I was reading through a significant liquor supplier’s marketing plan deck. It was a deck associated with a particular year’s go to market plan. Customer sampling cost of $10 to $15 per sample to the consumer was the planned spend for the year.

The difference between $10 and $15 was determined by the nature of the event or activation as we call it in booze marketing.

This informs you immediately as to the extremely high cost of sampling customers in the spirits, wine, and beer industry.

What are satisfactory metrics for these brands?

• Social reach/engagement
• Media impressions
• Building relationships
• Ability to leverage key accounts

Do you notice what’s not listed? Data, knowledge or relationships with customers, data that bridges the gab between these activations and whether or not the attendees bought the brand after the event.

The alcohol industry is satisfied with a final metric of case counts. I get it. Up to recently, there have been few options for them.

For $10.00 per sample, let me share what my company brings to the table.

Through the use of our proprietary beverage marketing software, we empower the sampling spend to do far more than brands currently imagine.

We call it the Hospitality Support Program. Restaurants, bars, and venues need support this year. They need cost effective ways to build foot traffic.

Our restaurant/bar/venue partners, which includes distilleries, vineyards, and breweries may come onboard the Shared Spirits platform. This takes about an hour including the time it takes to build a drinks menu that shows up on the Shared Spirits app.

When the venue partner is ready, we assist them in building a campaign. Shared Spirits compliantly converts a marketing spend by the venue partner into drink credits. The drink credits are pointed directly to specific drinks.

These drinks may be high quality cocktails featuring elements that make them high margin as well. They may be specific beers or wines by the glass or bottle.

When the campaign is strategically built, it is done so with the recipients of the drink in mind. Shared Spirits software allows us to push the drink credits out to a network of ambassadors provided to us by the venue partner.

These recipients then are notified they need to share the drink credits to others. Think about it. As a patron of your favorite restaurant. If you suddenly had the ability to shoot 5 or 10 friends, colleagues, or connections drinks from your favorite restaurant, would you be happy? Sure. They would be as well.

When they receive the drink credits, the campaign time frame is disclosed. Maybe it’s 2 days, maybe it’s two weeks. When the campaign concludes, Shared Spirits rebates 70% of the marketing spend back to the venue partner.

Let’s look at the math.

$1000 gets spent on the beverage marketing campaign.

Assume a $10 cocktail all in with tax and tip included.

100 cocktail credits get pushed out to the venue provided network. Those ambassadors share their inventory with others.

At the end of the campaign, 70% or $700 goes back to the venue assuming all drink credits were redeemed. The upside for the venue partner is vast. They get foot-traffic, buzz, good will, and recipients come in with a drink credit that leads them to buy another drink, bring a friend, buy appetizers or stay for dinner.

So for a net cost of $3.00 per customer, the restaurant knows who responded, who redeemed, what was spent per ticket on each visit and with our upgrades, a way to continually mature the relationship with the individual patron.

How does this relate to big liquor, big wine, or big beer suppliers?

If they spend their dollars on this program instead of other nebulous bull…s…t that doesn’t reinforce relationships with individuals they will one day loose out to brands that do.

With a supporting spend to their favored restaurant/bar account through Shared Spirits, the drink deployments would feature their brand. Assume a $300 spend every time your key account spends $1000. Big win!

The ambassador list could include supplier/distributor chosen participants driving traffic to the key account. Big win!

The cost of getting liquid to lips, in this case the lips of people that are known and may be continually marketed to after the activation is vastly less expensive than current sampling cost that render NO useful data. The cost of getting that customer sampled with exponentially more engagement and data as well as followup messaging about where to buy the brand at a key retail account? $3.00 to $5.00. Big win!

The highly targeted and compliant nature of this campaign eliminates risk from poorly targeted social media. Big win!

The relationship with the restaurant/bar account is vastly enhanced. Big win!

If you’re a bar or restaurant and want to see if you qualify for the program, pick a time to chat. We’ll demo the system for you and answer your questions. Click here to schedule a time.

If you’re a supplier in the spirits, wine, or beer space and understand the power of what’s being shared here, let’s talk. Click here to schedule a time.

Visit our explainer video here as well.