Marketing vs Sales: Where should I focus?
Should you market your beers or sell your beers? You might be thinking, wait a second, I have to pick one? Not entirely. Let me explain.
Your time, effort, and funding is limited, if that wasn't the case, you wouldn't be on my email list. So when it comes to making decisions about your promotional efforts for your brewery, how do you decide where to channel your budget and effort to maximize your marketing and sales activities? Let's figure that out together.
There are breweries and beers that need more marketing efforts than sales efforts, and vice versa. Determining which side you fall on is based on a multitude of factors that I will get to in just a second, but the general idea here is that you have to be smart with how you allocate your promotional funds and strategic attention, and if you can determine ahead of time the area in which you need to place focus, you can optimize your time and your budget.
I’ll give you an example to further illustrate. If the main goal of your brewery is to brew interesting craft lagers for your local neighborhood patrons in just your taproom, you can probably focus more on marketing efforts. This plays into the strategy of building brand awareness and getting your name out there on a wide scale. Your target customers probably know what a lager is, therefore they don’t need ultra specialized product education with a ton of explaining. You can focus more on casting a wide marketing net to attract your end consumer and increase traffic to your taproom.
Now let’s look at it from the other side. Say you’re specializing in mixed culture fermentation and produce beers that are designed for a niche group of customers and you’re selling these beers in the retail market. Promoting your beer will require a little more explanation and education to familiarize your target customer with your product and its benefits, plus if you’re dealing with retail buyers, you’re going to need specific sales plans on how to sell into accounts. This would be an example of when you need to approach your promotional efforts with an emphasis on sales. Your beers will thrive in a direct sales type environment where the nuances of your product are best experienced with the guidance of a brand expert (AKA your outside sales rep).
Please note that I’ve really generalized these examples here, but I felt it was necessary to illustrate this concept. In making this decision for your particular brewery, you need to take into account your overall brewery vision, mission, and goals.
In trying to decide if you need to lean more towards a marketing or sales focus, the factors that you need to consider are: price, market size, product complexity, market segment, and relationships.
Price: the higher your product price, the more sales focus you will need and vice versa; the lower your price point, the more you can focus on your marketing efforts
Market Size: big buyer pools need more marketing focus, so if you’re trying to reach a ton of consumers, you would be wise to invest well in marketing; if you’re selling beer to a niche customer base, you will need to focus more on direct sales
Product Complexity: simple, familiar beers = more marketing focus; complex beers that require an explanation of intricacies = more sales focus
Market Segments: if you’re focused on selling beer to end consumers only (i.e. taproom) your strengths should be in marketing (and customer service, but that’s a whole other article); if you’re selling beer in the retail market and/or with a distributor or wholesaler, you need a ton of sales focus
Relationships: sales is better for building buyer relationships; marketing is more suited for building end consumer relationships
Now, I’m not telling you to go all in on one or the other, you need to find the balance that's right for your brand, so that you can be intentional in how you allocate your time and budget. Knowing where you should place your promotional focus for your brewery or specific beers can be very helpful so you're not just winging it out there and hoping for the best.
Cheers,
Julie