In Mexico, where it is easier for people to consume beer or tequila, wine can also be relevant. It just needs a little push. And in Viñedos La Redonda they gave it to them when they registered the brand ‘National Wine Day’ for marketing purposes. The bet paid off. In one week, the winery increased its online orders by 600% compared to the monthly average and achieved 32.87% higher customer retention.
“Wine is still associated with a social class and we have come to break that mandate, our philosophy is that it is a drink that you combine with tacos, with pozole, with any Mexican food, which is not a question of classes, but of an experience” , explains Mauricio González, technology director of Viñedos La Redonda, which launched this campaign in mid-October.
“That is why it occurred to us to register the brand and carry out this recognition campaign where people felt identified with the drink,” he adds.
For two weeks, the company shared content on its digital platforms and generated expectations for the event. This helped him increase his average number of followers on social media by 55% and increased the number of interactions per 1,000 fans by 3.5 times.
Digital friends
For more than 10 years, Viñedos La Redonda has been present on social networks. Claudio Bortoluz, CEO of the company, says that the winery debuted on Facebook with the idea of ‘making friends’, but understood that the key to success was talking to people to get their attention.
“We started to grow a lot, we hired a community manager and we bet on the dissemination of content. This allowed us to grow in e-commerce. We spread our festivals, annually we do four and more than 10,000 people attend. It became a virtuous circle ”, says the manager.
Until that moment, the wine-producing house was in the top 10 of the alcoholic beverage brands in Mexico with the most interactions on social networks, but its leader still did not know it.
Everything seemed to be going from strength to strength until the coronavirus arrived. The company had the infrastructure to sell online, but had yet to learn how to exploit digital media. “We always felt that a part of that puzzle was missing,” confesses Mauricio González. With the help of social media marketing company Socialbakers, Viñedos La Redonda implemented a strategy that combined two elements: data and creativity.
In the winery they began to make decisions based on the data. They were in charge of interpreting the information and obtaining insights that helped them maintain the attention of their consumers in the midst of the pandemic.
Juan Carlos Luján, Socialbakers regional director for Latin America, explains that the company’s focus was on achieving a real connection with its followers on digital social networks through valuable content, encouraging feedback from its consumers. This generated high levels of engagement , brand loyalty and, above all, increased sales.
“This is how we released several special edition wine labels last year,” says Viñedos La Redonda’s director of technology.
The company increased its revenue in double digits and e-commerce sales doubled, so it had to buy its own vehicles to make deliveries (in addition to maintaining a partnership with the parcel firm DHL) and invest in the equipment of a warehouse intended solely to store the merchandise that is marketed through the internet.
He even created special packaging so that the wine would not break on the way, since the boxes he had were not strong enough to withstand the transfer.
On a digital level, their presence improved considerably. According to the ranking of the alcoholic beverage industry in Mexico, prepared by Socialbakers, in the fourth quarter of 2020 Viñedos La Redonda is the brand with the best performance on Facebook, with 617,025 interactions in 318 publications. It is above firms such as Jack Daniel’s and Cerveza Modelo.
On Instagram it also holds the title of the best performing brand in the sector. With 139,849 followers, each production company generated 164,186 interactions in 197 publications. Mezcal Ampres and Cerveza Minerva also stand out on the list.
Targeted and effective strategy
Focusing your digital marketing efforts on understanding your audience has paid off. Ingrid Álvarez, director of the intelligence business unit of the data science company Metrics applied to strategic communication, explains that in the last five years, searches related to wine have grown.
“People want to know where the drink is kept, for example, on the wine route (which is made in the company’s vineyard) or some bottles, but there is a very specific one that is Ruby red wine from La Redonda, it is the third place in searches, this speaks of the good positioning of the brand ”, he asserts.
For Javier Pons, a specialist at La Salle University, the success of the brand’s digital strategy is due to the fact that they have a well-defined market niche, which has caused the public to react positively.
According to Claudio Bortoluz, the majority of its consumers are millennials and generation X, but this does not mean that they ignore baby boomers or centennials of legal age.
“They are congruent with their public that consumes them, they do not lie about their product and they give options for a different intake than the one we all have in mind. The brand knows that it is not only about the drink, but about the lifestyle around it, ”says the La Salle academic.
The growth of Viñedos La Redonda in digital platforms contrasts with the fall that the drink in general has had in the last two years. Figures from Metrics indicate that wine searches increased 5.3% in 2020 compared to the 7.75% growth recorded a year earlier. “It must be taken into account that the sector has been declining, that is why the efforts to enhance the drink are effective,” says Ingrid Álvarez.
A different story is told in beer, which had a search increase of 13.84% last year versus 9.39% in 2019. Tequila increased 3.81% in 2020, a visibly smaller figure to 18.44% the previous year.
In general, the alcoholic beverages sector grew 8.21% in 2020 vs. 10.84% in 2019.
“The reason why the demand for wine also decreases is because the more poverty begins to exist in a country, the cheaper alcoholic beverages are bought,” adds Javier Murillo, CEO of Metrics.
For Luis Felipe Díaz, a marketing specialist at the Escuela Bancaria y Comercial (EBC), the challenge for brands in the sector is to transform their communication on social networks. From their perspective they are being very attractive and innovative, but the market is constantly evolving, so adapting to these changes will be paramount.
For now, Claudio Bortoluz is focused on surviving, increasing the company’s sales and profitability, and continuing to meet consumer demands. “We are launching special products for online commerce, different from those sold in traditional stores, we are doing well. In digital, we will continue to treat customers in such a way that they feel identified with us, we will continue to tell them stories”, concludes the director General of Viñedos La Redonda.
