these.

WELCOME AND THANK YOU!

1 –Personally call and welcome each new club member who joins. This may be time consuming, but you also have the opportunity to provide a “welcome new club member!” offer during the call. Perhaps to send their first shipment now, instead of waiting for 2 months before the next scheduled shipment goes out. Or, provide access to certain library wines or special reserves that may only become available to select customers during the year.

2 – Thank them for their purchase in your tasting room and see how they enjoyed the visit. Here’s an opportunity to do a little hospitality survey: was the staff friendly and knowledgeable? Were they welcomed at the bar immediately? Was their visit enjoyable? Follow up with a “Thank you for visiting” offer of a discount on their next online purchase.

3 – Let them know about some fun events that you’re hosting, similar to the one they attended recently. Again, surveying your customers to find out what worked - and what didn’t - is always valuable. Use this opportunity to contact a select group and improve your next event. In the meantime, don’t forget to offer them a special promotion on wines poured at the event.

4 – See how they’re enjoying their club membership. Customers join wine clubs to get something special, to feel a part of something, or to get access to information and products not given to the general public.. Make your customers feel like you care by checking in! Give them a call, thank them for their time in the club, chat about what they’ve enjoyed and want to see more of, and give them a reason to continue as a member. They already receive membership discounts on wine, and access to unique products. Perhaps offer complimentary shipping on a purchase, or a larger discount than they already receive, or access to a very special or unique library wine. This is a “thank you” sale. Make sure they feel like any offer given is truly a reward for their loyalty.

KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON

There are likely a few calls that your team is already making. These are the operational calls, but can be just as much of an opportunity to engage the customer:

1 – Updating expired credit cards prior to a wine club batch process. Your credit card expired rates can be 5-10% of your total. Don’t lose out on your full club value by neglecting to clean up your data. But give customers a call a month or so in advance of the next shipment –don’t offer them a promotion when they’re about to get a shipment.  

2 – Updating declined credit cards during a wine club batch process. This is another potentially lost revenue opportunity for your club. Decline rates are running higher than ever now, upwards of 10-20% of a club run. Give your customers a call to help ensure you’ve got the right information on them, but don’t push too hard on new promotions. Your job in this instance is to make that brand connection and not embarrass your customer. Give them a reason to stay on, or respect any requests to put their clubs on hold for a period, or even cancel if desired.

3 – Confirming a mailing address that may be bouncing back. Wine club shipments are expensive to ship, to return, and to re-ship. Having correct information for your customers is critical. If shipments are being returned, use the outreach as an opportunity to provide better service to your club members: offer to ship to a business location or to ensure the location you’ve got on file is the correct one. Don’t be shy about asking if they’re interested in hearing about your latest promotion or special wine sale after the conversation.

MAKE IT RELEVANT. PLEASE.

Remember that when calling your customers, regardless of the reason for contact, it's most important to demonstrate to them that you know who they are. You've likely got the mailing address, their purchase history with you, their birthday, any event they’ve attended, or more. It's appropriate to greet your customer by name, and ask a relevant question ("How are you enjoying the 2006 Cabernet you purchased?"). Similarly, when presenting a new offer to the customer, be conscious of the same - don't ask that repeat Cab buyer to partake in your Sauv Blanc special. Make it relevant, and make them feel as if you "understand" their needs.  Your job is to segment your list and define which offers will be most relevant to your segmented customer lists.  Your response rates will be higher, your telemarketing sales will be stronger, and your customers will be happier.

One final note:
One of the concerns we've heard from wineries about outreach to customers with declined credit cards, or who have not purchased in consistent volume, is that your call may "inspire" them to cancel their membership. True - some customers' cards are declined due to financial hardship. At that point, they would have cancelled anyway. Why not take advantage of your relationship with the customer to graciously accept their cancellation and ask if you can keep them on the list nonetheless! There's no reason to lose the relationship just because they're not purchasing regularly. They may return sooner than you think, and it's about building brand trust & loyalty. Perhaps they're purchasing your brand in retail stores and when out dining with friends anyway. Make your exchange with them easy, natural and comfortable. They'll remember you far longer than the winery that never called and simply removed them from the club as a "non-payer".

