Strategic positioning of your winery: Create your personal and strong winery brand!
What is special about your winery and why should I spend money on your wine? What seems to be a simple question turns out to be the most important question to answer in times of a saturated wine market, high competition and stagnating consumption. A strategic positioning helps you to find answers to those questions and will make your marketing easier and – most importantly – more relevant to your customers. Use the adavantages of a strategic positioniong for your winery and save yourself money, nerves and time!
Start from the scatch: What is strategic positioning?
In my daily business routine, winery owners often ask me questions like “should we post about xy?”, “should I use the social media channel xy to better promote our wines?”, “does it make sense to communicate in language xy?”.
To be honest, you could easily answer those questions by yourself if you got your strategic positioning right. So, what is strategic positioning at all? Strategic positioning refers to your brand, how it differentiates from competitors (from other wineries) and how it is perceived by clients. Through what do you stand out of the crowd? For that it is important to do some grass-roots work. Strategic positioning challenges you to really think about the basis of of your business:
- Who are you ideal clients?
- What does the market look like? Are there any trends?
- What makes you and your winery special?
- What are the USPs (Unique Selling Proposition) of your winery?
- Why do you produce wine?
If you made up your mind to answer those questions, it will be an easy task to create a marketing plan which perfectly targets your clientele with effective marketing measures. Are you the embodiment of a down-to-earth PIWI winery, a luxurious red wine boutique winery or a futuristic event location with AI-animated tours in the vineyard? Find your strategic positioning and develop it in detail. Then, times will be over in which you loose energy with non-targeted, inefficient marketing activities.
Create your unique winery DNA and escape the competition.
Most small familiy-owned wineries are overloaded with work. I know, you are not only a winemaker. You are also the marketing guy, the tax professional (uff!) and the sales person – all in one. Maybe you took over the winery from your parents and since then the priority has been to keep the business running. Work, sleep, repeat. Are you missing a chance here?
What chance? A chance to have a closer look at your business and to evaluate which direction it should take in the future. Call it what you like: strategic positioning, winery branding, business strategy or just a plan. The most important success factor is that you have a strong base which gives your business a clear direction. In order to attract the right customers, to successfully promote your wines and to implement a useful marketing appraoch, you need to define your unique winery DNA! Strategic postioning is a helpful tool to develop this unique DNA.
Why is strategic positioning important for your winery? 5 benefits for your winery.
You have already learned about a few benefits of strategic positioning in this article. Now, let´s make it very explicit how you as winery owner can benefit from it.
1. Focus & Clarity: Your strategic positioning gives you clarity about what makes you special (your winery DNA), about your ideal clients, your offer and your USP (Unique Selling Proposition).
2. Efficient & targeted measures: Accordingly, you develop a marketing plan which fits your target group and the key elements you want to communicate. No more “should I post this?”, “Is this relevant?”. You will be able to answer those questions by yourself once you have created your strategic positioning.
3. Reduced workload: A strategy is particularly helpful to identify what is NOT relevant for your winery by eliminating redundant factors. Your ideal target group is over 60 years? I´d suggest you skip the effort for using Snapchat.
4. Less competition: Once you have identified your USPs and you are acting accordingly, you have the chance to escape the competition. Without strategic positioning you will clearly sink in an ocean full of competitors.
5. More success: This sounds very general. But the point is, through targeted measures you will gain more reach, strengthen your brand and increase sales. Please note: It is not only about selling more wines but about strengthening your brand which can have a positive impact on your pricing policy.
Conclusion: No success without strategic positioning
The success of your winery depends on a strategic positioning. In times of high competition in the wine sector, it is crucial to show to your clients why they should choose you over other wineries. What makes you special? What do you promise your clients? What do they get from you?
Only by answering those questions you can build a strong winery brand and show the value of your winery to the customers.
Need some help?
Would you like to work on your strategic positioning but you don´t know where to start? You need some inspiration to boost your marketing? Let´s have a first, free call together, so I can understand your challenges and prepare an individual offer for you.
Get in touch now and send a message through the contact form.