POS & Promotional Items for Breweries
Aside from good beer, the key to running a successful brewery is increasing brand awareness. People have to hear about you in order to come give your brew a shot. So how do you spread the word about your brewery? You’ve got social media, websites, Google, local media, but another great way to spread your name is to offer branded merchandise. Rely on those who already love you to share your name.
Use branded promotional items to draw attention at local events and rely on them to continue sharing your name as they’re used or worn by recipients. Your best bet for ensuring the use and sharing of your promotional items is to offer cool or unique merchandise. Below are a few ideas to get you started.
Apparel
Apparel may be the first thing that comes to mind. Many people think t-shirts, but don’t miss the opportunity to appeal to your audience by expanding into tank tops, baseball tees, hoodies, and even bandanas. You can’t go wrong because everyone loves a good comfy t-shirt, and that’s what most people wear when they’re headed to a bar, concert, or just making a Saturday afternoon trip to the grocery store. It’s also the highest visibility item on our list, ensuring more eyes see your item.
Accessories
Beyond apparel, think small. Little items may be more appealing to a new customer and are often collectibles. Think pins that can be affixed to backpacks or jackets and patches that can be sewn in or ironed on. They’re inexpensive to create and sell, and they offer visibility. Although they’re small in appearance, many collectors love to share their collections – keeping them visible on their regular bar going jacket or sharing a new patch on social media. And if you’re in line behind someone with a hundred buttons or twenty patches, who can resist the urge to read them over? Collections like this are a great conversation starter, and pretty popular on the bar circuit.
Glassware
This one is a no brainer. Brand your glasses, steins, flight kits, shot glasses and growlers. People love to have branded glassware from their favorite breweries. They’ll likely get a little less visibility, but anyone buying this for their home is promoting your brew to friends and family. The growlers come with the added bonus of offering a fill/refill service for your customers increasing your ROI.
Miscellaneous Tools
Two great items that don’t have a category of their own are drink coolers and log books. Coolers can be small two bottle cloth coolers or a full size drag it to a party, strap it to a tube on the river, kind of deal. Both will offer good visibility and a practical use for your customers. Log books are a great way to appeal to your audience. Many brewery-goers are interested in tasting as many beers as possible and like to keep track of which brews they liked and didn’t. If you offer a branded log book, you can guarantee customers will carry that log book with them to other breweries, promoting your name to a receptive audience.
Partner with a Turnkey Beverage Merchandise & POS Solution Provider
On trend design and curation of your POS and merchandise catalog is your first step. But a turnkey solution provider will also help you ensure that these products are making it into the hands of your sales reps, distributors, national accounts and consumers in the most efficient way possible. Competition is stiff at the point of sale and point of consumption. Ensure that your sales team and distributors have access to an efficient on-line ordering mechanism to get your materials in market at the perfect time. Consider quarterly or trimester promotional distribution periods to allow for efficient and predicable design, procurement and distribution cycles. A comprehensive partner will also have regional, brand, sales rep and distributor level procurement budget allocation options for you to incorporate into your on-line tool and a comprehensive set of metrics on where your product is going. You may even move to a pre-order model in which your sales reps and distributor partners allocate their budget to the items they’d like to distribute before you make a purchase commitment – ensuring that your promotional items and POS are the perfect fit with your market’s needs. Learn more about our solution-drive methods designed to decrease your beverage industry POS and merchandise program Total Cost of Ownership while increasing your marketing ROI. Contact us today.
Photo by Carlos Blanco on Unsplash
