What are you doing to celebrate National Cocktail Day? If you’re not engaging customers today via social media and email, you’re missing out on a growing trend of DIY bartenders who are choosing to drink/entertain at home. The team at Market Your Craft doesn’t usually comment on the National Day Calendar and drinking holidays, so why start now? It’s important to think beyond craft beverage to remain relevant in the conversation with distributors, retailers and customers. We want to help your craft beverage business tell a meaningful story to attract new sales:
How does celebrating drinking holidays make your craft beverage brand more discoverable?
Drinking holidays are typically sponsored by big brands or [loosely] connected to history/origin stories. During a given month there could be as many as 10 such holidays, all providing craft beverage producers with opportunities to drive sales. Will the typical cider, mead or kombucha lover get excited about a beer holiday, for example? At first, probably not. That’s because you haven’t warmed them up to the idea. Instead, if you discuss the flavors or ingredients the two share in-common, you cause them to pause and consider. It’s when you share new ways to enjoy craft beverage that you’re more discoverable to new audiences. We’ll use National Cocktail Day as an example of creating a disruption using timely, topical content.
design craft beverage cocktails
| How often does your brand promote recipes in addition to your core offering(s)? It’s common to see food recipes on a craft beverage website, with beautiful photos alongside the step-by-step instructions for the perfectly-paired dish. Less obvious are the inspired cocktail recipes, where blends, mixes and flavorings are showcased. If you don’t already have a cocktail program in place, we recommend designing 5-10 cocktail recipes for seasonal or promotional use. Recipes can be sourced from your production team, tasting room staff, fans or customers, crediting the origin. Show a photo or video of the recipe being made, creating even more engagement. Then consider boosting social media posts to new audiences, widening the reach of the effort. |
On National Cocktail Day, we’re excited to share the following cider cocktail:
Recipe from Vegonosity.com  |
Market Your Craft| How often does your brand promote recipes in addition to your core offering(s)? It’s common to see food recipes on a craft beverage website, with beautiful photos alongside the step-by-step instructions for the perfectly-paired dish. Less obvious are the inspired cocktail recipes, where blends, mixes and flavorings are showcased. If you don’t already have a cocktail program in place, we recommend designing 5-10 cocktail recipes for seasonal or promotional use. Recipes can be sourced from your production team, tasting room staff, fans or customers, crediting the origin. Show a photo or video of the recipe being made, creating even more engagement. Then consider boosting social media posts to new audiences, widening the reach of the effort. |
On National Cocktail Day, we’re excited to share the following cider cocktail:
Recipe from Vegonosity.com |
encourage do-it-yourselfers
The coronavirus forced bars, restaurants and tasting rooms in most states to shut down entirely, then operate at reduced capacity for social-distancing purposes. And a year into COVID-19, researchers estimate it will take until late 2022 for on-premise traffic and sales to reach pre-pandemic levels. From celebrities to influencers like JohnnyDrinks on TikTok, the popularity of home mixology is exploding. With more drinkers enjoying a craft beverage at home, your craft beverage brand can expand sales opportunities by cross-promoting merchandise and supplies. Every well-stocked bar has the essentials, including a shaker, strainer, bar spoon, jigger and glassware. You may have inventory of similar tools available for sale on your website, and National Cocktail Day is the perfect opportunity to promote. Otherwise consider flash sales on complementary items, like bar towels, logoed glassware, coasters, openers, books and [branded] artwork. Be sure to use lifestyle photos of the product in-use to help push add-on or bundled sales. If your tasting room doesn’t offer merchandise for sale, consider partnering with a local or online retailer for short-run, promotional windows.
create a content calendar
National Cocktail Day is just one example of a marketing holiday used to engage drinkers with timely, topical content. But there are hundreds of recognized days during a calendar year, including federally-observed holidays and unofficial celebrations. Crafting a relevant storyline around any one of these dates creates a promotional event to help drive traffic and sales. We’ve captured some of the relevant holidays for the upcoming week(s) below:
If feels off-brand or disingenuous to promote your craft beverage for a specific holiday, trust your gut and wait for the next one. The point is to supplement your existing calendar of owned events – like craft beverage releases, events and other activity – with additional, relevant opportunities for storytelling. Over time, you’ll create and curate a robust calendar of content you can draw upon to help stoke energy and engagement around your business. Want to learn more about content calendars? Schedule a walk-through of Sprout Social – a leading scheduling, publishing, listening and reporting tool – with the team from Market Your Craft.
MailChimp archive:
https://mailchi.mp/847a242bd109/210324_cocktails?e=bd76eedb35
Download:
https://app.box.com/s/i6imkhyr5yc3bmq21yokz1cyav20qtjf
-
Add to wishlist -
Add to wishlist -
Add to wishlist -
Add to wishlist