Streamline your marketing efforts, stay organized during a busy season, and maximize your ROI with this comprehensive marketing kit from our partners at Outshinery.
By guest author: Laurie Millotte, founder of Outshinery
Spring is a busy time for the wine industry, with customers eager to sip on refreshing wines and enjoy the warmer weather. As a winery, it's important to stay organized and plan ahead to make the most of the season. That's where Outshinery and WineDirect come in - we've teamed up to bring you a comprehensive Spring 2024 Marketing Calendar that will help you supercharge your marketing efforts and make this season a success.
We've included all the important dates and events for the season, including holidays, wine festivals, and more. With our calendar, you'll be able to plan out your promotions, sales, and social media content well in advance, ensuring that you're staying ahead of the competition and capturing your customers' attention.
In addition to the dates and events, we've also included expert tips and strategies for marketing your wines in the spring. From creating eye-catching graphics to running successful social media campaigns, our tips will help you make the most of the season and reach new customers.
Outshinery is the leading provider of high-quality product images and marketing materials for wineries and alcoholic beverage brands. With a proven track record of working with thousands of brands worldwide, Outshinery is dedicated to helping businesses elevate their marketing efforts and stand out on the busy digital shelf. From Bottle Shots to Lifestyle Images and Ecommerce Copywriting, Outshinery offers a range of services that help wineries capture the essence of their wines and convey it to potential customers.
No shipping, scheduling, or coordination headaches. Only dazzling results delivered in ready-to-use formats that work wherever you need them. Your products have just seconds to shine on the digital shelf — Outshinery makes them truly sparkle.
Visit www.outshinery.com to get started.
Be prepared and sell more wine this holiday season with this comprehensive marketing kit from our partners at Outshinery.
By guest author: Laurie Millotte, founder of Outshinery
Get your winery ready for the gifting season with the Holiday Marketing Kit from WineDirect and Outshinery. We've included all the essentials you need to thrive, including a customized calendar to stay on top of warehouse deadlines. Sail smoothly through the most important time of the year, stress-free!
But that's not all! We've also sprinkled in some inspiration for all your communication needs. Reach out to new customers, engage existing ones, and watch your sales soar!
Here's what you'll find in your kit:
📆 Content guidance for October, November, and December ’23 with all the important dates such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, shipping deadlines, marketing tips, AI prompts, and so much more.
🗓️ Customizable monthly calendars to help you brainstorm, strategize, and stay on top of things.
💌 Content prompts to help you craft festive and compelling messages that will captivate your audience all season long.
💸 An exclusive 10% OFF on your Outshinery purchase. New or current customer, everyone's welcome!
So why wait? Download your free OND Marketing Kit today! 👉
Introducing Outshinery: With our unrivaled expertise in creating photorealistic 3D product renders, we elevate your sales and marketing efforts to a whole new level. Our visually captivating and industry-relevant content is meticulously crafted to ensure your brand leaves an unforgettable impression. The best part? You can achieve all of this online, without the hassle of shipping physical samples, while enjoying our exceptional 5-star customer service.
Ready to dazzle this holiday season? Embark on your journey at www.outshinery.com and unlock the possibilities. Let the celebration begin!
The ground-breaking 2021 Direct-to-Consumer Impact Report from WineDirect and Enolytics focuses on what wineries need to do now to sustain and improve their wine sales. According to the report, website sales have “settled at a level that far exceeds pre-pandemic highs, almost doubling from 2019.”
Everyone is shopping for everything online now, and as the data proves, this includes wine. This means that your winery’s online real estate must match the quality, reputation, and style of your actual tasting room and products. The look and feel of any virtual touchpoints remind shoppers of your brand and the reason they chose your bottles over millions of others whether it's through your website, social media channels like Instagram, or other immersive experiences like augmented reality.
How can your winery capitalize on the changing landscape of ecommerce and website sales to attract and retain consumers? Outshinery has proven and recommended ways to make it happen for your winery by using their 3D artistry for flawless and consistent wine bottle photography.
"The importance of using your existing consumer base to keep DTC business afloat and grow became even more apparent." The report highlights that repeat buyers and club members accounted for 94% of sales during the height of the pandemic. Thankfully, those days seem to be behind us, but it is still important to realize the value of marketing your products in ways that are fresh, seasonal, and unique to these valuable clients who may have already purchased or considered these bottles.
Laurie Millotte, Outshinery’s founder, likens bottle photography with a regular camera to trying to take a selfie in a house of mirrors. Lots of glare and distracting reflective qualities. Still, a winery needs at least one bottle of shot of each and every product — and that’s at a minimum. “Wineries spend a lot of time and money getting just a few assets, most likely just the bottle shot, and they have to constantly recycle and use the same ones,” she says. If your consumers haven’t seen your wines depicted differently than they did in 2020 and 2021, how will the product get their attention and suscitate interest?
