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Craft beer brewers are a very passionate bunch!
That’s what made me want to examine the general ideas of content marketing and contextualize them for craft beer breweries.
In this article, I will try to give you concrete, actionable advice on what to do to get the most out of your content marketing efforts.
What is content marketing and how it translates to craft breweries
Content marketing is simply creating content to achieve marketing results.
If you want to simplify content marketing and liberate yourself from confusing jargon terms, understand this: your one and only goal is to provide value to your customers through your content.
You don’t try to sell them anything or get them into your funnels.
Increased leads and sales are what organically happens when you do content marketing the right way.
When you put your customers first and provide value to them, the following benefits start to magically happen:
- Your business becomes a brand
- You build trust with customers
- You establish yourself as a thought leader within your niche
- Leads and sales increase
Over 50% of the consumers, when asked, say that the best way of getting their business is by offering free content on a topic they’re interested in.
70% of consumers prefer learning about a company from an article as opposed to an advertisement.
People don’t like to be sold to.
Go figure…
When you’re actively trying to sell your product to customers, they have all the leverage.
Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates 3X as many leads.
Content marketing also drives higher conversion rates than traditional marketing because you’re building a lot of trust with the customers by providing value first.
How does this all translate to craft breweries?
Craft beer enthusiasts are hungry for expert information.
Craft beer hobbyists are one of the most passionate communities on the internet.
Provide them value by publishing helpful content and they will love you.
What’s more important, they will buy from you.
You can do that through blog posts, Youtube videos, podcasts, social media, etc.
Let’s talk first about content marketing strategy.
Content marketing strategy for craft breweries
If you think ideas like content strategy are reserved only for bigger businesses, you’d be wrong.
Coming up with a content strategy doesn’t have to be complicated.
You don’t have to get into any of the fancy marketing jargon.
Step 1: Decide on your goals.
This one’s easy since we’ve already established that providing value to your audience should be the only goal you should focus on.
Step 2: Decide what medium you’re going to create content in.
Because I think any medium (written word, video, and audio) would work in the craft beer niche, I won’t recommend one.
You have to decide that for yourself.
Are you a natural writer or do you feel better in front of a camera?
Or you just want to record your voice and go with a podcast?
You can choose one, or go for all of them.
Step 3: Decide what platform you’re going to publish your content on.
If you want to publish articles, creating a blog would be an obvious choice.
You want to create video content? Youtube is your friend.
Audio? Shoot a podcast and upload it to all the podcasting platforms you can think of.
Step 4: Decide if you want to engage with your audience on social media and if you do, which ones.
If you’re thinking this is a lot of work, you’re right.
Content marketing is a long-term process that you can’t necessarily measure in traditional ways.
But the results of content marketing can be profound if you produce quality content, you’re patient, and you don’t give up.
Let’s examine each of the ideas from these 4 steps more thoroughly.
Why providing value should be the only goal for your content marketing efforts
I bet you’ve said the phrase “customers come first” out loud and then proceeded to focus on anything but the customers.
That’s nothing to beat yourself up over, though.
Day-to-day operations of any small business can get overwhelming.
You have a chance to change that with content marketing.
Content that provides value to your customers also provides the most value to your business in the long run.
Why providing value is such a potent business strategy?
When you help your customers with their problems for free, without any expectations, you are disrupting how business is usually done.
Your customers will take note of that.
Do this enough times and you build not a customer base, but a community of loyal buyers who trust you because you don’t constantly try to sell them something.
Your business becomes a trusted brand instead of just another craft beer brewery.
If you thought branding was important today, wait until you hear how important it’s going to be tomorrow.
We are entering a new age where customers are searching the Internet in a new way – with their voices.
There’s a critical difference between voice searches and traditional web searches.
Traditionally, if I was in the mood for some IPA, I would type something like “IPA beer brands” into Google, and Google would return a bunch of articles that list IPA beer brands.
Maybe I’d find your brewery on the list and order from you, maybe I wouldn’t.
At least you’d have a chance to be discovered.
Voice searches are performed differently.
I would simply say something like “Alexa, order me some IPA craft beer, please.”
And Alexa wouldn’t return any articles.
