What a Wine Tasting Tour Can Teach Us About Small Business Marketing

As a marketing professional, it is sometimes very difficult for me to remember how “regular” people shop for goods and services (by “regular people” I mean those who don’t have an insider’s understanding of things like reputation marketing, SEO, etc).  However, sometimes I get the chance to study the behavior of “regular” consumers when I am hanging out with a group of people.

Recently, my sister and brother-in-law visited my wife and I in southwest Virginia and gave me an opportunity to do just that.  During their visit, we took them on a self-guided wine tasting tour where we visited three different wineries in the area.

At the first two, the four of us spent an average of $50 per person on the wine tastings, bottles of wine, and food.  At the third winery, we only spent $5 each on the wine tasting.

In Episode 266 of my podcast, I talk about the things that the last winery did and didn’t do that caused us to spend so little money there, in the hopes that you won’t make the same mistakes in your marketing.

Listen to this episode and learn:

• Why people already have an opinion about your business before they ever talk to you or walk in your door.
• How responding incorrectly to negative reviews can make the problem much worse.
• Why how you sell is even more important than what you sell.
• How you can greatly increase the lifetime value of a customer by giving your employees a little bit of sales training

Use the embedded player below to listen to the episode.