Ep. 494 Marketing Manifesto | How to Get U.S. Market-Ready with Steve Raye

Thanks for tuning in. I'm Steve Ray, author of How To Get US Market Ready. And in this podcast, I'm going to share with you some of the lessons I've learned from thirty years in the wine and spirits business, helping brands enter and grow in the US market. I've heard it said that experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. My goal with the book and this podcast is to share my experience and the lessons learned from it with you so you can apply those lessons and be successful in America. So let's get into it. Hi. This is Steve Ray, and welcome to Italian wine podcast this Monday. Today, we're gonna be talking about a marketing manifesto for wines and spirits. I've been in the industry for about thirty some odd years. And I've learned a few things. And, what we're gonna be talking about today is a short list of, things I've learned that can help guide you in your entry into the US market and pursuit of growth in the market. And let's start with number one with which is distribution. It's not about placements. It's about replacements. Distribut on and off premise is a good absolute number, but the ratio of total distribution to number of accounts that have reordered gives more insight into how the brand is really doing. Reorder rates is the key metric, which tells you whether the product is moving at the point of consumer purchase. So here's dip. If you run a distribution build program with your distributor with anything less than three bottles, replacement minimum, you might be doing yourself more harm than good by generating distribution that won't move. One bottle on a shelf is not a help. The old rule of thumb is if you're not on the floor, you're not in the store. Number two, don't mark it to empty shelves. Before you start consumer promotions, make sure that you've developed sufficient distribution such that consumers can actually buy what you're promoting. Now, of course, nowadays with COVID and, the dramatic growth in e commerce, that, becomes a really, really useful vehicle. We had the off premise. We have the on premise, and now we have the e premise. So here's a tip when it comes to distribution. You must have where to buy functionality accessible on your website and in your social media presence. That's because if you're spending the time or energy to get people interested in your product, take them the last inch of the last mile, which is an opportunity to order. It does double duty. It not only allows your customers to actually buy the product are promoted, but it's also a powerful sales tool to let retailers know that you're helping to drive traffic to their store or bar or restaurant. Always target and work with at least one aggressive e commerce retailer in every market. It will allow you to sell your products to consumers in states where you may not have a distributor on board. This is very important for wines when the number of states that allow direct to consumer sales from retailers is pretty broad, but it's just as important. In fact, even more important than spirits because there are fewer states that allow in trust state e commerce from retailer to consumers. So where they exist, you wanna maximize their abilities. Number three, get it in, and then get it out. Building distribution is one thing, a good thing. But it has little value if you haven't coupled that with consumer marketing and promotion to move the product through and generate reorders at retail. The tip there is in today's hyper competitive environment, you need to prove your case commercially by your self before you can convince others that it will sell through for them. And so what that means is you need to have a successful case history showing that the product sells through. That's gonna make it a lot easier for you to sell to new distributors and new retailers. Because you're taking away the perception of risk, how do I know it will sell? Well, if you demonstrate that and quantify it, you make a much more compelling story. Number four, help the importer and distributor do their jobs. Tell the trade what you're going to be doing via trade advertising PR newsletters and so forth. You can drive consumer demand via advertising, promotion, social media, and all that kind of stuff. But and that's important. But at the end of the day, the most important thing because they are the the gatekeepers is you need to tell the trade what you're doing. And what's particularly important there is this is an area of the business that a lot of brands just don't pay attention to. And so they fail, which means that those of you who employ this strategy are that much more effective because you don't have as much noise to compete. So way to think about it is add a trade component to all consumer promotions so that the on, off, and e premise accounts that you have distribution in, recognize you're the one sending them customers and helping them grow their revenue and margins. Number five, target audience. Remember that you can't be all things to all people. Determine your target audience and focus on it precisely comprehensively, consistently and relentlessly, and then rinse and repeat. And the tip here is it's just as important to determine who's not your audience. As well as who is. And obviously, I'm generalizing here. There's a lot more details and practical applications of many of the things I'm talking about today. But I think if you keep them in mind, it will help, focus the spending and investment of the resources that you do have on a things that actually make a difference in the marketplace. Number six is is one that I think is absolutely critical, critically important, relatively easy to do and one that takes a little bit of discipline and most people don't do it, which means it's an opportunity. And that's triage by must should and could, when must do should do and could do. It's easy to be seduced by great ideas, the next shiny object. But it's your job to recognize that great ideas are only great if they are on strategy. And we'd like to break things into three categories to really simplify decision making first one is what must we do? What are the things that absolutely positively have to be dim done without them nothing else will work? Example there is you have to have distribution at retail, product, in inventory, it's stores that are selling it. Things that are on strategy and will help the brand, but only to be funded after ensuring that all of the musts are funded and fielded effectively. And lastly, what Could we do? Usually, these fall into the category of unsolicited offers for sponsorship, events, free giveaways at parties, and so forth. And we recommend that you consider these only after all of the musts and the most cost effective shoulds have been taken