Ep. 471 wine2wine Session Recordings | Going Digital is More Than Just Opening an Online Wine Shop

Italian wine podcast. Chinchin with Italian wine people. Italian wine podcast as wine to wine twenty twenty media partner is proud to present a series of sessions chosen to highlight key themes and ideas and recorded during the two day event held on November twenty third and twenty fourth twenty twenty. One to wine twenty twenty represented the first ever fully digital edition of the business to business forum. Visit wine to wine dot net and make sure to attend future editions of wine to wine business forum. Hello. I'm Valentina Bona, and I'm quite excited to be here with my friend, and they, to introduce a very interesting topic, especially for the moment that we are living now. In fact, in these last months, especially, data traffic, I've seen an incredible increase just seeing that in Italy, so only in Italy during the lockdown, traffic and upload has almost doubled. And this special historical moment, we are realizing how internet is key in our lives. Our habits have completely changed, as well as it has a traffic, which has moved from the city center to suburban and residential areas as a result of the lockdown in less mobility and traffic within the city itself. But what means exactly using the internet and going digital? Andresi Verino, who besides being a proud Portuguese wine expert and an award winning, food wine and travel entrepreneur, will lead us through what are the opportunities of which we can take advantage of while addressing the internet. Andrei is in fact a computer science engineer and a digital strategist with a long history of success. Just think, for example, at Aidega. He's a Portuguese company with a simple mission to make wine more accessible, easier to buy, and simpler to enjoy. So, Andre, just, Nice to see you. Good morning, Valentina. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction. Let me see. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. So hello, everyone. I'll I'll I'll start by by continuing what uh-uh Valentina so said so so well about how, things have changed so quickly. Wine was going online before But, of course, now we all know, what is happening around the world. Wine, at the same time, is moving faster than ever online. And at the same time, has an opportunity to do so, in a way that hasn't been done before. The other thing I'd like to mention about my presentation and and you should see it's, like that in that context is that the world is not binary. So what I what I mean is what I'm going to show you doesn't mean that the internet is going to take over the rest of the world. It actually means that the internet is going to be a very good complement to what is happening in terms of wine and specifically in terms of wine online. Of course. The other thing is, the presentation that I'm going to do, is not just for wineries. It's actually for everyone who works on wine online, on wine online, importers, wine lovers, anyone who's working with wine has an opportunity here to understand how we can use online to better sell, to better promote, actually to better enjoy wine. And I'll start by sharing a few numbers. The first one I would like to share is that, I've I've I've researched the number of of of different, I found that a number of different topics, and and with research that shows some really interesting interesting numbers of what's happening online at the moment. One of the things is this very interesting number of eighty one percent of people who are looking for a product. They go online first to try to find information about that product, whether they buy that product online or offline. So this is really interesting. People are going online for anything before they actually buy, even offline. The second number is that where do people do those searches? Where do they go first to try to find information about the product that they want to buy? And an interesting statistics. And this is actually a go a global study that is showing so so it includes not just the US as as it happens so often. This is actually a study that includes other countries including many in Europe. And so and and what it shows is that when people think about searching for a product, the what they do is that thirty two percent of the people go first to Google and then twenty three go to Amazon. Even in countries where Amazon is not, yet present, and and you'll see that Amazon is very strong when people want to find more information about about the products. Then what you see, this is This is, the same kind of information that I just talked about, but the difference is what you see on the on the dark blue column, is actually people who are looking for inspiration on what to buy. They don't have a brand in mind. And what you see on the light blue collar is, it searches for people who are, already have a brand in mind and want to know more information about that brand. And you see that the big difference is not on the third, on the on the first three columns. It's actually on the fourth one. Where a retailer's web sorry, a brand website is is more important. Of course, if you're looking for more information on on a on a specific brand. Another interesting number, is, how how well should you perform online? How well should the information be available online how important is it? And, there's a Google research that shows that, sixty six percent of the people who search for information online, actually find that a frustrating experience with a website hurts the opinion that they have about the brand that they're looking for. And this is a this is an impressive number. This is this is more than two thirds. Another interesting number, is, the number of people who are actually offline. They're in the shop. They're somewhere else. And they use online to complement the experience that they're having at that location. And, actually, it's a whooping sixty nine percent of people of shoppers that are, in a physical store, end up going to their mobile, phone to search for reviews, to search for price to do price comparison. And a number of these people, actually, I've I've read on this study. A number of these people are actually, quite, sometimes afraid to talk to the person who's at the shop. And they feel that they should gather more information. So they research online those products before talking to the people at the shop. And finally, a very interesting number for, for for wine for two reasons. One is, this is the number of eight eighty six eighty six percent of of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. And