Lifestyle Images showcase your product in a setting that helps people see how the wine will fit into their lives, and this allows wineries to keep it diverse and interesting. Some of Outshinery’s best-selling images illustrate a bottle at a dinner party surrounded by friends, or served on the table for pizza night. Maybe a club member bought the wine last year to give as a gift, and this year they’ll see that bottle of wine as more versatile, and decide to buy a few to enjoy in their own home!
Images keep your customers interested with easy and consistent pings. Keeping these pings fresh means your messaging doesn’t grow stale or allow your brand to disappear into the background when people think about other things in their lives, such as competing beverage categories or the various items they spend time and money on regularly. By using seasonally-appropriate imagery in your advertising campaigns including engaging visuals in your social media posts, you can stay top-of-mind with repeat buyers and increase engagement on social media.
Wine brands may be tempted to focus on pulling in new customers (which images can also do) but they shouldn’t neglect those current customers when there’s potential to nurture them into new purchases and improve the customer experience. Google data shows that people need seven hours of interaction, spanning 11 touchpoints over four different locations.* If a winery has already earned that trust through literally hours of hard work, it shouldn’t let it slip away by taking these valuable people for granted. Show them something new!
Another way Outshinery clients sell more wine is by displaying bottle lineups to compel buyers to purchase in bundles or consider joining the wine club. “If you’re working to build your Wine Club, know that it’s a big leap for a consumer to go from not knowing you to joining your Club,” writes the report authors. “Ease new contacts along the journey by inviting them to take small steps first - joining your email list, visiting your winery, purchasing a 3-bottle bundle."
“Group shots allow wineries to showcase new or unknown wines next to best-sellers and fan favorites,” says Laurie. This helps shoppers consider buying wines that perhaps they wouldn’t click on, but when they see next to a wine that they already love, open that door to a totally fresh purchase. Outshinery group shots can always be kept up to date, unlike traditional photography. If one of the wines in the image sells out or needs a vintage update, no problem. “The last thing you want is to falsely advertise a product, get people engaged and excited but actually not having it available for sale,” says Laurie.
Group shots also give a sense of the scope of the winery or the wine brand. They identify the different levels within the portfolio, such as reserve and premium versus everyday wine. This helps Outshinery clients tell the story of what kind of products they are making, giving an overall projection of their values and focus points.
The 2021 Direct-to-Consumer Impact Report encourages segmenting winery communications, but not simply on how much customers have spent: “Dig into what they’ve purchased, how much they’ve purchased per transaction, what times of the year they tended to purchase wine and whether they bought online and also onsite.” This means that your marketing team should be prepared to send messaging that responds to each segment taking into consideration their unique needs. A way to get to their hearts is time-honored: through their stomachs. By tailoring imagery and messaging to their unique needs, you can entice past customers to make another purchase.
One of the most exciting products that Outshinery clients use is customized recipe packs that pair with their actual wine, which is also depicted and explained on the card. These are professionally written recipes, styled and photographed by a team of artists who understand how to create dishes with wine in mind. Go behind the scenes to learn more.
Laurie believes these are the next evolution of tasting notes and tech sheets, because instead of simply relying on facts and figures, these actually show a real-life meal with which this wine can be enjoyed. These work double time as a banding opportunity for wineries and an educational tool for wine lovers. A short tasting note and spot for accolades and winery description provide ways to make clients familiar with the brand and product. “This is something that can be created on-demand and quickly turned around, and it really helps to mix it up easily and on a budget to keep customers and your audience engaged,” says Laurie.
The report states that wineries should begin planning by establishing an annual calendar. “Know that seasonality will be different for different channels. POS is increasing from February through October, while Online Sales are peaking based on holidays.”
To prep for top holidays like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and even Valentine’s Day sign up to receive Outshinery’s free Marketing Calendars, which are released each quarter and have all the holidays and important wine days, plus inspiration on how to communicate with wine loving audiences via social media, email, and club communications. This downloadable resource even includes a place to write your own notes and dates.
It’s an old adage that the report proves to be true: “It’s a lot more efficient, and a lot less expensive, to sell to existing consumers than to acquire new consumers.” With a few easy and budget-friendly assets from Outshinery, your brand and products get a fresh look that drives sales increases customer loyalty and retention rates
Check out outshinery.com to learn more and get your first Bottle Shot and Lifestyle Image for free.
