Getting People To Know You Exist

[jgmjackson]

Just like the title says - I am compiling a list of successful ways new (or existing for that matter) breweries have gone about getting new customers to know they exist. In other words, what has got people to hear of you?

What has worked best?
What has continued to work over time?
What was a waste of time and money?
What has worked for locals? tourists?

[3guysandabeerd]

do a ton of tastings and them more tasting and if you have the beer fests word of mouth works best and make the best dam beer you can they will find you takes time

hope this helps cheers matt

[jgmjackson]

Thanks, Matt. Taking it back a step further and assuming you do the tastings at the brewery, what was successful in getting people to hear about your tasting events (other than word of mouth)?

JJ

[3guysandabeerd]

social media seems to help out a lot but you have to keep you with it my business partner and I are always putting stuff on there even if its pics of us brewing and telling them what were brewing we also started an email list from are web site and every Thursday we send out and email of events and the new tap list and up coming beers then going to bars we are beer is served and doing a food/beer tasting lets people get to know who you are and also we try and hit the heavy vacation and tourist spots when the time is right so every fri and sat were out doing something
if you have any more questions send me a PM and ill tell you more

[Bainbridge]

Get a beer bottle suit and dance around by the highway off-ramp?

But seriously...
Word of mouth is huge. Get people talking.

Mug Club Members become your ambassadors.

Coherent branding on your shirts, your van, your kegs, your website, everything.

Print advertising is hit or miss. I find brochures are useful, but newspapers and other publications haven't show much return.

Facebook is increasingly useless for pro-actively getting the word out. Prepare to pay to have your posts seen, and prepare to have those posts arbitrarily rejected for no consistent reason. We are moving toward a weekly email-list based approach. Maintain and update a facebook page anyway though because people will seek you out on it.

Your website should at the least be a proper website and not just a facebook page. Above all, front and center, it should have hours, contact info, and a map. Then worry about bragging about your beers, or prattling on with your heartwarming story.

If you have a blog, you have to regularly update it. And ain't nobody got time for that.

Festivals are good when you're starting out. Diminishing returns later on. I am increasingly over them. (Depending on your market that is. Here, there's one or more every f-ing weekend and typically 30-60 breweries at the big ones, 8-12 at the small ones.) Be choosy, not a floozy, or you'll drive yourself and your staff crazy.

Small festivals can be better than big ones. Even better if you're the only brewery. Like we pour at the beer gardens for the 3rd and 4th of July here, which are huge local events.

Small festivals can be worse than big ones. Like nobody is there, or the wrong demographic is there, and it's a waste of your precious weekend.

Brewers nights can be a lot of fun, and good marketing both to the public and to your account. Plus a tasty dinner! Or the account can be using you to get some swag and drum up some business on a slow night by falsely promising to put some kegs of yours on later. Word gets around, talk to other local breweries to spot the serial offenders of this. And you've got to engage with the customers one on one. So if you're a shrinking violet, opt for the sort of event where you've got a five course meal to a small group of people who really want to be there, versus a crowded bar where nobody really gives a crap and just wants to drink in peace. Nothing worse than standing around awkwardly going "Hey. Um. So I made the beer."

For local self-distribution, it's the personal relationships that make or break it. Get to know the owners, buyers, lead bar staff, etc of every place around you that you want to sell beer. Then keep stopping in for a pint and a chat, bring some samples of new beers, etc.. Maintain those relationships and you maintain your place on tap.

[jgmjackson]

Thanks for your replies, Matt and Russell. I don't even have a brewery yet and blogging once a week is already tough. Does anybody have experience with various paid online advertising options (social media, yelp, beer sites, google, etc.) and if so, have they been successful?

JJ

[Zawlard]

Get a beer bottle suit and dance around by the highway off-ramp?

But seriously...
Word of mouth is huge. Get people talking.

Mug Club Members become your ambassadors.

Coherent branding on your shirts, your van, your kegs, your website, everything.

Print advertising is hit or miss. I find brochures are useful, but newspapers and other publications haven't show much return.

Facebook is increasingly useless for pro-actively getting the word out. Prepare to pay to have your posts seen, and prepare to have those posts arbitrarily rejected for no consistent reason. We are moving toward a weekly email-list based approach. Maintain and update a facebook page anyway though because people will seek you out on it.

Your website should at the least be a proper website and not just a facebook page. Above all, front and center, it should have hours, contact info, and a map. Then worry about bragging about your beers, or prattling on with your heartwarming story.

If you have a blog, you have to regularly update it. And ain't nobody got time for that.