we all know that in the physical, like a physical retail space, we know how important that is. We know how how how how we feel about going to a place that gives us a great customer experience, but online is not different. And and so what is what this shows is actually that eighty six percent want they are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. And actually, when it comes to to products like wine, they're willing to pay up to eighteen percent more of a regular price if for for a greater experience on buying wine. So as we see, being online is much more than selling online. We're not talking about selling online. We're talking about just how your information needs to be online, how important it it is to have that information correct on, on an online setting. So so the important thing is how how do we help our customers find a brand online? How how do we do this? And I'll share an interesting example that, that, that, I think it's it's it it in a way it should be one of the most, basic things when you think of wine online, but I realized that it's actually something that a lot of people don't know. And so one of the things I wanted to show is a couple of examples of how people really find brands online. So I'll give a, I'll go through some of these steps. Imagine somebody is looking for Italian reds online. So they go on imagine Google or Amazon as we've seen before, and they go and they search for Italian reds. And what they see is that they start getting information, they they understand stand that maybe, oh, okay. So there are regions, in Italy. So where can I search for more information? They might do a search refinement. So what they'll they'll see is that they go for Italian rents from, and then as they search more and more, they that they are they're actually interested in wines from these regions, and they do a top PMont wines kind of search. And when they do this, a number of brands pop up, the brands that have the best information that are more well located that have prepared information to be ready to be online they'll be, they'll be they'll they'll show up in the results first and other brands. And so, actually, in this this case, the the the the consumer had chose to search for Marquis de Barolo. And, of course, they want to do comparison of brands. And so the and they'll look for all sorts of information. And then they might even go deeper and do the same they do a branded search, ins they they've learned that Marques de Barolo does BarBaresco, so they want to search for that kind of information. And by the time they reach the the the bottom of this funnel, they'll choose to go with the website of the brand or somewhere else where the brand is present, and eventually either buy online or actually buy whatever they are in a physical location as we've said before. So how do we make it happen? How do how do we make all this all all this happen? How do we make all this information, good information available online? How do how do we make it happen? And I'll share ten tips from, Some are tips, some are practical tips, some are, strategic decisions that people need to take regarding their brands. But I'll share these tips based on my fifteen years of experience with wine online. And I hope I hope you you can take some practical examples from this. The first one seems obvious, be where people are. But what does that mean in digital? It actually means building a digital footprint. It means you have to have your information available. You need to have your information available in a number of different places. In this case, maybe your own website, maybe you need to be well referenced on Google. As we've seen, maybe it's important to have information on Amazon. There are a number of different other marketplaces that you can use. An interesting development, especially considered what we've been all living in the last few months, delivery delivery platforms. I've seen a number of people who don't see them as a channel, for information, but actually if you start showing up, in a mobile phone when people are sitting on their couch and they're looking for information of what to eat, and your wine is located there next to the food options. That's a channel of information, even if people are not buying exactly on that platform. And of course, retailers and specifically online retailers who need who need to have your information, in the best, way possible. And of course, to make this happen, one of the most important things is to have very good wine information that you can share. This means great product at photography means complete wine details. So all the information that you think it's important for your consumers, share with the with the with with these places. Make sure that it's available on all these places, and the more places you are the bearer because someone else might be looking for your brand there. A very important topic today. It's harder than ever to reach, people online. What you see is that, of course, with social media and all these other different channels, it's it's hard to get attention And sometimes to get that attention, you actually have to pay for it. You can pay for ads. You can do all sorts of different things. So one of my advices would actually be to start today if you haven't started or to make it better if you haven't, started. To make your own media. And what I mean by this is make a channel that people know they can connect to you directly. And when I say this, sometimes people understand that I'm saying build an Instagram account, and it's not that I'm actually saying that you should do a direct channel that you control. That means, your websites. It might mean, your newsletter on your website. You can actually write some articles and imagine yourself Imagine yourself has has running your own magazine, has running your own media channel, a way to reach consumers, to give them relevant and useful information that they can think that they know that they need to get directly to you and that you're sharing the best information about your products, with them. And, of course, attention is still very hard to get. So I have this specific tip here that works very well for us, and I've seen another a number of other people who who this information works very well for. Do giveaways. The only thing is do not give away your product. Try to give away gift cards. Try to give away something else that gets people engaged and interested in understanding. It's it's all about getting their inform their attention first And then you can provide information and and and and