Outshinery uses 3D tech to create flawless product images for the wine industry. Online everything, and hassle free, without the need to coordinate external professionals or ship physical samples. Bottle Shots, Lifestyle Images, Product Videos, and more. 550+ clients and 1500+ brands from 16 countries enjoy working with Outshinery. Join hundreds of ambitious, impact-driven, marketing directors, sales managers, and DtC coordinators from around the world who are committed to ramping up wine sales.
Celebrations call for wine, and with the flurry of the upcoming season, you can take advantage of the excitement, without doubling down on effort.
The average American adult makes an incredible 35,000 decisions every day.
Do you identify with the chaos of all those choices? As a business owner or decision-maker, you are constantly evaluating ways to elevate your brand. Meanwhile, your customers are dealing with the same overwhelming avalanche of information when they head online to make a purchase.
The fall and winter seasons add an extra layer of fluster to the mix. In the wine world, October, November and December - also known as OND - mean harvest, wine club shipments and numerous holidays (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkuh, Christmas and New Year’s Eve!). It’s a crucial time of the year for your business and a moneymaker opportunity when it comes to customer buying habits.
One way to make this season come together is to streamline your marketing to take advantage of the excitement, without doubling down on effort.
Here’s an idea: take one bottle and visually present it three ways. This approach keeps you organized and efficient, and relieves the dreaded feeling of being empty-handed during this ideal selling season. It works for all products, across your full portfolio, and it elevates your brand to the top.
In the array below it becomes easy to see how one bottle shot can be used year around with an evergreen effect, while lifestyle images are relevant and evocative for a particular season.
Portray your brand as timely and fresh with super minimal effort. A few moments of planning at the beginning of the season will outfit your bottles for the final quarter of the year. The peace of mind of being prepared frees you up to focus on other tasks, meanwhile your images work non-stop for you.
Lifestyle images help your customers view your wines and gift sets as ideal for their celebrations and gift-giving occasions. There are a number of ways to incorporate this imagery into your marketing efforts.
For example, create a One Click Offer using WineDirect's promotional tools. These offers allow your customers to click on an image in a marketing email - or even on social media - that takes them directly to the checkout page with a pre-filled shopping cart. Fewer clicks for them, more online sales for you!
You can also target customers with up-sell and cross-sell tools through WineDirect's platform. With well chosen promos, you can entice customers to spend a little more with each transaction.
Here are some examples of how to make this work for your portfolio:
The first step is getting a flawless bottle shot, using the latest 3D technology by Outshinery. Consider it like casting your actor (your wine) and then welcoming them to a performance-ready stage (the lifestyle scene). We need to get that star flawlessly ready first!
The results can not only be used to craft festive lifestyle images, but employed right away for ecommerce to improve your email marketing efforts and winery website, wine club communications, print materials and much more. (For more on bottle shots, check out Wine Lifestyle Photography and Bottle Shots: What Options are There? and High-quality Bottle Shots: an investment that pays off.)
Order bottle shots for every wine in your portfolio or at the very least, just the ones on which you want to focus in October, November, and December.
Maybe it’s simply red wines, or library wines, or bottles at the most premium level. Perhaps you want to highlight wines that you have in large supply, or customer favorites. Decide areas to place focus on and consider the style of the labels too, using color and texture inherent in the design to set a mood for your visuals. After that, the sky's the limit. Select lifestyle images from an ever-evolving gallery organized into collections for easy sorting. If you need advice on how to roll out a seasonal marketing plan featuring these images, download your free playbook from Outshinery here, Seasonal marketing: A guide for family wineries.This guide helps you break up the tasks involved in marketing for a particular season (or two). Imagine the possibilities on social media -- this stuff is solid gold!
You can also refer to WineDirect's holiday checklist for tried and true tips on making the most of this busy holiday sales season, or check out numerous holiday tips and articles featured in their Knowledge Center.
Last but not least...
Here’s a little gift to get you started: a complimentary lifestyle image for first-time test shots! If you've already claimed your image with Outshinery, you can get another one with any new paid orders as a friend of WineDirect. Just use code WINEDIRECT at checkout, through December 31, 2019.
You can browse lifestyle images on Outshinery's website. Set yourself up for success this fall and winter holiday season. Time to get festive!
Maximizing DTC wine sales during gifting season takes dedicated time and organization. Download your inspirational cheat sheet on how to market one bottle three ways for fall and winter sales!
Download yours for free today by filling out the form on the right.
