We live in a world where we can get anything almost instantaneously. It's no different when it comes to operating a successful winery business. You want results (more wine sales) and you want them yesterday.
However, in order to get to more sales, you've got to start at the top of the sales funnel and work on driving awareness for your winery. One of the best ways to drive awareness about your winery is to have a strong presence that gets a significant amount of traffic.
Therefore, since almost everyone is using Google to find the answers to their questions and to do research before traveling to new areas, you want to make sure your winery can easily be found for common search terms.
According to Search Engine Watch, 50.5% of users click on one of the first three links with 33% clicking on the first link.
So the question becomes, how do you get on that first page of Google and up to the top?
There are two ways: you can pay for it OR you can build a solid SEO and blogging strategy and earn your traffic.
THE PROS AND CONS OF PAID VS EARNED TRAFFIC
GOOGLE ADWORDS (PAID TRAFFIC)
Negatives
It costs money. Furthermore, depending on what keywords your competing for and how competitive your market is, it could cost a lot of money.
It's instantaneous and only instantaneous. You pay to play and once you're done paying you're done playing.
It's not easy. After years of running campaigns on Google AdWords, there are still interface questions that will get us calling our Google rep to sort out. The platform isn't intuitive and there are a TON of different advertising option. Knowing which will work best for your business can be hard to navigate if you don't have any experience with the platform. You can always pay someone to manage your campaign, but then, again, this will cost more money.
Additional deliverables may be required. Not only is the advertising management time consuming, you may also have to develop landing pages and thank-you pages that help make your sales funnel more seamless and relevant to your ads. After all, just simply advertising your website isn't guaranteed to generate leads.
Positives
Brand awareness. If your ads are running in an advantageous spot, you will be getting in front of searchers, even if they aren't clicking on your ad. This can be great for raising brand awareness and getting your name in front of potential prospects.
It's instantaneous. Once you hit go, your ads will start showing and, if you've set up your campaign appropriately, you will start generating leads. That's potential revenue in your pocket ASAP.
SEO & BLOGGING (EARNED TRAFFIC)
Negatives
It takes a long time. Getting to that first page of Google is not going to happen overnight. It requires time to have an SEO strategy deliver results.
It will cost money. Whether you are taking the time to blog and create an effective SEO strategy yourself or you are hiring someone to do it for you, it's going to cost you in either time or money. As a business owner, you know the two are one in the same.
Positives
It's organic. As tested by Search Engine Watch, when it comes to organic verse paid search rankings, organic rankings get clicked 94% of the time. Think of how you yourself use Google. Do you click on the ads or do you trust the organic, earned content more? Most of us choose the organic content.
It continues to work for you. Fun fact: 70% of HubSpot's monthly blogging leads come from blog posts not written that month. That means their blog content continues to work for them and bring in prospects months later. Producing engaging content will continue to drive traffic to your winery website.
It offers value and builds trust. In order to get good search rankings, you need to create high-quality content. That means your content offers value to your potential guests. By creating this type of content and content that is just selling something in an advertising space, you instantly build a better relationship and sense of trust with your potential wine buyer. That's a good first impression to make.
Whatever marketing tactic you choose to employ, as always, make sure you are testing and measuring results. How much does one thing cost vs the other? How much time? How qualified are the leads each tactic brings in?
Have more questions on how this whole earned verse paid winery website traffic works? Click the link below and reach out! We'd love to chat about it.