AccelPay & Mushroom Media OND Planning Webinar

Over two weeks in October, our partners at Mushroom Media and AccelPay hosted a series of webinars focused on strategies for optimizing digital presence and sales for alcohol brands during the critical OND (October, November, December) season. The sessions emphasized that OND can drive 30-40% of annual revenue for many alcohol brands, with premium brands reaching up to 50-60%.

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Key takeaways include:

1. Strategy and KPIs: Identifying essential KPIs and optimizing digital strategies across all sales channels to improve customer acquisition, traffic, and conversions.
2. Multi-Channel Marketing: Using paid social, organic content, email marketing, and other digital tactics to reach target audiences. Emphasis is placed on capturing first-party data to refine strategies and build brand awareness.
3. Customer Acquisition and Retention: Importance of leveraging email marketing for repeat sales and utilizing data-driven insights to build CRM audiences, target emails, and retarget potential customers effectively.
4. Implementation Tactics: Creating seamless customer journeys and focusing on user experience in e-commerce to maximize holiday season sales.
5. Performance Measurement: Using KPIs to track brand awareness, engagement, conversion rates, and return on ad spend (ROAS).

The webinar ends with a Q&A session and promotes a follow-up session that will delve into more tactical, channel-specific insights and audience-building strategies for holiday season success.

Besides the recordings and decks, you can find the full transcripts below. Feel free to each out to success@accelpay.io to dig into these topics or learn more about how AccelPay can help your alcohol brand sell online today.

Access the full recordings here:

• OND Best Practices Part 1 – Recording
• OND Best Practices Part 2 – Recording

Access the presentation decks here: 

• Strategy, Implementation, KPIs - Deck ‍
• Tactical Insights, Channel Strategies, Audience Building - Deck

WEBINAR 1 TRANSCRIPT

Brandon Crockett: wanna welcome everybody to today's webinar, O. And D best practices,

strategy, implementation and kpis, I'm thrilled to have you all here as we dive into the strategies

and tools that will help you maximize your digital presence and sales during the critical ond

season, and for those of you who do not know me. I'm Brandon Crockett.

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Brandon Crockett: senior sales executive here at Excel. Pay I'm going to be your host. Just kind

of giving a little bit of a preamble, but, as you know, only is the most important time for of the

year, for alcohol brands which often accounts for about 30 to 40% of annual revenue, and the

stakes are pretty high. But so was the competition.

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Brandon Crockett: But the good news is that you can gain an edge by optimizing your digital

strategies and making sure that you're set up for success across all channels. And this goes

well beyond just digital and e-commerce. So today, we're going to cover some key topics that

will help you. Fine. Tune your approach. And we're going to start by discussing strategic

implementation.

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Brandon Crockett: including Kpis, that you should be tracking to ensure you're meeting your

goals. And then in our next session, which will be held the same time next week, we're gonna

look into how to implement those strategies and really dive into traffic to your website, convert

that traffic into sales

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Brandon Crockett: and then leverage that data to refine your customer. Acquisition strategies.

Now excel pay has a bunch of powerful tools like corporate gifting subscription services, gift

cards.

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Brandon Crockett: international shipping on demand delivery. And if you

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Brandon Crockett: and even the ability to ship full barrels. If you're not taking advantage of those

tools, please feel free to reach out to me

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Brandon Crockett: or your account manager to chat through how we can add these to your war

chest. And if these features are not only going to help you increase your revenue streams.

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Brandon Crockett: but they're also gonna provide you a fantastic gifting opportunities for the

holiday season.

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Brandon Crockett: But, more importantly, we've got some incredible guests here today. I'm

joined by Mitch and Gabriella of mushroom media. Mitch is the managing director over there. All

things digital. They're a boutique

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Brandon Crockett: performance marketing agency, specializing in beverage and hospitality

brands. And then Gabriella is the director of digital strategy, and together they're going to

provide insights from their years of experience within the industry. So mushroom media has

been a preferred agency of Excel pay, and I know they'll be more than happy to discuss in detail

how they can help your brands optimize for this year and beyond. So by the end of the session.13

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Brandon Crockett: you're going to have actionable takeaways to implement immediately

whether it's optimizing your paid media strategy building out a robust e-commerce approach or

improving your performance tracking.