With the DTCS in full swing today, and wine industry tweeps chirping all day long about the on-goings, I was interested to see a side conversation on the placement of Twitter or Facebook addresses on wine labels. Healthy conversation ensued, with the majority of the social media advocates screaming YES!

I didn't see many in the conversation against the idea, but it was more of a preaching to the choir kind of inquiry - asked on Twitter and in a blog by someone whose followers are engaging in the social space heavily. For the full conversation, read here.

The post got me thinking about the basic needs of a wine consumer throughout the purchase path, and the role which information and access to the brand plays at each stage. To start, let's consider the basic path, as broken down to 5 stages on the way to brand loyalty:

At each stage in the path to purchase, there are specific customer needs in order to affect a movement to the next stage. And, there are marketing and sales strategies implemented at each to help encourage continued engagement and momentum forward. Ultimately, the goal is to drive towards loyalty, delivering repeat engagements with a brand, becoming a brand advocate to friends and colleagues, and delivering share of wallet to the brand.

At the risk of oversimplifying the process, the following identifies a few of the activities which can be undertaken at each of the stages, corresponding with the basic consumer consideration at each stage:

So, what role typically does packaging play in the purchase process? The role of the wine label is generally to appeal to the consumers need and provide information relevant to their decision making process. Brand name, varietal, region and vineyard all deliver necessary information. Winemaker’s notes even better. A winery URL to encourage incremental information to be found – great. In this age of smart phones, it’s easy and common to pull out your iPhone and dial up the latest Vino app for consumer reviews on the product under consideration. Easy, as well, to call up the winery website and see if any additional information on the product may be found.

So based on this, would a Twitter address on the label assist in the decision making process? Social media engagements most certainly play a role in the continuum. However, the act of "fanning" or "following" typically indicates that a customer has already experienced and enjoyed a wine, and is willing to engage further with a brand. By this stage, the consumer is likely past the label and packaging, moving deeper into "conversation" with the brand. It’s not likely that someone reading the label in the aisle of BevMo will “fan” a winery, expecting real time conversation to begin and drive them over the edge to purchase.  

Now, having said this, let’s assume the consumer buys your product, brings it to a dinner party and enjoys your 2005 Merlot with friends that evening. They look at the wine bottle to investigate the brand a little further, see your URL and Twitter address and make a note to visit for more information. Nice. No harm and an opportunity to begin the path towards engagement and loyalty.

So, does it hurt to put a Twitter address on a wine label? Likely no. Does it provide the information necessary to help a consumer make a first purchase decision? Probably not. Will it encourage deeper investigation into a product they’ve enjoyed? Perhaps. 

Personally, I'm more excited about the potential that QR codes present for wine label application. WOW. More on that one later.

It’s no revelation to say that we that we live in a digital world. Technology is prevalent. And no more so than with today’s “smart” phones.

What is a “smart phone”? Your Blackberry or iPhone. Or, per O’Reilly Media,

“A Smartphone combines the functions of a cellular phone and a handheld computer in a single device. It differs from a normal phone in that it has an operating system and local storage, so users can add and store information, send and receive email, and install programs to the phone as they could with a PDA.”

 Consider these facts:

• There are almost as many people buying smart phones as there are people buying laptops: 115 million smart phones were purchased worldwide last year
• Website visitors using a mobile device increased 34 percent year-over-year, to 56.9 million in July 2009 according to The Nielsen Company.
• The most popular non-phone activities among smart phone users are visiting websites (80%), taking photos (74%), and using email (73%).
• Over half (53%) of U.S. smart phone users download mobile content from the web at least once a day or thereabouts, and click on mobile ads.
• Thirty-five percent request coupons or further information and a quarter (24%) make purchases.
• eBay alone saw mobile sales worth more than a half a billion dollars this past year, which equates to 5 million item transactions. 