Your can also check out:
Outshinery’s mission is to empower wineries like yours with imagery that sells. Learn more at Outshinery.com
Humans are incredibly visual by nature. Images can help you facilitate and enhance how customers perceive your brand. Your winery’s photography and bottle shots serve as your ambassadors. Not only are they indispensable for your website and online store, they are also valuable assets across all your marketing channels.
Product photography helps you nurture the decision-making journey of a typical wine buyer. The quality of a wine bottle shot directly influences sales: the better it looks, the better it sells!
There are plenty of great reasons to display your wine bottles on a pure white background: highlighting your products and improving consistency come first to mind. However you need much more visual content to run a successful marketing campaign. Using a bottle shot on a white background for social media is uninspiring to say the least... That’s where wine lifestyle images come in.
When your products are displayed in context, they tell a story, persuade, and inspire. It is especially crucial for the latest “Instagram generation.” People put even greater emphasis on how things look. Consumers will not buy, nor trust, a brand that is using subpar imagery.
That said, it can be hard for wineries to meet these high standards. Finding a budget-friendly, logistically viable, and repeatable wine photography solution is challenging to say the least.
Until recently, you only had three options:
You now have a new option!
You can use Outshinery – an innovative service based entirely online. Using the same technology as Hollywood, we can create all your visual content (bottle shots, lifestyle images and short product videos) without the need for physical samples.
So, do you want lifestyle images for your winery? Let’s see how these four options compare.
Photographers come with various skill sets and styles. The good ones will do a fantastic job, but their services can be very costly and hard to repeat. These photo shoots also take a lot of time to organize. Photographers rarely work alone – they need to hire a stylist to source and set accessories, as well as an assistant. More people can equate to more risks. Initial budgets can explode, logistical issues can arise, and unforeseen delays can occur.
It may take weeks before you receive your final photos. And after all that, you have absolutely no guarantee on the final results – but are stuck with them, matter how satisfied with the outcome.
Stock photography in the wine industry tends to be generic and overused.
Stock photography websites are abundant, providing generic wine photography images for instant download. Chances are, however, you will struggle to find a truly compelling image that reflects your brand. You may end up browsing endlessly, while in the end, settling for an uninspiring wine lifestyle photo...and then you still have to figure out how to photoshop your label onto the image!
The problem with stock photos is that they tend to be generic and overused. If everyone uses the same images, they won’t contain the character and personality that make people believe in your brand. A stock photo may provide a quick fix when in a bind, but it won’t let your brand truly shine and get noticed by your audience.
Do-It-Yourself wine photography may not be the best option for your brand.
You can always try to go the “Do-It-Yourself” route. After all, the quality of the camera on your phone is really good! The catch is that not only do you have to make the time in your already busy schedule, but you also have to take time to purchase the accessories and style the scene. And then you have to nail the lighting… which is easier said than done!
We all know that wine bottles are highly reflective, and the glass surface will show anything and everything from the surrounding environment, including you, holding your phone! For all these reasons, enticing, DIY photography for the alcohol industry is incredibly hard to achieve.
Our services at Outshinery outshine all the options above by combining the advantages of stock photography (online, speed, guaranteed outcome) with the craftsmanship of talented photographers and prop stylists -- without requiring you to step behind the camera. The results? Custom Bottle Shots and Lifestyle Images featuring your brand, drawing on seasonal themes and celebrations while avoiding clichés.
We’ll take care of everything! First, we re-create your bottles in a 3D modeling software and then place them digitally into a backdrop of your choice. To ensure a hyper-realistic result, the glass surface of your bottle will reflect the surrounding environment in order to integrate seamlessly. No one will notice the magic trick! This is CGI applied to the alcohol industry. Best of all, you can be certain of the results before committing, and it only takes a few business days to receive dazzling photos displaying your products.
Outshinery first creates individual bottle shots, which then allow you to place your product into any backdrop, creating enticing lifestyle images.
Each of the Lifestyle Images we offer are created with purpose, right from the get-go. Our mission is to equip you with visual content that delights consumers and drives more sales. Our wine Lifestyle Images are perfect for websites, editorials, emails, brochures, social media, and so much more. Quick turnaround time and dedicated service allow you consistent, quality marketing assets whenever you need them.
We live in a visual world. From an attention-grabbing social media post to a newsletter with in-context imagery; from physical flyers and banners to product pages that convert… desirable photography does a lot of the legwork for you.
Quality visuals reflect product quality. Give your brand justice with proper visual content. Stay inspired, always have great wine photography on hand for marketing, and drive more sales.
Oh! And we are so confident you’ll like what you see that we offer a complimentary test shot to all first-time customers! No strings attached, just sparkles.
