Marketing strategies are changing every year and it is important you have a team that can keep your winery ahead of the curve. It’s time to revolutionize how wineries build their marketing departments.  

I have a deep understanding of the interworking of winery marketing departments having worked in-house for two Napa wineries prior to starting my DTC wine marketing agency, Highway 29 Creative. The skills required even a decade ago are less relevant today as marketing shifts to digital.

If I owned a winery and could build my marketing team from scratch, I would fill three specific jobs. While the scale of your winery will dictate the size of your marketing team, I think a three person team is capable of running marketing for even a large scale winery. Small wineries may only be able to afford a single marketer. In that case, they need to hire a multifaceted marketer who brings all of these skills to the table. 

I’m not into fancy titles, so call this a director or vice president if you like. When hiring this person, I would be looking for a real strategist. This person should have a proven track record building and scaling a brand. They need to have a plan to grow the top of the funnel (find new customers) and engage existing customers to maximize lifetime value. 

Job duties would include planning the marketing calendar, ideating major campaign themes for each season, scheduling promotions, and representing the brand at major events. I’d want someone with a killer instinct that is not afraid to roll up their sleeves, try something new, and bring fresh ideas to the table. 

Most importantly, this person needs to understand how to use data to leverage marketing. I’d expect them to be well versed in Google Analytics and have a firm grasp of KPIs (key performance indicators) for digital advertising and social media. I would expect this person to create monthly reports showing me their marketing campaigns and quantifiable results.

Suggested Interview Questions:

• What KPIs do you think can properly measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign?

• How would you acquire new customers for our brand?

• How would you engage our current customers to maximize their lifetime value?

• What is one big marketing idea you wish your last company would have followed through with?

There is so much more to social media than posting photos on Instagram. Social media is usually the first project to get delegated to untrained tasting rooms members or other employees and it’s a real shame. With social media, you get out of it what you put into it. 

Proper social media strategy can be taught, but experience is always helpful. For this position, the person needs equal competency in both paid and organic social media. They need to understand how to build, optimize, and analyze ads on both Google and Facebook. Other duties would include creating a monthly content calendar for organic channels including Instagram and Facebook at a minimum, TikTok and Pinterest if they have extra time. Better to be great at two channels, than so-so on four. 

So many wineries unfortunately do not see the value in this position. Do you expect a winemaker to blend a wine and walk away from it until bottling? Of course not! They need to rack, blend, and sample the wine regularly. Social media requires the same amount of upkeep. This person should be responding to all comments on social media, proactively engaging followers of your competitors to grow your following, and regularly monitoring ad performance. 

Certification in Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, Facebook Marketing is a minimum qualification. 

Suggested Interview Questions:

• What do you think is the best way to build a true community on social media?

• What strategies would you use to grow a social media account following?

• How would you build a digital ad campaign for the top of the funnel and the middle of the funnel?

• How would you measure the success of your digital ad campaign?

All of your brilliant marketing campaigns will be just ideas without great content to support it. Wineries need a full-time employee creating content for them. This person should have experience with photography, videography, editing, and graphic design. 

You do not need to hire a professional photographer with very expensive equipment. These days a newer model iPhone with a gimbal is perfect for capturing high quality content. This person should feel comfortable both behind and in-front of the camera. Our data shows content with people in it and selfie-style videos perform the best. They can become a narrator for the brand and create behind the scenes content. They would then edit the content and pass it off to the social media manager.

Depending on your winery’s needs, this person should be proficient in graphic design with experience using programs in the Adobe Suite, Figma, etc. They can design POS materials for the tasting room and general marketing. Additionally, they can design emails and graphics for social media and digital ads.

Suggested Interview Questions:

• What do you think is the key to creating engaging content?

• How would you tell our brand story through photo and video?

• What is another brand that you think produces great content and design?

• If you could change one thing about our brand’s aesthetic, what would it be?

Where To Hire A Good Winery Marketing Team?

I built our team at Highway 29 Creative specifically with a balance of wine industry experience and subject matter specialists. I did not care if interview candidates knew anything about wine or even liked wine. If they were good at their discipline, they could be taught how to apply it to wine. Even better, if they were new to wine, they brought a fresh perspective to the team.

Too many wineries focus on wine experience over marketing experience and this is a big mistake. Wine is not that special or difficult– anyone can learn it! If you post your job on winejobs.com you will only get ex-winery employees that most likely will bring you the same old ideas other wineries use. If you want a fresh perspective and a higher level of marketing expertise, look outside of the wine industry. Use other job boards and minimize qualifications related to wine. Focus on marketing and ecommerce experience instead. 

Our wine marketing agency is 100% remote. We do not have a central office and everyone works from home. Even more shocking, none of us live in wine country. The notion that you need your entire marketing staff on-site and living in your wine region is a fallacy. If you limit yourself to Napa for instance, you will only have access to a limited pool of talent that can afford to live there. Believe me, there is way more talent across the country. It would be a good idea to have one marketing employee on site such as your content creator, but all three certainly do not have to be. Your social media manager could live across the country and still do their job effectively. If anything, the pandemic normalized this style of work.

In-House Marketing Team vs. Wine Marketing Agency

If the thought of hiring a marketing team and managing them seems daunting or you simply do not have the budget for 3 full time employees, consider hiring an agency instead. An agency is not the right fit for every type of business, but for many it can be more efficient and cost effective. You can minimize payroll, benefits, insurance, etc. and tap into a larger team with more specialties. 

There are tons of great wine marketing agencies out there including ours, Highway 29 Creative. Do your research, interview many, and decide which is the best fit for you. Run a cost benefit analysis of hiring and managing your own team vs. an agency and make the decision that is best for your company.

Wine Marketing Revolution

Wineries need to rethink how they hire and build their marketing departments. The world is changing too quickly and “that’s the way it’s always been” will not keep your brand relevant. You need a team with fresh ideas, a proven strategy, and an understanding of how to measure success with data. Use this inspiration to reassess your approach and optimize it for future growth. 

Simon Solis-Cohen is the founder of Highway 29 Creative, a leading digital and creative agency serving the wine industry. He challenges clients to think about the future and constantly innovate. The agency chases data, not fads, and provides one-stop shopping for wineries looking to enter or jolt their direct to consumer sales. Their approach starts by designing and building a website focused on conversion (wine sales, club sign ups & tasting room reservations) and then dives into each digital channel with consistent and effective content and messaging.