With a lot of beer festivals either postponed or canceled this year, looking ahead to those that your brewery will be able to be a part of is both exciting for the staff and the consumers to take part in.
Letting your customer base know that you’re going to be at a fest and that you’re excited about it can be important, said Ryan Evans of Bruz Beers.
“It allows them to do more than just have a beer on your patio,” said Evens, a co-founder of the Denver brewery. “They’re going to have a beer amongst like-minded people in a fun environment and whatever key aspects that festival offers, so we try to get excited about and do a little bit of pre-loading and say, ‘Hey, we are going to be there! We’d love to see you!’
“You’d be surprised by how many people get excited about it that already follow you that are already fans of yours. They’ll email back and say, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to see it. We’re going to be there Saturday. I didn’t know you guys are pouring. Now I’m going to get a couple friends to go with me,’ and so it can help on that side.”
Holidaily Brewing also tries to put details of fests on social media as much as possible that it will be there.
Since the Golden, Colorado facility is a gluten-free brewery, pre-marketing a beer fest can be vital to let a certain crowd of consumers know.
“A lot of our customers will say, ‘Oh, this is awesome, because I can go and drink a gluten-free beer. I can also go with my whole friend group,’ ” said the brewery’s Kaitlyn Gipple. ” Normally they aren’t able to do that with their friends. I think that’s the big thing, is just letting our customers know that we’ll be there.”
Working with festival organizers to give away some tickets can also help gin up excitement for the consumer base.
Engaging with consumers more than once can be helpful as well while at the event. Being on the Belgian side of styles, Bruz will also do some timed releases and announce them at the fest.
“We might have three or four beers on tap at that particular festival. But then we’ll bring some barrel-aged bottled beer and say, ‘Hey, the last hour we’re going to tap these 6-12 bottles, and that gets them back at your table at least one more time,’ ” he said. “So they come by, they taste your beer early on, they see you got something special going on at one o’clock. And sure enough, they come back at one o’clock.
“So you get them over to your side more than once, which is valuable.”
Bruz will also sometimes do a giveaway for things like a couple of seats to a beer tasting class and Evans said they will have a drawing at the end of the event.
We can then add that name and info to our newsletter,” Evans said. “It gets the customer over to your tasting tent one more time, but it also gets you that contact information so that you can then start to market towards them.”
After the event, you can use pictures taken at the event to create post-event stories to share online.
“That story doesn’t have to end on that Saturday when the beer fest ends,” Evans said. “It can go on for several months and say, ‘Hey, remember back when we had so much fun over at the beer fest? Here’s a picture.’
“It keeps the brand in front of them.”
Photo courtesy Bruz Beers
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