care of. And the tip here is make sure your strategies mesh with target audience behavior. You have to use different tools to reach millennials versus boomers as an example. And number seven, if any of you know me, you've heard me say this before. You need to have a point of difference that makes a difference. P o d dot m a d point of difference that makes a difference. This is essentially, the simplest, but perhaps also the most difficult thing that you have to do. Pare down your brand positioning to its absolute essence to determine not just what differentiates you from competitors. But how to express that difference in ways that are meaningful and motivational. I often ask prospective clients to define their POD that MAD, one of your differences that makes a difference, and and I commonly get the same answer. We make really great, and then put your category here, mine, beers, spirits, vodka, whatever. Well, that's necessary, but it's not sufficient. What is it that makes your brand a unique solution to a consumer and trade buyers problem? And think emotional benefits rather than my product tastes better than anybody else. For example, here's a tip, pairing is no longer limited to just food and wine, cocktails. The new paradigm is not about what it pairs with. It's where and when and with whom you are pairing. What is the environment, virtual, or real, and who is participating? So it could be a zoom call of where you're doing a virtual tasting could be an example. With apps like vine pair, vivino, wine for me, consumers are sharing their experience in real time. And that goes beyond the food well beyond. Number eight, this is a marathon, not a hundred meter dash. The US may be the most important wine and spirit market in the world, but it's also the most difficult, competitive, and complicated. And the best tip I can give you on that one is recognize that complexity and plan for. It's not that camp complex that you can't deal with it. The important thing is to plan in advance so that you don't get blindsided when something you didn't expect happens because I can guarantee you it will. Number nine, don't pay for people to come to you, bring your wines, spirit to where they're already gathered. And that would be in the real world, for example, obviously bars and restaurants, retail stores, vents, and so forth, as well as the virtual world, whether it's wine destination websites, not yours, so if you know find parents, so forth, online events and online communities. The tip here is think of gathering in terms of asynchronicity. It doesn't happen at the same time. These days, not everybody has to be in the same place at the same time, to share the same experience. And creatively taking advantage of that can pay off dramatically for you in terms of marketing. So don't pay for people to come to you, bring your products to where they're already gathered. And number ten, push versus pull. Building both into your marketing plan is mandatory. Push has no value without consumer purchase, and pull has no value without distribution. So a tip is to allocate your resources to activate consumers to order or call for your brand in a way that involves the retailer so they recognize what you're doing for their specific account. One old school idea was a brand had run an ad with a coupon in the New York Times offering a free sampler of their product with a fifty ml bottle and two little tasting glasses. People would cut out the coupon. They would walk into the door, and, the second one that the retailer got kinda made the retailer jump stand up and recognize. Oh my god. These guys are sending business into my stores. They're a valuable partner. And, of course, the same thing holds true online. Develop your programs so that when you're forwarding leads or purchasers to a particular retailer, they're aware where the purchaser is coming from. Number eleven. Ready? Fire aim. I know that's not the right order. Ready aim fires, which you usually hear. But in this case, we're talking about ready fire aim. It's rare to get everything right the first time. So set specific, quantified objectives. That's the ready part. Fire when you're ready, and then aim or or re aim based on performance against those measurable objectives. It's a much better way of making sure that you're doing the right things in the right order to the right people the right way by generating effective sales. Tip here, an objective without a measurement is just a goal. Metrics matter. And lastly, number twelve, curb your enthusiasm and really, really focus. I know this is really hard to do, but but it's absolutely critical. Recognize that it's rare to get things right for the first time. You could be ready and still be wrong. I think about, sirach, it was originally positioned. You may not know this as Snapfrost vodka before P Didi got involved. It was a failure as a brand, and then they reinvented it. So invest the time and resources on a limited geography to soft launch in a small number of markets, no more than three. The US is more vulcanized than the Balkans. We have fifty two different markets, the fifty individual states, plus Montgomery County, Maryland, and, Washington, DC. The common mistake most people make is to go too wide, too fast. And you can't support that distribution, and you can drive consumer interest in that many markets. Better to focus, unlimited number of markets, a limited number of accounts, and really work them well. And the final tip here is prove your concept commercially and scalably, and only then look to expand. There's a simple but effective strategy to differentiate how you go to market. And I like to simplify that to Zag when everybody else is zigging. And the origin of that was I was in Ukraine, making a presentation on strategy to the owner of the company who didn't speak any English at all, so we were going through an interpreter. And I saw that all my explanations and, you know, marketing, jargon, and all the rest of that was completely getting lost. The guy was not capturing what I was saying. So I went over to he had a flip chart. He would have a whiteboard, and I went over there and I just wrote Zig and Zag. And I put a circle, big red circle with a line across it on the Zig and pointed to Zag. And he smiles. So graphically, he got the concept that I was trying to bang into his head by using all these big words. Sometimes using visuals is a much stronger way to communicate. But it's the philosophy here. If everybody else is digging, you shouldn't ask. That's it for this week? Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next Monday on the Italian wide podcast. This is Steve Ray. Same. Thanks again for listening. On behalf of the Italian wine podcast. My favorite quote from Jonathan swift. Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.