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Brandon Crockett: And then we're going to have a quick Q&A session at the end of the

presentation. So feel free to leverage the chat function, and we'll get your questions answered

as time permits. And then this webinar is going to be recorded. So if you want a copy, please

feel free to reach out to me, and

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Brandon Crockett: I'll make sure that you get it.

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Brandon Crockett: I'm also gonna throw a registration link into the chat for the next session at

the end. But with that, said Mitch, I'm gonna turn it over to you. I'm gonna stop sharing my

screen and let you guys take it away.

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Mitch Somach: Awesome. Thank you, Brandon, and definitely thank you to yourself and the

Excel pay team. You guys have been great partners. T o mushroom media, and so Gabby and I,

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Mitch Somach: we're going to really go over today kind of a high level strategy and really goals

around O and D, and some of the you know, best practices and planning. As you kind of

mentioned, this is meant for a 2 part webinar. So today, we're really focusing kind of the strategy

around O. And D, and what brands should be thinking about to kind of, you know, maximize

their presence. And then next week we'll get a little bit more detailed into

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Mitch Somach: some of the tactical components around O. And D as well. And so, if hopefully,

you find this helpful, please feel free to join next week as well. Okay, so I am going to start

sharing my screen. And we can kind of continue here.

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Mitch Somach: Alright. So, as Brandon mentioned. T oday's about strategy implementation, and

we'll touch on some light kpis that we can kind of go through and I'm gonna skim through some

of the mushroom media overview section. We'll just breeze through this very quickly. Just so you

guys, at least have some level of background for who we are. And kind of what we do.

Essentially, we are a brand performance and performance marketing agency.

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Mitch Somach: We focus in the beverage alcohol, Cpg and hospitality brands. Really, we help to

build upon digital strategies as well as implement some of the tactical components of those

strategies. Highly leveraging the paid digital strategies as well, but really making sure that

holistic programming and brand strategy

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Mitch Somach: is, you know, core and fundamental to everything that we do need to make sure

the brands leverage not only paid channels, but organic content, marketing efforts and really

aligning with the goals and initiatives of that brand for long term success.

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Mitch Somach: we'll skip over this slide. I'm sure Brandon will be able to help distribute some of

this content and material after, if you guys would like to do a detailed review. But this agency

was really formed around big kind of highly pedigreed resources working on some of the global

brands of today. And so everyone here kind of comes from that large agency experience, and

we put them into agency that focuses on growth and emerging brands. But with resources that

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Mitch Somach: you know, have well established histories and trajectories of success within the

beverage and alcohol industry.

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Mitch Somach: Okay, so enough on us, let's move into some of the ond tactics and setup here.

I'm going to start laying the framework for O. And D, with just a brief kind of overview of just

e-commerce as a channel in which brands can use to extend their reach and grow awareness.

So typically brands will see in the beverage alcohol space. Of course, brands will see roughly

between one and 15%

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Mitch Somach: annual sales come through their kind of direct to consumer online channels on

annual basis. Obviously the On off prem channels account for more of total gross sales,

volumes for those brands. However, it is highly important to leverage and grow kind of the direct

consumer or online channels because of the fact that it allows for extension of that brand's

tasting room really, of their physical locations. Additionally, it's great for

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Mitch Somach: awareness of the brand outside of just you know, the typical local sales, efforts

that happen through on and off premise sales cycles. Furthermore, communicating brand

message and positioning is a way to expand.

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Mitch Somach: Excuse me, brands are able to communicate their message and positioning

through online channels, such as paid socials, organic socials, and so forth. And then, finally,

capturing that 1st party data are ways that brands can capture. Excuse me,

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Mitch Somach: brands are also able to leverage digital by capturing 1st party data. And

furthermore, as you're able to, you know, build kind of your as you're able to build your online

channels, you really get leverage with distributors. As you kind of grow your awareness in key

markets around the around the country, you really are able to entice distributors to work with you

because of the fact that you have expanded brand presence

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Mitch Somach: alright.

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Mitch Somach: Now, moving on to the on and off premise sales channels.

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Mitch Somach: Okay, next slide here.