In this recent holiday season, according to a recent Motorola report, 51% of 2009 holiday shoppers across 11 countries used their cell phones to compare prices, find consumer product reviews and locate discounts while in stores shopping this past holiday season. Consumers are using digital tools like their cell phones more than ever, to inform which brands they purchase, where, when, how and at what price point they will purchase. 

The media is clearly abuzz with iPhone mania these days. And of course, there are a number of wine specific iPhone apps; they aggregate wines available in the U.S. market and provide reviews, price comparisons, consumer user generated content, food & wine pairings, etc.. See VinTank’s report here for a complete evaluation on the latest.

But if you aren’t in the market to build your own iPhone app, it's still important to ensure you’re giving consumers the information and experience they need via their smart phones. Your email and website executions are critical places to start.

Email Marketing for the Mobile Age

 A recent report by Experian CheetahMail revealed that over a quarter of total U.S. consumers now read emails on their smart phone. Most emails are being deleted before being read, however. The main reasons? Poor formatting and a lack of brand recognition. If you’re marketing to your own list, brand recognition shouldn’t be an issue. But formatting can be.

Think about the last email you sent. Open it up on your own cell phone. Can you read it? Does it load quickly? Does it give you quick information to take action? Best practices in email marketing have always been to keep them short, to the point, easily read/understood and with a clear call to action. Now more than ever it’s important to follow that direction.

In addition, ensuring your emails are relevant to your audience is critical: segment your list for appropriate messaging, and optimize your subject line to ensure action is taken by that segment. The closer you can make your brand, message and promotion relevant and meaningful to your customer, the better. If you only had a few seconds on a computer to entice the reader to open your email, you have even less on a phone.

Most importantly, make it easy for the consumer to access more information. A clear message that links directly to a web page that allows the consumer to complete the desired action is critical. Slow page loading on a smart phone can lead to huge frustration if the information sought is not found quickly due to image loading or excessive and unnecessary content.

Refining your website to meet the needs of a mobile user

How well is your website being browsed on a smart phone? Want to see something scary? Check out these sites to see how your site may be presented on a handset:

Google OR Skweezer

Clearly one solution is to create a mobile website (.mobi) or top level domain specific to a mobile user experience. This will allow for a distinct website which you can market to your mobile users, and which presents a more mobile-relevant presentation and click path.

Not ready for a mobile website strategy? You can still review your site for best practices in clear navigation, simple messaging and a reduced “click to purchase” path. Ensuring the same can help your site read well in a mobile environment. And please, if you do create a mobile site, make sure you offer access to that site clearly from your .com home page: “Click here to read on your mobile phone”.

For mobile web navigation, make sure the action desired to be taken by your audience is no more than 1-2 clicks from the homepage. Slow loading pages on mobile phones will make people leave quickly if they’re left waiting for loads and having to click through too many pages.

In addition, since browsing in a mobile environment can mean a lot of scrolling around pages to find what you’re looking for, consider breaking the traditional rule of keeping navigation and page frame consistency… a change in the basic landscape can quickly indicate to a customer that they’ve successfully moved to another page. Keep only the necessary framed items (logo, homepage link, headers) consistent.

Finally, in a web environment, the navigation is still critical. But it needs to be short and directed. Your .com environment may have the task of addressing several potential audiences, each with distinct goals. In a mobile environment, consider what you want to accomplish and for whom. Keep it as narrow as possible and it will be far easier to reduce the navigation, page layout and format to the basic elements necessary to guide that audience to its main goal.

It’s no surprise that the mobile world is here to stay. It’s only getting more sophisticated by the day (with some pretty exciting stuff happening in Japan and Europe already). Next holiday season is going to be even “smarter” – use the next 9 months to consider, test and begin finding the mobile strategy that’s right for your business.

