Congratulations! At this point you should now have a bunch of cases of your very special Spirits. Take a moment to bask in the pleasure of your accomplishment.
Now what?
Believe it or not, now comes the hardest part of this whole endeavor (hands down the most time consuming and frustrating).
You may have just created the most amazing Spirit ever put forth by man but no one will try it, unless they know about it and are given the opportunity to taste it.
How will people find out about your Spirits? You have many options open to you.
You can:
· Yell it from the rooftops. You should be doing this from the very beginning of starting your distillery.
· Advertise
· Word of mouth
· Enter competitions
Yell it from the rooftops
I have found that the real business of Spirits is in the marketing. No matter how good your Spirits are; if no one knows about them how will you sell them?
From the moment you decide to make Spirits you should be telling everyone about it. This is where social media can be a real boon; of course if you are shouting about how you are going to be making these Spirits and don’t produce any, people will start to ignore you because you lack follow through.
Advertising
Advertising your Spirits, other than on social media, can be problematic and expensive.
In my opinion one of the best and most memorable ad campaigns was Absolut Vodka’s ads from the 1980’s
(http://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/the-best-of-the-great-absolut-ads)
You saw these ads everywhere and by the end you could recognize a bottle of Absolut vodka simply by the bottle shape alone.
Unfortunately that form of print ad doesn’t really pack the punch it used to and it was extremely expensive (but worth it to Absolut).
In the end, I feel it’s up to the individual distillery to make their best call.
Word of Mouth
In my opinion “word of mouth” is the most powerful advertising you could ever get and it’s free but be aware that word of mouth can cut both ways.
Competitions
Except for the fact that you pay to enter these competitions, this advertising is also considered free. How many times have you come across articles touting the 10 best Whiskeys or the 10 best Spirits, etc.? The more impressive the competition is the bigger the bounce from winning a medal from it. After winning a medal you should definitely be yelling about it from the rood tops. Cheers!
--By Christopher M Neumann