It’s a strange time for all of us. A time that calls for creative ideas on a personal and business-related level. That’s why a lot of wineries are now delivering wine and curbside pickup or online purchases with low or no cost shipping. In this article, we’ll give you a few tips to get the word out and optimize your website for local deliveries. And although we are using wineries as an example, you can also use these tips if you own a distillery or any other type of local business. Let’s dive straight in!

1. Get the word out about your new wine delivery service

After you’ve made the decision to start with wine delivery, you need to notify as many people as possible. A good start is by posting the news on your own Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Now you might be thinking: “Facebook? Is that old thing still around?” It sure is! In fact, many people seem to have found their way back to Facebook. So don’t miss out and bring your old page back to life if you haven’t posted anything in a while. But don’t stop there! To really get the word out, try to think outside the box. What about partnering up with local influencers? That way, you’ll reach a whole new audience with the news that you’re delivering your unique wines up to 6 feet or 1,5 meters from their doorstep. Finally, don’t forget to add your new service to your bio on Twitter and Instagram. Want to know more about social media networking? See our article on 6 Engaging Social Post Ideas with COVID-19 Business Closures.

Additionally, remember to contact your local news agencies. Although the current situation rightfully dominates our news, local agencies are probably on the lookout for other (lighter) news as well. Create and share an awesome behind the scenes video for example. Your local news site will probably be happy with the new content provided and promote your wineries’ deliveries for free in the process. Also consider contacting UberEats and Doordash, which will also deliver alcohol such as wine. Also consider looking at a list of these wine, beer, and spirit delivery services to get your winery online on different platforms. Yes, they charge some money for that, but it quickly expands your reach on a local level. Plus, you can include a business card with your order and ask people to order directly at your winery next time.

2. Make sure they remember you

If you’re not doing this yet, include a list of wines you offer with food pairings and delivery options for customers to put on their fridge. Make sure people are able to download and print the list from your website as well. If you have weekly promotions or specials, include the start and end date so your customers know until when they’re able to order these. Also, add your preferred way to receive orders by stating your phone number and/or website.

Include branded napkins, coasters, or anything they can put in a kitchen drawer or on a shelf so every time they take out corkscrew or reach for a wine glass, they see your name. For example, some wineries are offering drink napkins or other small items that include a simple company sticker with every order.  

If you are using Activ8’s email system, or any other mailing system for that matter, you can set up a newsletter or send out custom emails with your winery information and special offers. And if you use WordPress you can add a newsletter subscription form to your website. Why am I telling you this? Because with this form you can quickly create a possibility for customers to subscribe to your weekly menus. Easy to subscribe, easy to unsubscribe.

If you aren’t using WordPress, and you have some spare time now, switching to WordPress is a great way to utilize your time at home. Scared? Consider hiring Activ8’s web design services to build your site for you. Expensive? Not necessarily. If you have a smaller website, you can really do a lot yourself. Plus, all our web packages come with 1 to 10  hours of training depending on which package you choose.

Reassure your customers by telling them what you’re doing to flatten the curve. A lot of wineries are open about their COVID19 precautions and what social distancing looks like at their wineries. Make sure that you are open about your precautions as well. That way, your customers will feel safe when you give them their delivery and thank them for their loyalty from an appropriate distance.

Another way to remind your audience of your new services is by reposting customer’s Instagram posts in your own Instagram stories. It’s touching to see the enthusiasm of people who ordered from their favorite wineries.

Offering virtual tastings is a great way to stay connected with your customers while promoting your wines and offering food pairing ideas. Let’s face it, most of us are going a bit stir crazy, how nice it would be to meet new people and connect with friends in your virtual tasting room. Want to know more about virtual tasting rooms? Check out this article on Virtual Winery Tasting Rooms.

3. Loyalty & Gift Cards

Does your business have loyalty or gift cards? Promote them! A sale is a sale. Customers can order wine and buy a loyalty or gift card at the same time. Your customers can send them to local family members.

So make sure to promote these cards on your website. Don’t hide the fact that they are really helping you out in dire times with these things. And if you don’t have a digital version yet, definitely consider making one. That way you’re able to send your loyalty or gift card to your customer’s email address!

4. Is pickup/takeout still possible?

Taking the right measures concerning social distancing, a lot of wineries still offer curbside pickup. If your winery also offers customers this possibility, then it’s important to promote this. Not only because you’re giving customers the option to save a few bucks on delivery costs, but it also saves you time!

If you have a WordPress website, consider adding the pickup option with a plugin such as Yoast Local SEO for WordPress. As with any WordPress plugin be sure to back up your website and test your pages after you install the plugin. If you prefer to have Activ8’s web design team do this for you, please contact us for more information.

You can also make sure your checkout process allows customers to choose pickup as a delivery method during checkout. And some wineries with curbside pickups are offering an extra incentive such as hand sanitizer or a specialty food item.

5. Optimize for your wine delivery area

Local optimization is actually pretty hard if you are servicing a broad local area. Local optimization tends to work best if you are able to optimize for a location, your physical address. The Yoast’s Local SEO plugin mentioned earlier helps you optimize for that address or several addresses if you have them. But even if you are located in a certain town, you might want to deliver in other neighboring towns as well. Optimizing for towns and cities you’re not located in, is a different ball game.

A word of warning: there is no quick technical fix for ranking in more than one town from one physical address. There is an AreaServed property defined in schema.org markup, but that is not being taken into account by Google right now. So don’t invest a ton of money into getting that working for you. But don’t worry, that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.

If you are serving more than one area, let your customers in those areas know. This probably means that you have to write a page about your deliveries for every town/city you want to serve. Because your delivery times might vary a bit depending on the area you’re writing for, you might want to advise customers that delivery times may vary if they live farther away from your winery or tasting room.

That’s it, now go be creative!

The examples of necessity-driven promotions we’ve seen so far are amazing and can teach us “experts” a thing or two about creative marketing ideas. So keep it up and think creative! These are strange times and we hope that the tips and tricks in this article* help you optimize your winery services to keep your business running and profitable.

* This article was edited and adapted from an article by yoast.com called 5 tips to switch from restaurant to food delivery.