down on your marketing?

Unfortunately though, with the exception of a handful of CAMRA members, the brewery taproom remained largely empty. On a brew day, total strangers would often walk in off the streets and gawp in wonder at this charming building steeped in character. ‘Wow!’, they’d say in wide-eyed wonder, ‘How long has this been open?’. ‘Eleven years’, I’d reply. ‘Eleven years?! I never knew it was here!’

This script was so well rehearsed that I decided we should open an Instagram account and start showing off the brewery and the building. I also suggested we incorporate the building’s rich history within our branding and brand narrative in order to draw people to the source, to taste our beers in-house and maximise profits.

Fortunately, the stars aligned and an artisan food hall moved in opposite the brewery around the same time. Before we knew it, we were full to the rafters with punters.

Now, you could argue that by simply being across the road from the food hall, we’d inevitably receive footfall. True. However, in order to measure our marketing, I would ask people at random, ‘How did you find out about us?’, to which many would respond, ‘Oh, I saw it on Instagram! It’s the first time I’ve been here’.

Measure, measure, measure

The main reason people slash their marketing spend is because they don’t know which of their endeavours is having an effect, and thus conclude it’s all a waste of money. And yet marketing, as I’ve just shown, is the very thing that gets people to engage in the first place.

The key is tracking and measuring your marketing with every tool available: from technological solutions such as Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics, through primitive methods such as simply asking people questions.

Now isn’t the time to cut your marketing spend. But it is time to crunch the numbers, analyse the data, do some market research and find out where people are spending money at the moment. And once you’ve done that, it’s time to market the hell out of your business and generate income.

Nick Law is the Creative Director of Hop Forward: a branding, marketing and business consultancy for the brewing industry. He works with a variety of beer businesses both in the UK and overseas and also runs a weekly podcast with a variety of guests from across the world of beer. Find out more at www.hopforward.beer or email nick@hopforward.beer

Beer. Do you remember your first glass? I do, it was with my friend Gemma in her parent's kitchen. Her parents, it has to be said, were not aware of this at the time, we might not have been of legal age. The fact that I remember drinking it alongside a cheese sandwich on Mighty White bread certainly points that way.

Alcohol, and my consumption of it, has come a long way since 1995, but the experience of sitting in a pub or restaurant, with good friends and sipping a perfectly served glass simply cannot be beaten. I have a feeling many of you would agree with me, but KAM’s recent research identifies one part of this experience that many hospitality customers really don’t enjoy… the actual process of choosing and ordering their drink.

Information at point-of-sale

Research we carried out in partnership with Hallgarten & Novum Wines, a specialist wine supplier to the on-trade, looks at the customer experience when ordering in pubs, bars and restaurants and I was surprised to find that 1-in-3 customers don’t feel confident ordering wine specifically in pubs, bars and restaurants, with 1-in-9 admitting that they often find the experience intimidating. They are put off by confusing jargon and the perceived complexity around wine. They feel embarrassed to ask staff for advice and therefore default to what they know, switch to a different category, or worse, go without.

Not quite the outstanding customer experience we’re hoping for in our great venues.

When asked, many customers say they don’t feel that pubs and bars provide enough information to help them make an informed decision when ordering wine and I strongly suspect that many beer drinkers, especially where it may not be their regular drink, feel exactly the same way.

Choosing no and low

Different research we carried out in partnership with Lucky Saint looked