Blogging, Branding
& Public Relations
How to use blogging to help sell
more wine and build your brand

Josh Hermsmeyer
President, Capozzi Winery

Pinotblogger.com

Haven’t sold a single bottle of wine
(yet)

You lost
me at
“Hello”

What’s in it
for me?
1. Help you sell more wine
2. Build your wine
brand

Why blog?
Reason #1
Help You Sell
More Wine

Case Study

Stormhoek
Hired Hugh in 2005 and started a blog

Stormhoek
Sales went from 50,000 cases
to over 250,000 cases
after they started blogging

Stormhoek
five fold increase
That’s a
in less than two years

How?
One explanation:
Hugh sent bloggers
free samples of
Stormhoek wine
and they blogged
about it.

What happened
According to Hugh:
“Bloggers and their friends didn't
start suddenly descending on
supermarkets, buying the wine
in large numbers.”
gapingvoid.com
Source:

What happened
According to Hugh:
“What happened is that by interfacing
with the blogosphere, it fundementally
changed how Stormhoek looked at
treating their primary customers
(the supermarket chains) and the end-
users (the supermarkets' customers).”
gapingvoid.com
Source:

What happened
According to Hugh:
“[The challenge is that] there are
hundreds of thousands of vineyards in
the world, all trying to sell to the twelve
or so mass market wine buyers in the
UK.”
“You need a story that cuts through
the clutter.”
gapingvoid.com
Source:

Case Study #2

Pinotblogger

No sales #’s,
but here are a couple
interesting stats

800
# of mailing list sign-ups
via pinotblogger.com

10,000
# of monthly visitors to pinotblogger

Tee-shirt giveaway

Hundreds of links
=
a conversation with the market

Cool Bonus:
Got a book deal
• Mention in the Wall
Street Journal led to
being contacted by a
literary agent.
• A book on starting our
winery has to be
good for sales, right?

Remember...

Haven’t sold a single bottle of wine
(yet)

So Just Imagine...
what you can accomplish with some actual juice to sell!

Caveat #1
You need to make your blog a main focus of
your marketing to really be successful

Caveat #2
Both Stormhoek and I are new to the
industry and have nothing to lose

Takeaway:
Blogging can help you
sell more wine indirectly
and
The results can be phenomenal,
especially given the extremely low cost

Why blog?
Reason # 2
Build your winery brand

But first...
What’s the difference
between Marketing,
Advertising,
PR, and Branding??

Marketing

Advertising

Public Relations

Branding

Blogs help you outsource your PR to
hundreds of people who can build your
brand by word of mouth, for free.
IF...
...your wine and customer service are remarkable

If your wine sucks and you act like a jerk,
they’ll be happy to blog about that as well!

Google Juice

Google loves blogs

Around 40% of searches on Google are
people looking to buy something

Blogging helps those people locate you
because Google loves blogs
(and the number of people shopping for or
researching wine online will continue to grow)

Examples:

Search for: “robert parker pinot”
Text

Search for: “russian river pinot”

Search for: “cool russian river wineries”

Takeaways:
It is cheap and effective to use your blog to
get people talking about your wines.
You just have to be remarkable.
and
Blogging helps your Google ranking, which will help more
people find you.

Thank You!