Sources: Compete Smart Phone Survey 2009, Forrester Research, 2009, eTailing Group Mobile Survey, 2009, Universal McCann/Platform-A Mobile Survey, 2009, Crowd Science Smartphone Survey, 4/09

Ok, maybe not a fascination, but yes, I listen to Lady Gaga. I admit it. However, it's not because she’s musically talented. It's not because she did a fantastic sado-masochistic presentation of herself at the MTV awards last year. Nor is it because of her amazingly keen sense of fashion. But rather, it's due to the fact that her music gives me something that I need to perform a certain behavior. Something that I can use and embed into an important activity in my life: exercise. And, she provides me with exactly what I need to do it: a monotonous, fast paced, upbeat tempo that is timed to the exact BPMs at which I like to walk.

I found her branded product (music) and am using it in a certain behavioral way that is both meaningful and relevant to me. I need music that’s fast paced at a beat I can work out to (relevant), and that will allow me to continue to perform an exercise that helps me clear my mind, which makes me feel energized and happy when I’m done (meaningful).

That’s power.

She’s connected with me in a way that – regardless of what I feel about her presentation or political position (which by the way, I know nothing about) – works for my NEED. That works for me. And I’ll look for her next single on iTunes the next time I’m searching for exercise music.. She’ll likely get another $1.99 from me, regardless of whether she’s a brand that I would follow on her website, or on Twitter, or even attend a concert.

This is a lesson for any brand seeking to connect with the consumer.  Consider the needs, behaviors, cultures, activities of the consumers in the marketplace who may potentially consume your product. How do they interact with the world and friends during their day? What are their needs? How might they be able to apply what you are offering into their everyday? We talked a little about this in our blog recently “Time to Clean Your (Brand) House”.

Think about it.

P.S. For those Lady Gaga fans (you know who you are…): Barbie Gaga.

We're going through an exercise to help position a new company that's entering a very crowded market. In order to most effectively define who and what this company is, we need to also define how it's different than others in its market, and why businesses would want to engage with them.

The process of developing a positioning statement is pretty straightforward - it's the actual activity itself that becomes the challenge. Many different ideas and "keywords" come to the brainstorming page, and a lot of passion sits behind each of those. The challenge is ensuring that the language used to define who and what a company or brand is adheres to 3 primary principles; that it is:

1. Ownable in its respective marketplace or industry
2. Meaningful to the core audience being provided for
3. Durable and lasting over time (not trend-based)

Read "Time to Clean Your (Brand) House" for more information on defining a positioning statement.

One of the most fun exercise in the development of the positioning statement - and one that I find helps tremendously when "stuck", is to get everyone working on the obituary for that business or brand. Think ahead to the future and imagine the company is a person. Sadly, it just died (of natural causes, of course - the business was a thriving one!). Now. What would you like the obituary to say about the life and legacy of that company?

Once written, the initial positioning exercise and the struggles to identify which definitions would be most meaningful and durable are much easier to nail down. Test it yourself. What would your brand legacy be? Why wait until you "die" to act on the actions necessary to create that legacy?

I've been running through my personal list of 2010 resolutions and it occurred to me that each of them applied quite well to any wine business seeking improvements in their DTC initiatives. Thought I'd share a few quick thoughts on each...

Clean up your mess.  How's that customer database looking these days? Probably ready for a little spring cleaning...
o   Depending on how and where your customer contact data is maintained, now’s the time to review and clean up duplicates, dead links, missing email addresses, old physical addresses. Whether it’s a manual clean up or working with a hygiene service, your data should be reviewed and cleaned on a quarterly basis. 