No, Alexa won’t even have a screen to display the results on because I was speaking into a smart speaker device like Amazon Echo.
What would end up happening is Amazon would recommend an IPA craft beer it wants to recommend.
A scary thought for small businesses since 85% of the customers end up ordering the product Amazon suggests.
Now, if I was aware of your brewery and I was a loyal customer, my voice search would sound something like “Alexa, order me some IPA craft beer from XYZ brewery, please.”
That’s the power of the brand and it will make all the difference in the world in 10 years when voice search is the dominant type of search.
If you want to know more about this, please read my article on “How to Prepare Your Local Business for Voice Search [Actionable Tips].”
This is why building brand awareness is critically important and value-driven content marketing is the best tool to accomplish that.
Blogging as part of content marketing for craft breweries
Blogs are perfect for long-form written content.
You can either start a separate blog or incorporate one into your current business website.
I suggest a WordPress platform because it allows you to be fully in control of your website.
When it comes to web hosting, a shared hosting plan with some of the reputable web hosting providers is all you need at the start.
I suggest A2 Hosting because I use them as well and I’ve never had any issues.
Now that you have a blog up and running, you need some content ideas.
Answerthepublic.com is an excellent place to get that from.
Simply type a keyword of choice into the search box and the website pulls relevant data from Google and Bing and serves it on a silver platter.
Pick a keyword and write your first article around that topic.
Rinse and repeat.
As your blog gets populated with content, it will rise in authority and Google will start recommending your content to more people.
This process is very slow and it can take years.
If you want to read more about Google ranking and how long it takes for content to rank on Google, please read my “How Long Does it Take For an Article to Rank on Google [in 2020]” article.
If you stay patient and persistent, you will be rewarded with organic traffic from Google that will undoubtedly increase leads and sales.
What does it take for your blog to start bringing in traffic?
It takes 30-50 quality articles in the first 2-3 months to build up the domain authority and then you steadily add 1-2 (or more if you can) per week to keep and further increase the domain authority.
Yes, that’s a lot of work.
What to focus on when it comes to SEO
If you decide for blogging, I certainly recommend learning the basics of SEO, local SEO, and voice search SEO.
This section will not come even close to covering what you need to know.
But I will outline some points of interest you should read up or watch some videos on.
SEO points of interest:
- Focus on long-tail keywords
- Learn how to find keywords that have relatively low competition and relatively high traffic
- How to properly structure an article and mark your H1, H2’s, H3’s, etc.
- Learn about the concept of content silos
- How to properly interlink between your content
- How to optimize your site for mobile
Local SEO points of interest:
- Claim all the business listings on various business directories (especially Google My Business, Yelp, Yext, etc)
- Enter all the data points you possibly can
- Make sure your NAP’s are in order, meaning, your business’ Name, Address, and Phone number are correct and identical everywhere
- Hire a service to audit your NAP’s if you have to
- Respond to all the reviews, good or bad
Voice SEO – I’ve written extensively on how to prepare your local business for voice search. You can read my article here.
SEO is, ultimately, very important.
But don’t spend excessive amounts of time studying every single detail thinking SEO is some kind of a magic wand when it comes to ranking #1 on Google.
No, quality content is much more important.
So, apply the 80-20 rule and focus on the best practices.
Avoid any “ninja tactics” that take a lot of time to accomplish minor improvements.
There are 200 known ranking factors Google takes into account when ranking a piece of content.
To try to optimize for each and every one of them would be to never write the second article because you’d be stuck optimizing the first one forever.
Youtube videos as part of content marketing for craft breweries
If you feel like writing articles is like pulling nails, but you’re comfortable being in front of a camera, Youtube might be the right choice for you.
The reason why Youtube is fantastic for content marketing is that it’s a search engine too.
Second only to Google.
It’s also owned by Google and integrated into Google’s search results.
Why is all this important?
People use search engines to find solutions to their problems and that’s exactly why they use Youtube as well.
Plus, because of this quality, your old Youtube content keeps bringing in viewers and subscribers sometimes even years after it was published.
This doesn’t happen with, for example, social media posts.
