FGC Group. When Great Minds Think Alike

Lucky Bay Brewing is unique in its position in the West of Australia. Set in Esperance, a tourist town of between 14,000 and 40,000 during peak holiday periods the brewery is around 7 hours drive from the nearest capital city. and services the local area and the mining town of Kalgoorlie (4 hours North) as well as rural localities and with exposure into Albany and Perth. Nigel and Robyn founded Lucky Bay Brewing over 12 months ago and engaged FGC Consulting to look at their digital presence.

The tourist friendly design Lucky Bay Brewing, Esperance WA

Two priorities influenced how we tackle an online presence for a brewery. These were informed by our clients (of course) and also our secondary research, some of which we’ll highlight now:

In January, beer website The Crafty Pint in a post titled Through The Looking Glass said “a large number of new [breweries] are targeting the same markets; there remain plenty of untapped towns and regions of Australia that can support one or more breweries but there are plenty of other markets reaching or passing saturation point.”

And in late 2016 Black Hops Brewery in a post sub-headed “How The F**k Do We Make Any Money” outlined some of the best areas on which to capitalise to generate revenue/customers:

• “At our Taproom, we can sell beers… and [as] the taproom was a small additional cost to the brewery setup, this is a very good margin for us. Without our Taproom, we’d really struggle to make a profit."
• And on growler and bottle sales through the Taproom... "While it’s hard for us to make money by selling into bottle shops, we can do quite well if we sell the beer directly at our Taproom in takeaway packs."

Using conversations with our client and other sources we decided to focus on (a) getting additional draw to the venue with the aim of additional growler and can sales and (b) boosting profile online to remain competitive with local venues / tourist attractions and (c) competitive in  50+ established breweries in Western Australia.

THE WORK

Without a functioning website presence (except a defunct Wordpress.com presence), or domain based email (these are email addresses with the form info @luckybaybrewing.com.au) we would need to work with the team from the ground up. There is a strong Facebook following and healthy engagement there. Some other platforms had been initiated but most were not actively managed. With our priorities in mind, the team laid out the following program:

1. Set up up a hosted website domain using a domain and hosting provider and add an email service. 

We used a robust Wordpress install and provide a design/layout that gets things moving quickly but which can be altered later to get luckybaybrewing.com.au running. It was important to get this done off the blocks, as we needed to tie this in to the rest of our strategy.

Provide some elementary training on how to edit the structure, menus and how to publish content to the site and we were looking great after minimal labour.

With time constraints on the project we left some website design decisions up to the default template we pre-loaded in. These could be perfected later as long as the brewery branding worked well with the site templates' contemporary feel and rendered great on mobile.

Finally, set up the new luckybaybrewing.com.au email service on all staff mobile and desktop devices.

2. Undertake verification process with all the key social/directory platforms. 

This included setting up (where one hadn’t been done already) profiles and ‘verification’ for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Mailchimp and Google (Google Business) as well as the many and varied verification methods for Untappd, TripAdvisor, Yelp.

A domain based email (@companyname.com.au is essential for correct business verification), so a fair proportion of the project time is setting up the domain correctly. This includes configuration to make it credible in the eyes of Google and for email marketing.

3. Optimise search keywords across all platforms and use this to get better at making new content.

We performed a keyword analysis (using Google Keyword tool, part of Adwords) to look at high performing keywords for the following areas industry and topic areas on a global, regional and local level and found “craft beer” and “microbrewery” and “perth craft beer”, for example to be strong.

We then added in some local keyword combinations to determine what people were searching for in Esperance (i.e. Esperance + x where x = tourism; bars; things to do; events). Obviously these are useful for anyone with a venue or cellar door. These keyword sets are incidentally swallowed up by Tripadvisor in some areas, but there is a way to influence that too ;-)

A Keyword Focus report from FGC Consulting. Designed to be pinned to the wall whenever new content is being created on website or social channels.

Next, we exported the spreadsheet for these to our project folder. We then looked at ‘high credibility’ competitor sites, for example, Little Creatures (owned by multinational Lion).  We looked at what keywords were being optimised on those sites. Considerable resources should be thrown at these websites and in this case Lion is a Japanese multinational with a long established market presence and was a reasonable place to look for best practice.

