Brand awareness is critical to marketing strategies and efforts to drive incremental sales. It is directly proportional to boosting your alcohol business’s overall bottom line. The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed the food & beverage industry, including companies that supply, distribute, and sell alcohol products.

Data from JAMA Network highlights that alcohol sales increased by 262% during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, businesses that fail to maintain brand awareness may not achieve their goals. According to Statista, 40% of alcohol consumers stick to their favorite companies/brands for more than ten years.

Remember, this does not mean consumers may not try new products. Therefore, improving brand awareness is not a one-time job. It requires consistent efforts and solid strategies to create value and build consumer trust. Today’s article will discuss methods to increase brand awareness for alcohol companies. Read on!

Leverage the Power of Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool for suppliers, distributors, and retailers to improve brand awareness. A statistical study published by SIP Awards shows that alcohol consumers are active on social media platforms, including 91% on Facebook and 87% on Instagram.

According to Spirit Business, social media engagement increased by 326% during the Covid-19 pandemic, and alcohol businesses were in the ten best-performing posts on Facebook and Instagram. Therefore, managing social media accounts;/pages is essential for alcohol brands to improve their recognition and reputation. However, it is not about posting text-based and photo-based content. Social media engagement requires publishing valuable content, including video content, to share your brand story, promote new products, and provide users with helpful content that resolves their concerns.

For example, if your followers ask about mixes to complement your alcohol products, you must answer immediately and provide essential details. That way, you can engage your followers and show others that you value your customers.  

Instagram

Instagram is one of the most popular social networking platforms, with hundreds of millions of active users. You can use Instagram to promote your alcohol brand and improve its reputation. However, you must understand how Instagram marketing works and what tools you can use to achieve the desired results.

Leverage stories, reels, posts, lives, and ads to optimize your marketing campaign. Create simple, short, and engaging stories with a clear call-to-action (CTA) to drive traffic to your business website and encourage your target audience to explore your alcohol brand.

Facebook

Facebook is a cutting-edge branding tool for alcohol companies. You can use Facebook to target adult audiences based on various metrics, such as age (above 21), location, preferences, other demographics, and geographical data.

We recommend promoting your liquor products in the News Feed to engage more customers. You can use stories, live streams, graphical posts, videos, and Facebook ads to attract a large clientele.  

Host Tasting Events

Improving brand awareness requires creative approaches, such as hosting tasting events at liquor stores, bars, and pubs. You can also interact with consumers directly and document feedback.

You can review the collected data and generate valuable insights on consumer preferences and changes in products and marketing campaigns. Hosting a tasting event allows you to determine what products perform well.

You can use software to enhance access to retail or liquor store data. Compare competitor surveys, analyze customer data, and track performance to optimize or modify your branding strategy.

An ideal tasting event engages customers through free alcohol products and giveaways, including bottle openers, coasters, rock glasses, shot glasses, koozies, and totes with your brand logo.

Participate in Liquor Competitions

Keeping your brand’s name in consumers’ minds is your ultimate goal to promote brand awareness, achieve customer loyalty, increase sales, and improve your company’s bottom line.

Participating in liquor competitions is an excellent way to catch the eyes of consumers and stand out from the competition. For example, the SIP Awards offers alcohol competitions where consumers taste and judge different spirits, wines, beers, and other alcoholic beverages.

So, winning a SIP award benefits your brand because you can create a marketing campaign. You can show potential and existing customers you win and celebrate the award.

Participating in the SIP awards competition allows you to showcase your alcohol brands to more than 23,000 consumers, distributors, retailers, bars, pubs, etc. You can receive valuable feedback from distributors and consumers about your alcohol product and increase your brand credibility and reputation.  

Implement Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an excellent marketing strategy for alcohol brands. It optimizes your website content and ranks it in Google SERPs for specific keywords and phrases.

According to Web FX, 93% of online experiences start with Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. Therefore, optimizing your website for Google and other search engines is critical to driving organic traffic to your site.

We recommend finding relevant keywords and phrases to optimize website content. Create valuable content and add shorttail and longtail keywords to increase organic traffic.

In addition to keywords, you must earn backlinks from reputable websites, increase website loading speed, and use mobile-friendly or responsive design to improve user experience.

Use Content Marketing

In addition to SEO, developing a solid content marketing strategy is crucial to improving brand awareness in the food and beverage industry. However, instead of focusing on traditional content marketing, you should follow a creative approach because audiences usually don’t require product education.

So, focus more on building connections with your target audience. Get your audience to a specific feeling with your alcohol brand. Center your brand’s message around consumers’ emotions and feelings that align with your products.

Although blogging is an excellent way to improve brand awareness, we recommend creating content for YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. Keep your posts upbeat, fun, entertaining, and social.

For example, you can ask your followers on social media, “how was your weekend, and what are you looking forward to doing these holidays?” Questions initiate conversations and allow you to promote your products and improve brand awareness.  

Final Words

Increased brand awareness means a positive reputation, leading to more customers, increased sales, and boosted revenues.

Successful alcohol brands in the F&B industry focus on brand awareness and other processes, such as inventory management, real-time data analysis, and positive relationships with distributors, retailers, and liquor stores via KEXY, a cloud-based platform with numerous features to streamline operations. Get KEXY now to achieve your goals.

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