Festivals are good when you're starting out. Diminishing returns later on. I am increasingly over them. (Depending on your market that is. Here, there's one or more every f-ing weekend and typically 30-60 breweries at the big ones, 8-12 at the small ones.) Be choosy, not a floozy, or you'll drive yourself and your staff crazy.

Small festivals can be better than big ones. Even better if you're the only brewery. Like we pour at the beer gardens for the 3rd and 4th of July here, which are huge local events.

Small festivals can be worse than big ones. Like nobody is there, or the wrong demographic is there, and it's a waste of your precious weekend.

Brewers nights can be a lot of fun, and good marketing both to the public and to your account. Plus a tasty dinner! Or the account can be using you to get some swag and drum up some business on a slow night by falsely promising to put some kegs of yours on later. Word gets around, talk to other local breweries to spot the serial offenders of this. And you've got to engage with the customers one on one. So if you're a shrinking violet, opt for the sort of event where you've got a five course meal to a small group of people who really want to be there, versus a crowded bar where nobody really gives a crap and just wants to drink in peace. Nothing worse than standing around awkwardly going "Hey. Um. So I made the beer."

For local self-distribution, it's the personal relationships that make or break it. Get to know the owners, buyers, lead bar staff, etc of every place around you that you want to sell beer. Then keep stopping in for a pint and a chat, bring some samples of new beers, etc.. Maintain those relationships and you maintain your place on tap.

How great is this advise? Many gems here but this one is priceless!

[Scott M]

Educate your accounts on your beer. A Cicerone or bartender who knows your general malt bill, hop additions, and nuances that make your beer unique is priceless. As a beer geek and brewer, I love it when the server knows what beer they are serving.

[Brandjes]

Donating a gift basket with a growler, t shirt and gift card to fill the jug has been a good way to get noticed outside my normal market. I probably do 2 per month to charity auctions

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

[wlw33]

Hi,
We have been open a little more than a year. We had built up a decent buzz before we opened by doing tastings. We weren't picky about which ones we did. We were home brewers trying to go pro so we had no experience but we managed to amass over 1000 Facebook followers before we even opened, and 500-600 Twitter followers too. We also hosted fundraiser dinners at my partner's house with samples and food we made ourselves, creating private facebook events and inviting our friends and family. Not only did we raise some dough but it helped us seem legit, even though we were brewing 5-15 gallon batches in my messy garage on a podunk home brew system.

A couple years ago, FB was a lot better for marketing than it is now because of their news feed algorithms, but as mentioned before you still need to regularly update it.

Getting people in the brewery was hard after our grand opening. We would have encouraging nights here and there, and then we would have days where we made under $50 and some days when we had 0 customers. We opened in the fall and were blessed with a terrible winter which definitely played a part in our slow start but luckily things picked up in the spring by us doing some bottle release dinners.

This summer we began doing a Groupon offer which has been pretty great. It doesn't net you a lot of money, but almost everyone who comes in ends up buying growlers anyway, and Groupon periodically dumps some money into your bank account. Our offer is a tour for 2 with two pint glasses and tasting for $12 and $24 for four people so we are ordering pint glasses more frequently but it still has worked out pretty well as the groupon price covers the cost of the glassware.

Also, as mentioned before, make awesome beer. If it sucks, take the loss and dump it. And figure out why it sucked. You'll make up for it later by only having good beer on tap and therefore repeat customers. Limited release sours and higher ABV beers generate buzz and a high markup (we do very small bottle releases at the brewery only)

Cheers

[ChesterBrew]

Another great opportunity is to use your local news, radio stations and print news. They are always starving for content. When you are ready to launch and after, give them the opportunity to interview you, the team, etc. You'll get lots of exposure. We gained significant share of mind using these sources and they were thankful to have a fun topic to report.

We've been really fortunate to receive a large amount for free publicity this way as we work towards our planned opening sometime in December. Be sure to utilize it, especially if you're like me and have a face for radio.

[3rdcoast]

Another great opportunity is to use your local news, radio stations and print news. They are always starving for content. When you are ready to launch and after, give them the opportunity to interview you, the team, etc. You'll get lots of exposure. We gained significant share of mind using these sources and they were thankful to have a fun topic to report.

Not that it's always possible, but if you can find an employee (or fan) who knows how to write a press release and take a decent high rez photo, you can become the darling of your local media. As a former journalist I was constantly getting the brewery I worked for free publicity and photo ops. We would create any excuse to create content for the local papers and radio. We did a 'one million pint poured' event in the middle of winter. Trust me, nothing else was happening that day, so lots of coverage