and articles and all the other things, to them afterwards. But first, you need their attention. Third, digital partnerships. As I've said in the first, in the first, in the first points, you need to be everywhere. You should be everywhere, but how are you there? Are you just sending them information and hoping for the best? Like, like everything else offline partnerships are great. If you if you actually work towards the same goal and for you, it means having that information available on all these places in the best way possible. But if you think from all these online magazines, retailers, marketplaces, all these places, They also wants the best information you can give them. So try try to do digital partnerships to make sure that you get to, what I said on point one and and and be everywhere, but make it a partnership instead of just an email with a number of information that you want to share with them. And actually, this is an important point also, because I've seen in a number of of different marketplaces, for example, where if if someone wants to do a promotion and they don't know who to promote, if they have a partner who's sending them, updated information regularly and and they have images and they have all the information they want to do, a promotion, they'll they'll pick they'll pick that partner first over some other brands. Social media is a trap. Like I said before, very simple point here, what's happening these days is that, Facebook and all all the other, social media channel owners are limiting your access to your own your audience that you've been asking people to join their audience. But now, an example is like Facebook who's limiting your access to your Facebook audience or your Instagram audience. And the other thing is various very strong opinion on don't just do Instagram ads or ask someone else to do your Instagram ads because it looks good and because everyone else is doing. Eds is a whole different, channel, and you think if you think about it like that, So, social media has you, you, as you've seen, is not the place where people go to search for products right ahead. What I would do is I would actually look at social media as an awareness channel where you want to, tell people to to make sure that people think of you top of minds, but but it's not the main channel. Who has much effort or more in other channels that you put on social media. And I see that's not what happening at the moment. Mobile first, very important. We all know we're all having our mobile phones on our hand all the time. Mobile is where people are searching for products more and more. Design thinking about it. I've I've I've seen a lot of people design their websites thinking of how does it look on the desktop? Because we're on a meeting deciding how it's going to be beautiful, the new website that we've just built. But then we forget that people are going to see their website when they're searching on the shop heads, on a physical shop has we've seen before. So think about how your design is adapted. To a mobile first experience. One very simple example here. Many people want to tap a phone number to call the the winery that they actually want to get information from. Make that possible. And you you can do that with technology. It's quite easy. So make sure that you have this very make sure you test your website using a a a mobile experience instead of just a desktop experience. Very practical again, make phones bigger, and there's many reasons why you should do this. One is, especially now with the with the pandemic, seniors are going online. They need to be online. They need to order things online. And have way more disposable income than, than have many of the young generations who are actually, suffering more from from from the pandemic. So this is an important thing. Again, when you design, think about not just how beautiful it looks, but actually how practical it is for the targets that you want to reach. And in this case, we're talking about seniors. High professionals, digital is a skill. It's the same way you'd hire an accountant, a winemaker, a lawyer, they know all the acronyms, all the technology, they know how to do this professionally. It's a very, very I cannot stress this point enough that digital is as hard as any other areas. So do hire professionally if you want to look professional. Seth godin is a is a a marketer that has created this concept of the purple purple cow many years ago in a very famous book. The the idea here is that in a very crowded marketplace, like the internet, you need to be relevant. You need to be remarkable. You need to be totally different from what's happening. If you're trying to fit in, you're going to fail on the internet. You need to be different from everyone else and stand out. And, of course, we're talking digital and technology and all these all these things that that that are online and and, and keep us distance more than ever. We need to actually try to counteract that. How do we do that? We make sure that the connection is still human. We need to make sure that if someone reaches out via, an email or via call. We need to have, someone human on the other side, a person on the other side that can talk to that person. We need digital, ease calls, and we need to make sure that that that people, still have a human experience when connecting. And, of course, this point is is is more important now that we're going through a social distance periods. And I, again, I cannot stress these points, more. I can actually tell you, an example of what we're doing, on Adega, where we're actually calling everyone who buys from us And what's happening is that even all the problems that might, come up when someone is buying something or anything that people wanted to buy but forgot to buy, we've sold all those things by having someone who's actually interacting with our clients, not via email, but via voice using a phone, and we are an e commerce company these days. And finally, do sell online, but do everything I've just presented before you do that. Thank you. Thank you, Andre. This was really interesting, and there's also very nice comments, on the chat while you were talking, in particular someone asked, if you have a tech list for small businesses to use. I think that already by listening to you now was a pretty nice way to start. So, I personally have some questions for you. I understood from your presentation that information is key. So, internet and going digital can also be an opportunity to, choose what kind of information to share, and what what kind of image we wanna send outside