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Mitch Somach: as we've seen

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Mitch Somach: e-commerce.

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Mitch Somach: Excuse me

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Mitch Somach: over the last few years. E-commerce transactions are expanding rapidly their

industry is roughly a 10 billion dollar depend. Oh, excuse me, here.

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Mitch Somach: Yeah.

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Mitch Somach: we've seen a proliferation of e-commerce over the last few years. Accounting for

roughly 10 billion dollars, and in 2028 the industry expanded to grow

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Mitch Somach: over the last. Let's see, over the last 10 years we've seen Pre covid dips in

e-commerce channels with high degrees of sales between 2016 to 2019 with expanded

e-commerce transactions in 2020, and we are starting to see increase in these transactions

over the next

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Mitch Somach: a few years.

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Mitch Somach: All right.

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Mitch Somach: by the way.

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Mitch Somach: I apologize for the hesitations here. All right, let's move into some of the meat

and potatoes of why O and D is so important

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Mitch Somach: beverage. Alcohol brands are ripe with market challenges. 1st of all, there's

large portfolio brands that are starting to monopolize a lot of the competition in the space as well

as celebrity, endorsements that are taking away market share from some of these brands.

Furthermore, consumer attributes and perceptions around alcohol, moderation, wellness,

health, and wellness trends as well as this.

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Mitch Somach: Sober curious are starting to be

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Mitch Somach: top of mind for consumers leading to consumers, not drinking as much alcohol.

And then also, there's a category education when it comes to

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Mitch Somach: got it

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Mitch Somach: consumers not really understanding the differences between

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Mitch Somach: variance within certain categories. So, for example, people understand what

tequilas are, however, not necessarily understanding the difference between repos, blancos and

yahoes, and so forth, and then, finally, macroeconomic factors, such as downturns in the

economy or inflation can reduce can lead to reduced discretionary spending as well as just a

value. Perception of, you know, the increase of premiumization products, however, really not

understanding why

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Mitch Somach: consumers need to pay additional for those particular products.

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Mitch Somach: and so connecting that brand message to that consumer is highly important.

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Mitch Somach: Okay, moving on. Let's look at sales, customers and resources when it comes to

O and D, so typical brand sales between this time period accounts for roughly, 30 to 40% of total

brand sales for more premium or specialized products. It's an account for roughly, 50 or 60% of

total brand sales. Now, O. And D is a great time period for audience testing. Really, what you

get to do is understand your product market fit. 

Mitch Somach: So for the digital components really refining your audiences as well as for on

and off premise channels, really understanding what consumers like and feel about your brand.

So our brands, implementing

Mitch Somach: surveys and contact forms at the kind of local levels in order to really capture

that sentiment of that brand and really understand what consumers are saying. And then, finally,

we all know that resource planning is very important for not only the current year, but for future

years. And this is really evident with how O. And D goes. So if brands have successful on these,

they're able to budget more appropriately for the future and really scale up and ramp up their

efforts.

Mitch Somach: There are a couple of things that brands should be focused on when it comes to.

You know how to how to really tackle. O, and D 1st is driving awareness of the brand

Mitch Somach: and this is done not only through digital channels, as we've seen, but through

traditional on and off premise sales channels, and then also building out robust, direct to

consumer initiatives. So point being when brands lead into not only strategy for O. And D, but

just on a annual basis they should be looking at. How are they growing their brand as well as

what are they doing to really grow their content? Marketing efforts. You know, builds upon their

direct to consumer initiatives and really grow their brand from a top level perspective.

Mitch Somach: From the more implementation. Mindset. We're looking at a couple of key topics

and focuses that the brands should be looking at. And that is really about awareness and traffic

goals. This is typically in the form of social following engagement email marketing lists.

Additionally, what are brands doing to capture new customers?

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Mitch Somach: when brands are doing on and off. Prem sampling? Are they employing

technologies in order to profile individuals and capture contact, form submissions? And then

what are brands doing in additionally to kind of entice, repeat purchases. So if we see that

consumers are, you know.