Analysing other websites that have authority and a high design aesthetic and have been around for some time is a sure way to learn about keyword best practice.

Could we find keyword inferences from our analysis and these sites? We took a look at these keywords to juggle the spreadsheet and draw out sets of most potent keywords.

This list, along with some stats around search volume is important to leave in the hands of people creating the content day-to-day. It gives them a grounding to include these keywords in their posts whenever it makes sense.

"Considerable resources should be thrown at these websites and in this case Lion is a Korean multinational with a long established market presence."

Finally, we looked at how existing keywords were used when describing the business online (in this case, a two or three paragraph Facebook Page description) and how these stacked up against this new research. This informed and honed our list and any adjustments to the keywords we wanted to push before the next stage…

4. Get brewery text and visual branding consistency right across all platforms

Each platform requires its own attention, so TripAdvisor and Yelp for example each have sections to add images to the listing. This requires a labour component to get each platform optimised – and it’s worth it.

Generally, the more complete and verified a profile is, the higher in search results it will appear on the platform and externally on Google too (for example, a verified Yelp listing will be indexed highly by the search giant). In this case the sum of the whole is greater than its parts.

Search rankings are competitive and completing all sections plus adding backlinks to your other social profiles is key in being found. As are seemingly innocuous things like your Display Name on Instagram or Twitter.

Were we using all the available space given to us to get those small keyword boosts / findability boosts?

5. Getting Local Listings Right, Or....“We drove in but it was shut” – Prince Charles, 2015.

Over in Google-land, having a bricks and mortar cellar-door and an operation that services tap-points or distributes in a town/region are different things when setting up a listing. There is an area to indicate which of these your business does (along with opening hours) in your Google Business listing, so that you turn up in the correct search results and people can get to you via GPS.

Having an ‘official’ address that you can make public helps to focus and improve Google results. Not all small brewery setups have this option. It is however a ‘credibility’ signal Google looks for, along with say, having a company email address that ends in @luckybaybrewing.com.au

Just remember Google is not the only place you need to keep opening hours current. Tripadvisor, Yelp, Facebook and your website will all need maintaining if you adjust your opening times or public holiday times.

A note on URLs...
Getting URL consistency is a no brainer and early on we found Google listings with /luckybaybrewery and others with /luckybaybrewing along with other unclaimed URLs. Getting all of the social accounts to be in the form xyz.com/LuckyBayBrewing can be an arduous task!

Activating a YouTube brewery channel for example will ask you to wait 30 days before claiming a URL plus you must upload at least one video and fulfil other requirements. We didn't do this as Google forced an "au" suffix on the end of the username, so securing a .com website as well as the .com.au website is important for this and other kind-of obvious reasons.

Anyone that works digital marketing for your business should at least commit to see the process through for 4 weeks in order to settle things in. Google Business even sends a postcard in the mail to verify a listing. Without verification your listing will be degraded and you may be losing out on being found by beer drinkers everywhere.

Setup an Email Marketing and customer database [See below]

Email Marketing is still a hugely important channel to communicate with customers. We liked Email Marketing as it gave us an in to “publish once, distribute to everyone”. It’s important to note that we didn’t need to add a busy workload of running a brewery. The brewery team was in a position of having 2-3 hours a week to work on their content through Facebook.

Overhauling your digital presence to rake in the additional exposure shouldn’t demand time that you just don't have.

To get email marketing ‘ticked’ off our priorities we developed an auto-compiled newsletter. As each news item is added to the website (eg. what’s coming out of the tanks, pricing updates, new canning machine arrived), these can be auto-compiled weekly or monthly as a digest and sent out to the database.

Overhauling your digital presence to rake in the additional exposure shouldn’t demand time that you just don't have.

Using an Email Marketing service like Mailchimp is a no-brainer. It’s free at under 2,000 email addresses. These services improve deliverability plus look much better when it arrives on a customers' device.