of of who we are. So I'm thinking, for example, at a at a winery, like in my case, we can choose what we wanna say, how we wanna say it, which images we wanna share. So, using information on the internet is the most important, thing. Is there also a way to control this information? And to make sure oh, well, I will reformulate the question. So, internet can also be a way to control over this information and make sure that everyone is sharing what you wanna share. Yes and no. So the yes part is yes if you do a good job of creating a, a group of images, a group of tech technical sheets, a group of if you make sure your information is professionally presented and very good quality, what is going to have what is going to happen is that a lot of people will be using that information because it comes from the most important source, the brand Mhmm. And it's well prepared so that they can use it. So in a way, you're controlling by make it a the better the best information available online is that one. On the no part is people will share as you know, people will share, when they're drinking your wines online, and they'll do their own pictures. And the so in a way in a way they're sharing information about your wines, but they're not you cannot control the kind of information. What you can do is maybe some of those consumers will actually search for the brand that they're drinking online, and they see that the brand has amazing tech sheets on the site. Or has a paragraph that describes the wine, very simply. And if if your information is easily defined and and readily available, they might use that to complement what they're sharing. And actually, again, you're not controlling, but you're making sure that you're doing everything possible to have the best information for your wines and winery online. And I believe that this can be referred also to pricing. If you share the pricing that in your opinion are correct, you can control over in this way, as you just said, what the others are sharing. Correct? It's a very important question. As you know, pricing is is, is one of the reasons the internet sometimes it's still seen has something to be to be looked on on the side And, comparison, comparison, sites are go are are are going to exist always exist. And so we need to leave with that. And there's always going to be someone who's willing to do a deeper discount or sell it cheaper. We cannot control everything what we can do, and and I recommend that to our clients is that they should re they should say what is the recommended price for that wine. Even if someone is then selling cheaper, it means that for some reason, they have a discount for But if you don't have that reference, you're actually not doing a good job of explaining to the client. What is what is the what what should the price be? Again, also for from the point of view of someone who's doubling the price and selling for double, what is not worth double? If they know the reference reference price, they know they can say, hey, this is double what what the producers say it should be. And so you can control the kind of action. And and and pricing is, and and and also together with pricing. I recommend that wineries and importers and whoever is is is selling wine and wants to do a good job online. Even if they're not selling online, they should have a where to buy page I know sometimes they're complicated to do. I know sometimes, you cannot have everyone there. But I I think about the consumer who's looking for information or the professional who's looking to, taste some model and wants to buy it. If I don't if I if I'm I'm in the country that I know your wines are in, but I go to the page of the of the producer of the winery. And, there's no place where I can see where to buy. It tells me go search somewhere else. This is not a good service. If someone calls you or sends you an email, telling where to buy you, we'll share the information. The problem is that the information is published publicly. So so, of course, people say, oh, okay. Maybe I don't have everyone. What we do on the internet is if you don't have all if if you don't know if everyone is listed there, you could always add an email saying, if you think you should be listed on this list, please send us an email. And it's a practical thing. So you you have, it's a practical tip on how to solve that. The only thing that can happen is that the consumer who's looking for that, shouldn't be pushed away to somewhere other sites, and you should be able to provide that information. If if you have the pricing, even better. Well, again, it's, in a sort of way, it's all controlling over the information in your own way. So we have some other, questions from Joseph asking what is the role of personalization, personalized wine advice, when selling wine online. There's there's a number of different kinds of personalization. Of course, if you think of physical product personalization, we think of a bottle that has an engraved number of the client, an engraved name of the client, for example, But when we say, personalized, wine experience, for example, we can actually think of, in our I'll use our example, to to see what we do in terms of personalization. We have, a few thousand customers who buy wine every year from Adega. And what we do is we know we know the average price of the bottles that they normally buy. So when we send emails, marketing, announcing new wines, and new releases, and all that, what we do is we actually send those wine segmented, by the average price per bottle that that client, of course, with the margin, but that client pays for. And so in a in a way, we're not personalizing to each person, but but at the same time, we're doing groups of people who would probably be willing to spend ten on ten euros on average on a bottle or fifty euros on average on bottle. And so and I I think you can do that already with the kind of technology that you have. And as you move forward, and you you introduce new technologies like, artificial intelligence and machine learning and a few other topics like that, very advanced kind of technologies that are being used by the big retailers these days, you'll be able to go actually deeper and recommend wines that some consumer might be interested in because maybe he likes that kind of region. Maybe he likes that kind of varieties. Maybe he likes something else. Having said that and going back to my point about being human, I think if you do, technology based personalization, then you should always have, think about the human side where someone might not might want to drink some