While it is relatively easy to calculate the ROI for equipment and machinery, it can be hard to measure for less tangible departments, like marketing and packaging. Yet, it doesn’t make these elements less crucial to your business’s overall performance. Adequate visual content offers great return on investment when approached strategically.
Marketing efforts’ returns can be particularly challenging to pin down. How do you know if the quality of your bottle shots in your online store impacts people’s shopping decisions? If the featured imagery on social media influences sales? If the video on your landing page converts to longer website sessions?
If these questions make your blood run cold, you are not alone! According to the Content Marketing Institute, 59% of marketers are either unsure or have no clarity on what success looks like for their business.
But, measuring the performance of your photos and videos will empower you with better insights on how to deliver value to your business… without having to constantly second-guess yourself!
Return-on-investment is a percentage that identifies the revenue made in comparison to the time and money spent creating your visuals. Here is what the equation looks like:
Here's a concrete example: you can determine the ROI of your Facebook promoted content by applying the formula below.
This means that for every $1 you spent on this piece of promotional content, you earned $3 back. A great start for sure!
According to experts, an ideal ROI ratio is 5:1 or 500%. For every $1 you spent, you make $5 in return. As a rule of thumb, a 200%, or 2:1 ratio, means your company would only break even after the cost of production and marketing, which is not ideal.
To keep things simple and attainable, aim for results mentioned in the example above: an ROI of 300% is a great starting point. You can always aim for 500% at a later stage!
The truth is, your imagery (photos, videos, graphics, etc.) creates a myriad of benefits, other than just sales, and those can sometimes be hard to define.
You can define the “return” on visual content by the increase in brand awareness, audience engagement and overall sales. Keep in mind that the human brain processes images in as little as 13 milliseconds and studies show that 93% of consumers consider the visual appearance of a product to be the key factor in a purchasing decision!
Your “investment” will come in different shapes and forms: internal production costs (marketing team), external production costs (photographer), time spent planning and managing content strategy (marketing manager), advertising (Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc.), software and equipment (WineDirect, iPad for tasting rooms, etc.)
Building upon the standard ROI formula, you can define “return” and “investment” like this:
Custom visual content communicates your brand's unique offerings and commitment to quality in a way that stock imagery never can. But how can you afford it?
Let’s look into concrete examples of what you could be measuring to calculate the ROI of your visual content marketing.
a) Look at your website sessions:
Similar to how you track your goals, you can track your website sessions to determine your value of return. Jump into your Google Analytics account and head to Audience > Overview > and select the dates you want to review. (Note: if you have over 1,000 sessions a day we recommend a month over month view, otherwise stick to the week over week view.)
Start recording your metrics in an excel sheet to identify spikes and relative downturns that may also be reflected in your sales! Tip: if you’re ready for more Google Analytics, go to Acquisition > Referrals and check out what has been sending traffic your way. Take note and try to repeat these successes!
b) Survey your social media awareness:
Record metrics like volume and reach. You want to know how far your message is spreading. Pay particular attention to the numbers displayed on your Facebook Business Manager and/or Instagram Insights.
In the same spreadsheet you started above, in another tab, include:
Now, look at those numbers over time: how are they trending? Can you confidently report how your social media awareness is building up? Nowadays, great brand awareness starts on social - if these three indicators are increasing month over month, you are doing something right!
c) Measure your social media engagement:
There are a multitude of platforms that can help you out with this measurement but here are some basic metrics you can identify on your own: shares, comments and clicks per post.
These metrics will give you the data to understand how engaged your followers are with your content. Many social media specialists value these metrics over likes and awareness metrics. They are great indicators of how your content is amplified and your brand awareness is building up.
Visuals are memorable and effective, because they help people process, understand, and retain more information more quickly. Take the driver’s seat by tracking your visual content ROI regularly. Experiment, learn, tweak and repeat. This may just be one of the best, overlooked investments you can make!
Kick start your summer social media and convert browsers in buyers with this comprehensive social media kit by our partners at Outshinery.
Want to do a better job marketing your winery on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and even SnapChat? Our summer guide makes it easy for you to plan campaigns, engage in trending conversations and execute timely content.
Your kit includes:
Download yours for free today!
Outshinery’s mission is to empower wineries like yours with imagery that sells. Learn more at Outshinery.com
Wine clubs offer strong recurring revenue - which is why 75 percent of wineries have one. Read the full blog post here for strategies on growing your wine club and increase retention rates.
The next logical question is: How do I focus on making my wine club members involved in the wine they love to drink? That's exactly what Outshinery lays out in our latest template. Implementing a wine club mailer within your club shipments will connect your club members with their wine and create more loyal wine fans.
Download the free wine club mailer template on the top right of this page!