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Mitch Somach: running consumers are buying product from brands, what are they doing to put

pop those brand, pop those consumers into content, marketing efforts to reactivate them and

remarket them in order to get them to purchase for their products, and then, finally, looking at

market penetration targets? What type of new on and off premise accounts are being captured

by these brands, as well as what type of product velocity is happening

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Mitch Somach: at kind of the local and regional sales level.

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Mitch Somach: So with that, I'm gonna pass it over to Gabby, where we can talk about a little bit

more on the tactical side of the setups for success within O. And D.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: Awesome. Thank you, Mitch, so like Mitch has been saying for the last 15

min or so, ond is really the most crucial quarter for beverage alcohol brands. It's right up there,

and even exceeds summer for most brands, and, like Mitch, mentioned for many brands, this

period can account for 30 to 40% of total annual revenue.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And then for your more premium brands and premium seasonal products,

it could be as high as 50 to 60%. So really the time to double down on both the sales side, as

well as the brand awareness side, to be able to combat the challenges that Mitch outlined for

us. So the rising trends in alcohol, moderation, competition from the Celebrity endorsed brands,

and then just the general ad clutter that we see

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: across the industry during the holiday season. So it is of paramount

importance that we are able to stand out from the crowd to communicate our value. Prop.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And although Q. 4 ond comes with all the challenges that we do have we

do have a unique opportunity to

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: reach people in the holiday planning mindset, or people who are shopping

are a little bit more willing to splurge during the holidays on maybe premium products. So if you

flip to the next slide. We could start talking about strategy which we need to be super focused

on during ond. And there are 2 key objectives that really should drive everything that we do so.

That's increasing brand awareness and then expanding direct to consumer initiatives.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And we really need to rely on the halo effect from our brand awareness

campaigns and awareness building tactics like social or strategic partnerships, since those are

the tactics that are going to create a buzz, I should say, and captivate our audience during these

busy months of the year, so that we're top of mind when people are in the liquor store, and

they're reaching for their next bottle of tequila or whiskey, or whatever it may be.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And at the same time we should also focus on building out robust, direct

to consumer programs to ensure that we're capturing that 1st party data and then maximizing

our revenue potentials by creating a direct connection with our consumers which will set the

stage for repeat purchases, aiming for one and a half to 2 purchases depending on how

premium your product is.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: So on the next slide we go into our strategy components. Strategy is

really foundational for success throughout the year, but especially during ond. We need to look

at our market analysis and market trends. How we have to understand our competitors, and how they're approaching the market during this time of year, and then look inward to analyze our

customers, what drives them, what motivates them to purchase

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: and in their daily lives. How are how are we going to appeal to them with

our advertising? Of course, conduct a slot analysis, and then look into those off prem and

regional strategies

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: to maximize regional efforts, and then look at trade events to see where

you could be present to the trade that will help get you into some more on-prem. And then, of

course, looking deep into digital strategy to help decide you know how or what channels you will

land on in order to reach your audience during ond, and then optimize all of your E-com efforts.

Your SEO user experiences and operational efforts in

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: order to create the most seamless flow user flow for your audience and

your consumer to really convert as many times as possible during the holiday season.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: So on the next slide, we go into the funnel a bit, and when it comes to

implementation there are 3 really crucial areas, and they're the 3 parts of the funnel spoiler,

alert. It's the top funnel of brand awareness, mid funnel of customer acquisition. And then the

bottom funnel of market penetration.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: So you really want to boost brand awareness. This is just as important as

the middle and the bottom funnel. I know sometimes when budgets are stretched thin. The top

funnel is the 1st place that people kind of cut, but it's really important to drive that high reach

among your consumers at the top funnel, because this is the most efficient part of your

marketing campaign, and it can be done using channels like paid social or email marketing at

Times.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And then you move down into the funnel into the mid funnel for additional

touch points. This is where the more targeted email campaigns will come into play. Perhaps

some custom content campaigns, and then

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: that supports our customer. Acquisition.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: where you will have. And yes, I think we will share the deck to answer

your question truly. But cap, customer acquisition, where? We would prioritize both new and

repeat customers, and ensure a steady sales flow throughout the holiday season.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: So on the next slide we break down the funnel a little bit more. So. T op

funnel of awareness is really like, I said, critical in guiding marketing efforts. It's the 1st place

where you're going to be able to reach, or the 1st touch point where you'll be able to reach your

audience so you could drive awareness in places like paid social video ads or display ads.