wines that are not what he's has been drinking. So maybe we want to recommend the opposite of what he likes to see if he actually is going to broad to broaden his his interest in in trying wines from another region. So we go into things. I think that here we go, on what Joseph was touching because he meant a personalization based on individual taste. I think it can be done, but it needs I need it is being done already. But I I I do see the limits at the same time of of that happening. And all the examples that I've seen been working with with consumers consumers want that. They feel safer because someone is recommending based on their tastes. But at the same time, wine is so diverse that people are always interested in understanding different things. And I haven't seen an an an example that works at scale. But maybe now with artificial intelligence and machine learning, we'll see a few more things working that way. At the same time, people are people, and they always want, you know, what they want. And even if we do technology based personalization. I think there will always be a human component that wants something else. And, regarding this topic, so these, other investments that we can do, there is a question by land you, ask asking, about the cost of digital transformation? What is the realistic return on investment for a producer? When we talk about digital transformation, we're not talking, just about online. We're actually talking about implementing digital technologies across a company, for example. And what that means, it means that, a company needs to, implement systems that email is this digital transformation. It's not just, it's not just, when we're talking about just online. And so when you seed from that perspective, you need to understand, of course, that you're making an investment, and everyone's doing that investment at the time they're already using email or other, digital tools. But you need to see that from from the perspective of, of of how more efficient a company is going to be or how much business a company is going to lose because they're not digital. And, of course, if you focus only on doing, for example, social media has your digital transformation, the the the digital transformation that you want to do, then it's only a subset and it might not have, enough return on investment that you're thinking of. But if you see it from a broader perspective, it's really important. And you, you might actually lose business if you don't do it. And so, about organic traffic and pay traffic in this case. Do you have a suggested ratio? It's really challenging to, of course, to find what is the perfect. It it it depends for for so many people. But I I think what I would do is I would actually get, you want to have as much organic traffic as you possibly can because you don't pay for that. You pay developing your website, but you home pay, of course, for for people to come to your website. And the more you have organic traffic, the less you need to spend on ads, but if you want to to to if you can combine both, I would I would say that twenty to eighty So twenty pays and eighty percent not paid would be, would be a very good number. And, last question by Scott Patrick. How do you measure the success the online success for your brand. Are you certain statistics? You think can carry more than, more weight than others? How do you measure the success I'll I'll actually answer it with a question. How do you measure the success of your customer service? So if you think of, how do you measure the success of the system that takes calls from customers who want to know more information about your wines, Of course, you can you can always measure everything. You can always have a system to rate that. But there's a number of things that you don't measure. And sometimes we make the mistake of, for example, thinking, oh, let me see how many, people buy online. And if they don't buy online, why why am I doing online? And the point of my presentation, what is exactly to show that if you are online, you're constantly pushing your information and making sure that any information is available in as many places as possible, especially now that people are searching for that kind of information. And I think that's it's it's re really relevant to to sometimes it's really relevant to measure everything. You need to measure so that you know what you're getting. But it's it's really important to see things not just from a transactional point of view. But from a from a customer experience point of view. And here we talk about again about the human component, which it's key in, this sort of business in your opinion. Right? It it is it is very important in this kind of business. And it's a perfect example to introduce a metric. For example, what we do is we have a metric of the number of people who go to the website and click on the phone number to call our customer service. And it it can be a very good or a very bad metric. If you're having a lot of problems and you have a lot of people clicking, it means you're you're doing too many problems, and so that's not very good. But if you don't have that many problems, or if if if you have way more calls of people asking for information, or that that can be a a metric to see if it's working or if it's not working. But if you're not measuring, you don't know if it's going well. But if you're measuring, you shouldn't stick to just the transactional component here. Okay. I think that these were the question. I didn't know if there is, something else that people are curious about. Yep. I think that was it Okay. In terms of questions. Thank you very much. I would say thank you, Andre, for leading us through these great opportunities that we have and especially the way that we can use them successfully. So I'm sure that, you know, people will be writing to you, often now to investigate more. Well, we have a, maybe a last question from Amelia. No. Well, she was just, adding to your answer. The setting, KPI, and measure results are are the most important, the most overlooked of practices in marketing. So Very true. Perfect. Well, thank you very much. And, Thank you so much, Tina. As long as internet is very important, I still hope to see you in person very soon. Same. Likewise. Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We're on SoundCloud, Apple podcasts, Himalaya FM, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. If you enjoy listening, please consider donating through Italian wine podcast dot com. Any amount helps cover equipment, production, and publication costs. Until next time.