• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Advertise
  • About Craft Brewing Business

Craft Brewing Business

Professional Insight, Unfiltered

  • News
  • Business & Marketing
  • Ingredients & Supplies
  • Packaging & Distribution
  • Equipment
  • Webinars & White Papers
  • Newsletter

Three tips to boost sales, exposure at beer events and tastings

May 8, 2018Meg Raiano

reCreative-tasting events
Tip 1: People are suckers for free beer.

What’s the point in doing tastings at liquor stores, beer festivals and restaurants? For one, exposure. Getting your brand name out there and introducing people within your market to your beer is one of the major factors in longevity. Making your beer recognizable and delicious are the two things that are going to keep you in business. Also, people love free beer, and those tastings directly lead to increased on-site sales.

We here at reCreativeAGENCY, recently started providing tastings in partnership with Hartford Distributors Inc. and SamPoll App where we put together a sampling of the newest beer to hit shelves in Connecticut. The first selection? SweetWater Brewing Co. from Atlanta.

The main purpose of our tasting event is to get people in the Connecticut market to taste and love SweetWater enough to buy. The beer speaks for itself but in a new, extremely saturated market, how will they stand out? Below you’ll find three things you can do to make your brewery stand out at a tasting, festival or tap takeover. Some of these aren’t for everyone but you can bet your ass implementing one or a few will get you more sales, more interest and more long-term brewery visitors.

1. Bring options

In every state, there are going to be those beers that are overwhelmingly popular and mass produced, and then there will be those that don’t get talked about as often but when they do, damn. In our home state of Connecticut, New England IPAs are where it’s at. Every brewery has one (or twelve), and they all seem to favor that style or other IPAs. Not only should you be promoting the beer that is currently your state/county/town’s “it” beer, but it should be displayed loudly and proudly during your tastings. For those breweries marketing out of state, make sure that state’s preference is represented as much as possible within your tasting.

RELATED: How to use events to build your craft brewery’s brand

Offering what everyone loves will get them to visit your booth, offering something a little different will help keep them there.

By providing a variety of tastes, breweries can set themselves apart from the other brewer next door that also has a NEIPA, an IPA and a double IPA. Why not bring your one lambic beer or that oatmeal stout that won gold at the Great American Beer Festival? Show you’ve got a variety of options for those people who, like me, don’t like IPAs (blasphemy, I know). Bring out your wheat ale that complements the IPA taste without leaving that extra hoppy flavor, bring out your fruity beers that show your true range and if you strictly make one type of beer, make sure you show the range in those. As we here in Connecticut can attest, almost every NEIPA has its own distinct taste.

A 2014 Eventbrite survey of 5,000 food and drink festival attendees found that after a beer event, 99 percent of participants will recommend your brand to a friend. Not to mention, half will buy your beer on the spot, and 40 percent will sign up for your email newsletter.

Imagine how many more people will buy your beer right there if you offer a wider variety.

2. Bring swag

recreative agency
The SamPoll app lets you create a tasting challenge that automatically enters customers to win something awesome of your choosing.

Nothing says “I love this brewery” more than walking around with it emblazoned on your shirt and honestly, who doesn’t love free swag? Now, we’re not saying to give away all of your stuff, but try stuff like having a drawing for all the people who visited your tent and tasted your beer, or use an app like SamPoll to create a tasting challenge that automatically enters them to win something awesome. This provides an opportunity for more people throughout social media to see and rate your brews.

People who are going to beer festivals love drinking beer and knowing about beer. We all know those guys who walk straight up to you and ask you which hops you’re using and why you chose to go with Citra instead of Galaxy. Those people are your word of mouth marketing for life. If you can get them to love you by providing them with great beer and an awesome experience or some sweet swag, they’ll sing your praises til the end of time.

3. Entice people to swing by the tasting room

beer event sales

I know that sounds like a no-brainer, right? People come to beer festivals or in-store beer tastings and leave with (hopefully) a new found love of your beer. But how do you get them to come back? Give them with a reason to. Even giving away something as simple as $1 off a pint or a free branded glass when you buy a flight will drive more people into the brewery, get people to buy more beer and, as an added bonus, bring friends.

Of course, without the added incentive, they can always buy again in stores if you distribute, but wouldn’t you want your customers to come have the brewery experience? With the amount of craft breweries popping up each day in the United States, the one thing that will make your beer stand out against the competition is the experience you provide at the tasting room. Other than your badass can art and any prior knowledge of the brand, what makes you stand out over the 15 other IPAs sitting on the shelves right next to yours? They might still pick you, but wouldn’t you want to solidify that by creating a kickass tasting room experience?

All in all, it is our humble belief that tasting events create consumers for life, so make sure you do all you can in your approach to make it happen.

people drinking at bar
Five private events that can keep your brewery’s calendar booked
Renting brewery space
Harmonic Brewery shows us how to market a brewery through events
Deschutes Street Pub
Deschutes Brewery tells us how to throw a kick ass party and give all the proceeds to charity
Blue Mountain Dark Hollow Reserve
After the event: Blue Mountain Brewery tallies event successes

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Primary Sidebar

Latest News

  • Get way smarter next year with these online brewing courses from UC Davis
  • Hard seltzer consumption forecasted to triple by 2023, half of U.S. alcohol consumers drink it at least once a week says new survey
  • Five insights from Drizly’s independent alcohol store owners survey
  • Is ‘local’ the next ‘craft?’ Big Lake Brewing adds Michigan-only brewery seal

Sign up for our newsletter

unsubscribe from list

Most Popular Today

Recent Features

  • White ClawHard seltzer consumption forecasted to triple by 2023, half of U.S. alcohol consumers drink it at least once a week says new survey
    December 5, 2019
  • Billion-dollar Ballast Point sold to a Chicago brewery I’ve never even heard of, Constellation prefers Corona Hard Seltzer
    December 4, 2019
  • Reeves-Microbrewery Handbook-001Keys to Improving Day-to-Day Taproom Operations (an excerpt from The Microbrewery Handbook)
    December 3, 2019
  • Craft beer marketing idea of the week: Cleveland’s Platform Beer launches Willy Wonka-esque Golden Sticker contest
    December 2, 2019
  • We are off this week, so here are 27 craft beer articles to be thankful for
    November 25, 2019
  • The guy who came up with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos when he was a janitor is the Craft Brewers Conference keynote
    November 21, 2019

Footer

  • Email Newsletter Sign Up
  • About Craft Brewing Business
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise on Craft Brewing Business
  • Media Kit Download
  • Privacy and Terms

© 2019 · CBB Media LLC