Social media posts are relevant for a very short amount of time, days at best, and then they’re gone into the oblivion.
Youtube isn’t like that.
The discoverability factor, which is technically there in social media as well, is much more potent on Youtube.
Have you ever finished watching a Youtube video and then another video from someone you’re not even subscribed to caught your attention?
That happens all the time on Youtube.
What does it take to build a Youtube presence?
It takes tens or even hundreds of videos for the effects to start compounding and your presence to start exponentially growing.
Just like blogging, growing a Youtube channel takes a lot of time and dedication.
Podcasting as part of content marketing for craft breweries
Podcasting is an emerging format.
51% of the US population have listened to a podcast, which means more and more people are aware of podcasting.
When it comes to content consumption, 80% of the listeners listen to an entire episode or most of it.
What’s great about podcasts is that the market is still not as saturated as in other mediums of content.
Especially when it comes to podcasts that focus on their local communities.
In most towns and areas, you would probably be the first person to start a podcast in your niche.
You could use podcasting in two ways as a part of your content strategy.
1. Create a podcast for your local craft beer community.
Engage with the local craft beer hobbyists, experts, and beer-lovers.
This would definitely create brand awareness for your craft brewery within your target audience.
Being their go-to podcast for their local beer-related information would be priceless.
Through your podcast, you and your brewery would be able to demonstrate your passion for beer to the entire local craft community.
2. Create a podcast for your local business community.
You could call the podcast something like “Youngstown business podcast” and you could interview your fellow business owners from Youngstown, or wherever you’re from.
Without even trying, you would be making connections with your entire local business community.
Just think about it, hosting a podcast gives you a reason to connect with business owners you want to do business with without cold calling them to sell them stuff.
You wouldn’t even have to tell them what you do, they’d seek that information on their own.
And don’t worry, you don’t need much equipment to start a podcast.
The interviews could even be done over Skype from the comfort of your home.
Social media marketing for craft breweries
Posting content on Instagram or Facebook with the idea of organically reaching consumers would be a waste of time.
Facebook’s organic reach is long-gone and Instagram’s is diminishing, if not gone as well.
You don’t even reach all the people that already follow you on these platforms.
But those two platforms are very useful for customer engagement.
Basically, the idea is to actively seek customers in Facebook groups and Instagram comments sections and engage with them.
The idea is not to sell to them but to treat them as human beings.
Help them if you can, or just say something nice.
That way you’re spreading the word about your brewery, but you’re not being pushy or salesy.
Be sure people take note of that.
They will check your profile out and stay if they want to.
This takes a lot of time, but it’s worth it.
Ultimately, it’s up to you. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time on customer engagement, odds are your time would be better spent on creating content for your primary outlet.
One social network is exploding when it comes to organic traffic, however.
And that’s LinkedIn.
Don’t worry, LinkedIn is no longer a biz-oriented recruiting network.
It’s become a content platform just like Facebook, but with a bit more business flavor.
What makes LinkedIn different is the lack of content on the platform.
In other words, there’s more content consumption than content creation at the moment.
This forces to the algorithm to share the content organically to more users than on other social media networks.
Which is where the big opportunity is.
The beautiful thing is, you can just re-post the content you create for your blog on LinkedIn.
Just make sure to follow proper formatting guidelines and you’re set.
Conclusion
Content marketing is the key that unlocks a great many doors.
When you start posting content, things start happening.
Be warned, however, creating content is not easy or fast.
You didn’t build your brewery or learned everything you know about craft beer overnight either, did you?
Accept that creating enough content to build authority with audiences and search engines takes time too.
As time passes and you amass more and more content on your pages, the results start growing exponentially.
Think of it this way, you’re pushing the ball of content uphill at first.
It’s heavy and you’d rather be on a beach somewhere or watching that new show on Netflix.
But instead, you keep pushing the ball and eventually reach the top.
You make one final push over that tipping point and the ball starts rolling downhill on its own from there.
A similar effect happens with content marketing.
Once you’ve built enough trust with audiences and search engines, they start recommending you to even more people.
That’s called the compound effect.
Small actions can amount to profound results if you perform enough of them and don’t give up.
And that wraps it up.
Beer time!