Go on a diet. Has your proverbial waistband gotten too tight? Might be time to pare back on the overindulging.
o   Trying to do too much? Resolve to scale back. Consider your top 5 producing DTC sales and marketing initiatives. What makes them successful? ROI? Customer engagement? Deconstruct them to fully understand how and why they’re working for your brand, and then define ways to improve them even further. Now consider your bottom producing DTC sales and marketing initiatives. How much are they costing you – in both time and money? Have you exhausted attempts to revive them? What will you lose by giving up 1, 2, or all of them?

Take risks. You'll never know until you try...
o   Try one sales or marketing tactic that you’re not quite sure about and see what happens. Find something that you’ve not considered, attempted, or incorporated into your marketing mix in the past. Make sure it's relevant to your target customer, of course. Not sure how to get started with it? Just do it. Jump in and see what happens. Don’t be financially foolish, of course, but you may be surprised at what you learn.

Mix it up. Life is about balance. Everything in moderation...
o   Don’t think 2010 is exclusively about going social. Or about video. Or about email. You can’t neglect a balanced and integrated marketing mix.  Consider your customer and the ways which they can - or want to - interact with your brand. Are you available through the channels they’re frequenting? Is your brand visible or active in the vehicles they’re using?  How well are your marketing and communications aligned through each vehicle?   

Be true to yourself. "Today you are you. That is truer than true. There is no one alive more youer than you." Dr. Seuss
o   Define your "one thing". What is it that you’d like your customers to know about your brand? Your winemaking style? The family heritage behind your winery? Your sustainable farming practices? Think about that one thing and how well you may be communicating it through all the vehicles discussed above. If your customers aren’t “getting it" after visiting your tasting room, shopping your website, attending an event, watching your latest winery video, etc., review your marketing & communications for opportunities to communicate and identify or distinguish yourself better.

Here's to a great 2010!

I love this campaign for its pure simplicity. Ikea leveraged an application that already existed (Facebook), behaviors of their core audience that were already in place (social tagging of pictures), and a simple human motivation (greed for free stuff). See the campaign on YouTube here.

Nothing new was invented. Dollars spent were minimal. Time spent was likely the same. And yet the viral effect was HIGH.

We spend so much time trying to overthink our next moves, trying to build a NEW mousetrap. Sometimes you just need to KISS. 

The following are a few "quick win" considerations to help refresh - or perhaps even jump start - your winery direct-to-consumer efforts in 2010. None of these cost very much to implement, but the return on each can make a big difference to your brand presentation, the experience your customer's have with your brand/s, and even your revenue bottom line.

eCommerce

1.       Imagery getting stale? Refresh your product and general site photography.
o   For site uniformity, and a user experience that’s easier to browse through and digest, make your product images consistent; i.e. all category page images are label close ups, all product page images are full bottle shots with no context in the background.

2.       Get back to basics. Review your site for the fundamentals: clear information, brand alignment, easy navigation, engaging content.
o   Take a look at other successful winery and retaler websites. Now, review yours. Do you have clear navigation on every page? Clear descriptions of your products? A non-cluttered, brand-aligned experience? Pretend you’re a consumer looking for information. Can you easily find what you’re looking for?

3.       Let your customers speak for you. 67% of shoppers spend more online after recommendations from online community of friends (Internet Retailer, September 2009).
o   If you’re not already doing it, simply ask your club members what they thought of the latest shipment and post their comments on your website. Or, ask tasting room visitors to fill out a product, event or tasting room experience comment card and post their responses.  Don’t forget to ask permission first.

4.       Get social.
o   If you’re not testing the waters on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or the like, give it a go. Engage in at least one social media community and participate frequently. Start a conversation with your customers and see what happens.

5.       Refresh your email templates.
o   Look at the email templates for the major e-tailers; nearly all have a similar format (logo placement, navigation, header placement, body structure).  Now take a look at yours. Time for a refresh? Develop 2-3 new templates for the following messaging types: 

1. Multiple product marketing
2. Messaging/events announcement
3. Featured or single product promotions

Wine Club

1.       Tackle credit card expired and declined rates.
o   Enlist someone in house to track and manage declined and expired credit cards in your wine club list. Spending just 2 hours a month on this task can make a big difference. For larger clubs with greater turn, consider outsourcing. Even a 10% improvement in your expired/declines can mean critical dollars to your bottom line.

