When the Direct to Consumer Wine Symposium invited Womenkind’s president, Kristi Faulkner, to California’s wine country to speak at their annual conference, she jumped! Not only a connoisseur of wine – Kristi is sommelier certified by the Master of Wine – she is also an expert in direct to consumer marketing. The Wine Symposium posed the question: How can we better market directly to women? Like too many consumer categories, the spirits industry is not as focused on marketing to women as they should be. Kristi went to speak to them about how to improve their consumer insights, brand messaging, and increase their market share by marketing to women.
The wine industry’s global growth is slowing, and yet the DTC aspect of the business is can be up to a whopping 60% of a winery’s sales. Kristi spent an afternoon enlightening a very sophisticated audience of marketers to the spending power of women – the world’s most powerful consumer. Women outnumber men in the US by more than seven million, and they outspend them too – accounting for more than $7 trillion of purchases, compared with men’s $2 trillion. And more than 50% of “traditional male products” are purchased by women.
Yet many wine and spirits companies still subscribe to the ingrained belief that men are their customer!
In fact, 59% of wine drinkers are women, with about half drinking wine daily or several times of week. Wine is a lifestyle, and women have embraced it! According to research, high frequency wine drinkers, who logically are the greatest consumers of wine are willing to pay more for the wine they drink. And 57% of high frequency drinkers are women.
Kristi presented the symposium with an overview of WomIntuition, Womenkind’s proprietary research of all aspects of womanhood, and shared with the attentive audience the data of how fundamentally women and men differ. And then she gave the audience five unique ways that wineries can better welcome, serve, and sell to women.
The ideas began with the sensory experience of wine and wineries: How to design the taking room and experience to satisfy a woman’s greater sensitivity to touch, taste, sight, sound and smell. She talked about exciting ways to engage her heart and palate. And spoke to audience about the critical importance of making an emotional connection – how to tap into her emotions to make the experience one she won’t soon forget.
Kristi also spoke to the idea of reframing the direct to consumer experience all together. After all, wine clubs are fine. But an invitation to participate in a dynamic community is even better. Of course, we know that a woman’s relationships are paramount to her, so she encouraged the audience to embrace her wider circle and not to overlook the role that girlfriends play in her life. After all, 39 % of women report that they’ll plan a “girlfriends getaway” at least once in the next three years – so why not make it a winery?
The objective of direct to consumer marketing to is to develop an ongoing one-to-one relationship with a target consumer. Make the relationship more personal, and collect valuable data that leads to insights. In order to drive sales, DTC brands must nurture and sustains the relationship. And that means understanding the consumer intimately. Great advice for any brand marketer, whether she’s marketing to women or not!