Cider Corner: Three Ways to Increase Marketing Exposure​

​Knowing your brand and expounding it to consumers — both ones you have had and those that have yet to hear of your brand — can be a frustrating endeavor.​

​Your branding and marketing of that brand can be vital to success. You can be an orchard-based cidery, a production cidery or somewhere in the middle. These cideries shared ways that they have worked toward increasing their marketing efforts.​

​Tap Room Marketing

​A cidery’s tasting room ​can be the truest representation of ​your business.

”It is for us because it’s set within our orchard,” ​said Nicole Ward of Eastman’s Forgotten Ciders. ”People can come out, have the most access to our ciders.”

Eastman’s only takes a small sampling to farmers’ markets while bars generally only carry one brand at a time​.​ Even ​off-premise ​may have limited varieties ​to carry at once.

At the tasting room, consumers can see where everything is grown, picked, pressed, fermented and so forth.

“It’s a “tree to tap” experience to come out to our tasting room,” Ward said, “and we feel people get to know us better by making the trip out there.”

Online Marketing

Coyote Hole co-owner Chris Denkers pointed out that getting your cidery’s story and information about your ciders online is key.

“Make sure you get it on as many platforms as possible, be it your website, social media outlets, blogs or wherever,” he said. “People in today’s world will check you out before visiting your tasting room or if you have your cider for the first time out at a restaurant or purchase it at a retailer, they will want more information and you need to be able to get it out to anyone and everyone you can.”

Making a connection with potential consumers is paramount in bringing more brand awareness to your cidery.

Another important aspect is documenting the events through photos and videos to help showcase the event online.

Photos are not only to be available for regular social media posts and event posts, but they can be used to pitch to media outlets to pique interest in the cidery for feature articles.

Cross Promotional Marketing

Marketing campaigns can help connect consumers into what new products are available or an entire culture of the cidery.

Pennings Farm Cidery increased cross-promotional efforts through partnerships with outside vendors to offer experiences at the cidery including teaming with a local goat farmer, Totes Goats, to host Goat Yoga events that repeatedly sold out each session.

“We were able to reach expanded audiences beyond a demographic of bar, craft beverage, farming interests and reach audiences interested in fitness and yoga,” they explained.

The cidery was able to utilize cross-promotion through advertising partnerships with its parent company, Pennings Farm Market, to reach an audience through social media that is five times the size of the cidery’s audience.

The cidery also hosts local Chamber of Commerce events and functions that bring in chamber members, their staff and family members.

”We’re learning the importance of teamwork and partnership to increase our general audience reach and to gain the support of local businesses and from the community at large,” Pennings Farm said.

Eastman Forgotten Cider Photo Courtesy Full Steam Social Media

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