2.       Get to know your club members.  
o   Survey your club members, both during and after they leave your club.  There are a multitude of online survey providers out there – all easily used and managed. Find out why they joined, what they like about the club, what they would be interested in seeing more of, what products are their favorites, what types of events they would be interested in participating in. And after they leave – thank them for being a member and ask why they left. Use the information to adjust your Wine Club program and marketing outreach.

3.       Surprise and delight.
o   Do something unexpected for your customers at least once in 2010: Send a mid-year thank you card hand signed by the winemaker, or send a personal birthday wish to your club members. Surprise them with something relevant to your winery or brand and give your customers a reason to remember you outside of the normal shipment frequency.

Tasting Room

1.       Help your staff engage.
o   Not everyone is a natural born salesperson. Your tasting room staff may be engaging and witty and fun in the break room, but entirely different in front of customers. They might be overselling your wine club, and under-whelming your visitors. Help them out with training. Write scripts and role play. Take a field trip to other tasting rooms and discuss their experiences. Lead brand discussions so they understand and feel empowered. Give them the tools they need to become better salespeople.

2.       Ask for the email address. Your customer list is your most valuable marketing asset. Leverage every opportunity to grow it.
o   If you’re not already capturing or asking for the email address during the sale or wine club sign up process, do so. Incentives are common, but not mandatory. If you’re having trouble capturing emails, offer 10% discount on their next purchase when providing an email address, for instance.  Let the customer know that an email will be sent to them with the applicable discount code (this will help validate correct addresses).

3.       Refresh your merchandise.
o   If you’re offering incremental merchandise in the tasting room, is there an opportunity to refresh it? Better display it? Improve signage to provide better information on the products? Is your merchandising relevant to your brand or wines? This is the environment in which you’ve asked your customers to experience your brand and engage. Create an inviting and engaging environment in which to allow your customers to experience your wines… and use non-wine merchandise to upsell.

For more on the differences, here's a good snapshot article: Strategic Planning, Mission - Vision - Values.

10.  Know your BUSINESS
Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to help monitor and manage your business. Your KPI’s will help define and monitor the progress your business is making towards the long term goals you have established.

There are KPIs for every aspect of your business, not just financial or marketing activities. You might establish KPIs for your operational efforts, your supply chain activities, your logistics or manufacturing side of the business, or any other core activity undertaken by your business. Have each of your divisional managers define the critical measures in their area of focus as they work towards the long term goals of the business. Which metrics must they monitor to ensure continued success?

Your KPI’s should be SMART. Everyone should have a firm grasp on those business indicators that are critical in keeping your business growing. And, they should be monitored on a frequent enough basis that your team is able to see when issues are arising in certain areas. Establish timely reports to help monitor your KPIs (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly), and use the data your reports show to refine or fine tune your business and brand strategies when necessary.

And finally... a little extra credit:

11.  Know your LIMITS
If you've attended to each of the top 10 addressed here, you're not going to overextend your business; however it's easy to get ahead of yourself with the next great idea or opportunity to service your market or customer. Keep it simple. Keep focused. Don’t try to be all to everyone. Don’t over-leverage your resources.

Establish your top 3-5 business priorities in the near term and maintain that focus. If market, consumer, financial or other conditions disrupt your ability to focus on those top priorities, refine them down to 3, 2 or 1. Recognize your limitations and work with them. It's too easy to be distracted by the next great idea, or the latest trend, but with strong planning, a focused vision, engaged and informed employees, a good understanding of the marketplace, and supportive and empowering leadership, your business and brand can soar.