A note on membership clubs…

Launching a beer barons membership for instance is one idea we floated and the benefit here is many-fold. We discussed, customer segmentation as a way to enable your customers to get from first-time taster to a rabid-fan-pining-for-every-mail-orderable-seasonal.  The ability to send different updates / customer specials to special segments is something that can be built-in to email marketing and other services too…

There’s other power in email addresses too. While many fans lurk on Facebook, you can take an email address and use it on other platforms like adding them to an invite-only Lucky Bay Beer Barons Facebook Group (FB groups is a great marketing channel when used like this). Or you can take the email and import it to LinkedIn or Twitter, getting the customer to join you over there. We should note that not everyone follows you everywhere. But you would be amiss in forgetting to do this.

HOW WE TIED THIS ALL TOGETHER

Taking a “publish once, distribute to many” approach doesn’t mean working for hours on a Facebook video then copying it everywhere else. Let's got with a Baseball analogy (first championed by Chris Brogan some years back), a website is a Homebase from which you can have social outposts. We designed this in a visual workflow for the brewery that you can download below.

Most breweries know that Facebook is a great marketing tool – but it’s important to consider its downsides and use that to balance your efforts. Facebook also has almost zero long tail, so your content falls off the radar too easily. Great for instant gratification when your video is seen 4,000 times but not when a craft beer drinking contingent in China wants to access your updates. And your Facebook is a ‘walled garden’ – not great at posterity, ability to search, openness to the web or for having control over data.

One example of rejigging efforts to fulfil our goal was a recent canning machine announcement. Starting in December anyone can take a 1L can home for themselves from Lucky Bay Brewing. It is the kind of announcement deserving of its own entry on the ‘latest news’ section of the website. And the website is where you should now dedicate some of your time to regularly publishing content.

"...native content – one that looks like it has originated on the service it has come is always given higher visibility and is more coherent with the social network that user is on."

Thankfully you have the option of automagically sharing this to your Facebook Page from the website. Of course if you would like it to go to Twitter and LinkedIn when appropriate too then it will. And because your email newsletter system is waiting in the wings it will go to your email database just a few hours (or days, weeks..) later.

Now... take an Instagram post. That photo of spent grain from your last mash going to the local piggery? As it is posted on Instagram it will be automagically shared on Twitter, added natively to your Facebook Page and your profile plus archived as a native image on your website gallery.

Remembering that native content – one that looks like it has originated on the service it has come is always given higher visibility and is more coherent with the social network that user is on.

A note on the different behaviours of people using Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc

This is a good time to quickly mention the different behaviours of users on different platforms. Having an awareness of how Instagram users connect with a brewery helps us to get rid of assumptions. Gary Vaynerchuck talks about this at length: the way in which one Instagram post can get a customer to come in and refill their growler is - anecdotally - much more powerful and successful than one Facebook Page post. So for maximum bang for your buck it is worth getting Instagram moving.

Not every piece of can or should be put out like this! It breaks some big rules on having an authentic voice on each platform and doing the right thing by your audience wherever they may lurk.

As we said previously, we don’t want to add to the workload here, just redistribute the efforts to maximise reach. “Crossposting” when used sparingly can stop any one area from wilting and help create good sustainable exposure.

Splitting the available time on our social efforts...

If we break it down in terms of where we should be spending the very limited 2-3 hours available to put into content each  week, we might have seen 95% of effort going directly on Facebook Page posts.

In this new mix we might suggest trying 40% website, 30% Facebook Page, 15% Instagram, 5% Twitter, 5% YouTube and 5% Untappd/Tripadvisor. Facebook will still receive a similar level/lions share of activity because of crossposts. After a few weeks we would tweak this to include a one-off Mailchimp email announcement, some updating on LinkedIn Profiles and  LinkedIn Company Pages and so on. The multitude of other monthly/quarterly engagement and maintenance tasks are executed to a schedule.

The Finish Line

We found time to launch a new POS payment solution for taproom sales as well. For the brewery it will utilise things like till receipts and invoices to smartly direct customers to social and newsletter subscription channels. And we can, in time, add an easy online shop, online ordering, local delivery service and pre-pay facilities for party keg setups....So, as much as a finish line would be great there is no end to notching up effort, exposure and tactics when it comes to promoting a brewery.

Designing authorative homebases and outposts that include practical time saving and audience capture is we think the best way to service a diverse craft beer drinking following.

You can download a copy of the online marketing workflow here and a copy of the keyword focus report for writing new content.

Online Marketing Workflow showing content crossposting.