10 Tips That Will Make Your Brand Pop at a Wine Sampling or Tasting Event

By: Ray Sheehan, Founder - Old City Media

When attending a wine-tasting or sampling event, your brand needs to sparkle like fine champagne. Potential customers need to see you and know you are the best brand in the room.

No matter what you are selling, if customers don't believe it, they won't buy it. With that in mind, here are 10 tips that will help your brand make an impression.

Tip #1: Hire Knowledgeable and Outgoing Brand Ambassadors

Whether you hire internally or outsource to an agency, knowledgeable and outgoing brand ambassadors are the key to a successful wine-tasting event. During the night, they will represent you to potential customers and introduce them to your product because they serve as the face of your brand.

It's critical to hire friendly and outgoing ambassadors who easily engage with customers. At a wine sampling event, personable ambassadors attract a crowd, while shy and reserved ambassadors can appear unapproachable. Once they get people talking, they also need the confidence to motivate consumers to buy products.

Your brand ambassadors also need to be knowledgeable about your brand and the wine industry as a whole, which is why a TIPS and/or RAMP certification is a must. These certifications ensure your brand ambassadors know what they're talking about and can be trusted to represent your product.

Tip #2: Train Brand Ambassadors about what Makes Your Brand Special

You may have the best wine in the world, but if your brand ambassadors don't know how to present it properly, no one will ever know. Before the tasting event or sample sale, train them thoroughly about what makes your brand special. They'll need to interact with new customers, answer questions about your product, talk about what sets it apart from other wines, and convince them to buy it.

Before brand ambassadors represent you at the tasting event, they should know your brand's story, mission, and values as well as yourself. If your brand has a competitive advantage over the other wines available that night, make sure your brand ambassadors know it.

Make sure to provide thorough training to address the following aspects of your brand:

● Your brand's history — brand ambassadors should be well-versed to speak about how your company came about, who founded it, and why. This information will help ambassadors answer questions with a personal flair that tells customers why they should buy from you, not another company in the industry.

● Your brand's unique products — brand ambassadors need to be able to speak about each separate product you offer. For this reason, train them with specifics about how your wines are made, how you source ingredients, how you promote sustainable manufacturing, and what makes your wine stand out compared to other brands on the market.

● Your customer benefits — brand ambassadors must be able to highlight the value of your product(s). For instance, if a prospective customer walks up to them and asks what results they can expect to see, taste, or feel, this can include things like less sugar, fewer calories, organic