Pulling the trigger on yet another cost is always a debate as a brewery owner or marketing manager. The rise of the Untappd app gives mixed reviews to every brewery owner, employee and craft beer connoisseurs.
The Alementary did pay to be a “Verified Venue” because, as COO Blake Crawford said, “While being — on the whole — horrible for our industry, Untappd is unavoidable.”
He pointed out that too many bars, restaurants, liquor stores and other outlets surf Untappd scores when deciding what new beers to bring in.
“You gotta play the game, and Verified Venue including badges is just another tool in that game,” he said. “I’d cancel in a heartbeat, but there’s extended marketing value.”
Phoenix Brewing Company became a verified venue to utilize the Mansfield, Ohio brewery’s print and digital menu resources.
“It significantly reduced our overall time creating and sharing menus and made them more consistent and accurate,” said Creative and Marketing Director Carmone Macfarlane. “It supplemented our marketing efforts at that time.”
She added that weekly tap rotations made revising offerings on print and digital menus, Facebook and the website very time consuming and difficult.
“Especially on a busy weekend,” she noted. “We set up our Untappd menus to automatically update on our website and Facebook when edited on the app.”
Both Topa Topa and GameCraft told Brewer they opted not to go that route and instead focused on another online outlet that is just as important.
“It’s amazing how many people use Google compared to other services like Untappd and Yelp,” said Topa Topa founder Jack Dyer.
“We understand Untappd’s choice to raise subscription fees, but for us, the value simply isn’t there,” said Marketing Specialist at GameCraft, Kelly Beach. “Most of our customers don’t regularly use the app, we have our own menu system, and Untappd’s demographic here (Laguna Hills, California) is not an accurate representation of who we appeal to.
“Instead, we focus on making sure all of our core outlets contain relevant/accurate info like Google/our website/socials/Yelp/etc.”
Google is still incredibly effective for businesses and most tools are free, Beach said.
“In an ever-increasing world of pay-to-play tools, having a couple free resources is huge,” they said.
Macfarlane said that a few other places that Phoenix Brewing keeps venue information updated is on Google, Trip Advisor, Yelp, its state beer guild’s website along with local travel bureaus, state tourism websites and publications, ale trails, and local Chamber of Commerce.
Photo courtesy The Alementary
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