While there are slick, and completely automated cider finder tools online that can help your customers find your cider at a nearby location, not every cidery wants to invest in the time and/or effort it may take.
But Helen Lewis, the Marketing Director for Portland Cider Co. feels it’s worth that time and investment to keep up to date.
“We point people to the Cider Finder on our website almost every day,” she said. “It is such a great tool to help fans track down a specific flavor of cider at a store closest to them. Especially for our newest cider releases.”
Lewis said a consumer being able to find the exact store near them that has their favorite six-pack or 19.2oz cans has been a hit with fans.
“We do everything in-house,” she explained. “It is a fairly simple and quick process altogether to update the Cider Finder.”
Team members will check to make sure the Cider Finder is running smoothly on the cidery’s website weekly because they are constantly sending people to that page.
“We have also made it a point to go through the process of updating it about every three weeks to ensure that the information is accurate as new ciders hit the market,” Lewis added.
With a distribution network throughout Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and most of California, Lewis said all of the company’s distributor partners provide them with sales data that they can consolidate through iDig VIP, where Portland Cider has a custom report to pull retail accounts that have bought their ciders within the last 30 days.
“We manually review that data to ensure accuracy to the best of our knowledge, and then we upload it to a third-party system called Meta-Locator to keep our Cider Finder up to date,” she said. “Both programs have been a huge help in keeping our Cider Finder updated and customers happy.”
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