A visual to recap:

Last week, in “Time to Clean Your (Brand) House”, we defined 4 critical things that you need to truly “know” to successfully build a strong, engaging and lasting brand. If you’ve taken a look at your brand – and evaluated your position with those first 4 - now it’s time to move onto the next 3.

Without further ado, here we go…

5. Know your CHANNELS
As a marketer, your job is to utilize the right mix of channels to build brand engagement and sell your products and/or services. It’s critical that you understand the channels at your disposal and how best to leverage them as unique avenues through which to communicate. Knowing your audience (as referenced in Part 1) also means knowing where they expect to find information, and where they’ll be receptive to finding and engage with brands. But just knowing which channels they’re likely to utilize isn’t enough. You need to know how to engage through them and further, how to evaluate the impact of them.

Each channel has its own rules for engagement, its own metrics to evaluate, potentially its own manager to keep it running. Your marketing mix should be such that each channel can operate independently, however it’s important that you consider the forest for the trees –your customers brand experience is made up of the combination of all touch points, and it’s essential that you create and maintain a well balanced and managed marketing channel strategy.

Make sure you understand the role each channel plays in your marketing mix, how much you can and should expect to get out of each, and what metrics you’re anticipating through the whole mix, as well as the individual channels. It’s important to not only KNOW the right channels, but to UNDERSTAND them and how they are delivering.  

6. Know your VEHICLES
You’ve decided that direct-to-consumer channel is a viable and important one for your brand. Now it’s time to figure out which vehicles need to be leveraged to most effectively engage in the DTC channel.

* Where are your target users engaging?
* Where would they be most receptive to finding you?

Once defined, it’s even more critical that you understand how to use and manage those vehicles. For instance, on social media vehicles you’ll seek to engage with consumers. But with direct mail, it’s a one way conversation that hopefully leads to the engagement.  You’ll push information out through one vehicle, while another will be used to (hopefully) get your consumers to pull information from you.

Think about the various DTC vehicles at your disposal: email, direct mail, catalog, social media, your tasting room, and more. Each has its own distinct form of engagement and purpose for your target consumer. Each has its own metrics to be evaluated for success measures, each may have its own manager for daily execution. To most effectively get the end results you’re seeking, be sure you truly understand each vehicle and its purpose and placement within your marketing mix. Establish individual vehicle goals, define the key metrics that you will monitor for each, and define which resources you will need to employ to most effectively deliver your brand and sales goals through those vehicles.

Don’t forget: Like your channel marketing mix, it’s essential you create a balanced mix of vehicles leveraged within each channel, understanding how together they contribute to the whole brand experience, ultimately delivering against your desired end. Your channel will have key performance indicators, and potentially its own P&L for management. Manage at the granular level (by vehicle) with an eye for the big picture (by channel – and ultimately your entire business).

7. Know THYSELF
It’s important to understand who you are as a brand; from the visual elements that comprise your brand, to the tone and “voice” your brand takes, to the core values to which your brand adheres. Consistency is especially critical when it comes to the expression of your brand.

Work with your designers or whomever is responsible for the design and development of your brand mark, typography, logo, color palette, etc., to build a standards guide. The standards guide should define for everyone in the company how your brand is represented visually and communicated verbally. It should define the exact color tones, font styles, sizing ratios, placement and usage guidelines for your brand elements. It should demonstrate commonly used business applications (business application templates, website usage, advertising guidelines, black & white vs. color expressions, etc.). It should define how your brand "speaks"; its personality, the tone it takes in communications, and even the ways which your brand will spell, punctuate or capitalize common words (think about the variations available for words like: eCommerce, ecommerce, e-commerce, or online, on-line, on-Line).

The standards guide can also dive into the overall vision, mission and core values for your brand. Once defined, share your standards with everyone in the company and anyone who participates in the communication of your brand. Be diligent about adhering to the standards. If you’ve effectively communicated your brand strategy internally, there should be no inconsistency in use. If there is… work on your internal communication skills.