Why Using a Marketing Funnel is Important For Your Alcohol Brand

Having a clear marketing strategy is important for alcohol brands, especially as the digital marketplace gets more and more saturated and more brands launch in the space. 

A clear marketing strategy helps a company define its target audience, set specific marketing goals, and identify the most effective ways to reach and engage its customers. Your wine or spirits brand can then focus your resources and efforts on the most promising opportunities, rather than spreading them too thin across a wide range of activities.

Having a marketing strategy in place can also help a company allocate its marketing budget more effectively and track the results of its marketing efforts. This can help the company optimize its marketing spend and measure the return on investment of its marketing activities.

So to gain clarity with your strategy, it's best to zoom out and take a look at your customer journey and the marketing funnel. 

Let's Start Here: What is a Marketing Funnel?

A marketing funnel is a framework that outlines the steps a customer goes through in the process of buying a product or service. It typically consists of four stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention.

Awareness Stage

This is the first stage of the funnel, where potential customers become aware of the product or service. This could be through various marketing channels, such as social media, advertising, or content marketing.

Consideration Stage

In this stage, the customer begins to actively consider the product or service and compares it to other options. They may do research on the product or company, read reviews, and seek recommendations from friends or family.

Conversion Stage

In the final stage of the funnel, the customer takes action and makes a purchase. This could involve completing an online form, making a phone call, or visiting a store to purchase the product.

Retention Stage

This gets forgotten in marketing funnels sometimes, but we'd argue it is just as crucial as the rest of the funnel for retail, e-commerce, or any business where return customers are a thing. This is where the customer continues to build a relationship with you through tools like social media or email marketing.

Ultimately marketing funnels can be used to help wine & spirits brands understand and optimize the customer journey, so that they can better target their marketing efforts and increase conversions.

What Your Alcohol Brand Needs to Consider for the Consideration Stage

In the consideration stage of a marketing funnel, potential customers are aware of a problem or need that they have and are actively searching for solutions or products to address it. This is the stage where they start to research and compare different options, including the products or services offered by the company.

What makes your wine different? Why is your gin going to change their mind about gin? What makes your vodka the smoothest vodka? Why should they care about your brand's story?

During the consideration stage, it is important for the company to provide information that will help the potential customer make an informed decision. This can include product descriptions, pricing information, customer reviews, and other relevant details to answer those questions they might have.

This stage is often referred to as "Middle of Funnel" or "MoFu" in ad agency terms. Tools to consider here include:

• Retargeting Ads for bringing customers back to your web site.
• Social Media Management to build relationships and trust.
• Email marketing to continue to inform and remind.

Marketing efforts during the consideration stage might include targeted advertising, content marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO) to make it easier for potential customers to find the company's products or services online. But remember in all of these efforts that your copy shouldn't be just saying "hi" and introducing your brand, but diving deeper and differentiating your brand from competitors.

The goal of the consideration stage is to get the potential customer to move on to the next stage of the funnel, which is the conversion stage, where they make a purchase.

Why The Conversion Stage is Important for Wine & Spirits Brands

The conversion or action stage of a marketing funnel is the final stage in which a potential customer becomes a paying customer. This is the point at which the customer takes the desired action, such as placing an order on your site or buying your products in a store.

During the conversion stage, it is important for the company to make it easy for the customer to take the desired action. This can include providing clear calls to action, such as "Buy Now" or "Find Us in Stores" and making the process of purchasing as smooth and seamless as possible.

Marketing efforts during the conversion stage might include creating landing pages with compelling copy and persuasive calls to action. This tends to get overlooked in the wine & spirits world, because the digital space is still a new world to navigate. However, creating a compelling landing page will definitely put you ahead of competitors in your marketing efforts, and make your efforts more effective.

It's important to note that the marketing funnel is not a linear process, and customers may move back and forth between stages as they research and consider different options. The marketing funnel is simply a way to understand and visualize the various stages of the customer journey from awareness to purchase.

Marketing Funnels Help You Understand The Customer Journey

A customer journey refers to the series of interactions and experiences that a customer has with a company or brand over the course of their relationship. This includes all of the touchpoints that a customer has with the company, from the first time they become aware of the company or its products or services, to the point at which they make a purchase or engage with the company in some other way.

The customer journey is an important concept in marketing and customer experience management, as it helps companies understand how customers move through the sales process and identify opportunities to improve the customer experience. By mapping out the customer journey, companies can better understand their customers' needs, preferences, and pain points, and develop marketing strategies and tactics that address these issues and encourage customer loyalty.

The customer journey can include a wide range of touchpoints, including advertising, social media, customer service, and in-store experiences. By understanding the customer journey, alcohol brands can create a more seamless and enjoyable experience for their customers and build stronger relationships with them over time.

Why This Matters for Your Alcohol Brand

Understanding the customer journey is important because it helps companies better understand the needs and preferences of their customers and identify opportunities to improve the customer experience. By mapping out the various stages of the customer journey, companies can gain insights into how customers interact with their brand and what factors influence their purchasing decisions.

Having a clear understanding of the customer journey also allows alcohol brands to identify points of friction or pain points that may be causing customers to drop out of the sales process. By addressing these issues, companies can improve the customer experience and increase the likelihood of conversion.

With the introduction of e-commerce to the wine & spirits world, there's a whole new customer journey to consider now. 

Taking the conversations online has changed everything for wine & spirits brands, and they now need to look at the digital marketing tools they're using to help customers through their journey.

In addition, understanding the customer journey can help companies create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns. By identifying the key touchpoints and channels that are most important to customers, alcohol companies can create personalized and relevant marketing messages that are more likely to resonate with their target audience.

Overall, understanding the customer journey and your digital marketing funnel is essential for building strong customer relationships and driving business success.

Looking For Help Understanding Your Marketing Funnel?

Twist & Tailor is a digital marketing agency uniquely poised to help wine & spirits brands understand their customer journey and how to meet them at each point in the marketing funnel.

Book a consultation call and we'll talk more about how we can increase your marketing efforts this year.