These are more for your prospecting audiences.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: Then you move down the funnel. When you think about things like content

marketing if you do content, start

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: sponsorships with a company like travel and leisure, or an eater or a

thrillist

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: and email marketing campaigns, and this is also the portion where we

would deploy retargeting efforts to re-engage with your consumers, and then at the bottom of the funnel, is all about the conversion. So you've now passed a wide net of your prospecting

audience. You have reached them on a deeper level in the mid funnel to explain more about

your brand to them. Tell them what is valuable about your brand, and why they should

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: like you over any of the other tequilas, or whiskeys, or whatever wine or

spirits, or whatever product you're selling. And at the bottom of the funnel is where you focus on

running promotions or optimizing Ecom ads in places like Instacart or using personalized emails

to really push consumers to make that final purchase.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And next is where we talk a bit more about channels.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: So I always recommend a multi-channel approach in order to maximize

your success of digital campaigns. And I think that just becomes way more relevant during the

holiday season, because of all of the ad clutter that we experience. And when I say

multi-channel, I mean leveraging several different tactics or places where you can reach your

audience so you can run paid social ads on Instagram and Facebook.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: or on Tiktok or Snapchat, depending on the audience that you're trying to

reach, you would want to run, paid social alongside organic social. So making sure that you

have that content on your Instagram account organically, so that if someone is curious about

your brand. They can go to your Instagram page. Or even if you have a section, a blog section

on your website to learn more about the brand. And what makes you unique and special

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: email campaigns in order to kind of reach people in a more meaningful

way in their inbox when they're going through their emails. Maybe they're reading newsletters in

the morning.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And then if budget allows for all these things, you can keep going with

display ads or connected TV ads in places like Hulu. So if you are targeting a 21 to 50 year old,

who's watching holiday movies on Hulu, that would be an example of a connected TV ad.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: So just having all of these campaigns live at the same time with a

consistent brand message, is important to again cast the widest net and to portray a consistent

brand experience across the target consumer, and it allows you to have a really well rounded

marketing mix. So you'd be able to drive that reach among your audience. So reach is just the

percentage of people

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: within your target audience that you are serving your ads to on, on the

web, or on social, or wherever it is that you're serving ads. And it gives you more chances to get

in front of that consumer

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: getting in front of people who could be interested to buy, and then you'll

be top of mind when it comes to the consumers making a purchase decision.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: So the next is more of what you can expect when you do leverage a

multi-channel strategy. So with this strategy in place. You could expect more bottle sales, of

course, enhanced audiences, because now you have an audience that has

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: come into contact with your brand more than once in more than one way.

So you can come into contact with an ad 50 times with the same page social ad, and it won't

really build on your understanding of that brand, because it's the same message over and over.

But when you have a few different messages in market, or a few unique ads in market. That

helps kind of tell a more robust story, making the audience more familiar with the product

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: and kind of planting the seed a little bit more each time.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: You can also collect 1st party data and then be able to actually use that

1st party data to help optimize your campaigns. So when I say that I mean, you can in the mid

funnel collect those emails to build your Crm audience.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And then you could take that robust list from your Crm audience and port

it into a platform of your choice. So, for example, you can port it into Meta. If you're running an

Instagram ad, and you can either retarget those people who are in your email list, or you can

build a new audience of people who look like people who have opted into your email list, people

who exhibit the same browsing

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: behaviors and the same interests. Because those are people who, you

know are interested in your brand, and you want to reach more people who could be interested

in your brand. So that's more of a mid like between the mid and the lower funnel targeting tactic

and as an example of putting your Crm list into into motion in real time.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And then, of course, on organic socials, you can expect increased brand

awareness and follows and engagement with your community.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: So moving into the process,

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: actually, I'll pause if there are any questions.Gabriella DeLorenzo: Okay.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: and we'll have a Q&A period at the end as well.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: So, moving into the process, it's pretty straightforward. We run paid ads

that are aimed at both awareness and conversion again, because you want to cast that wide net

at the top of the funnel and then push people to convert lower funnel and look to capture 1st

party data to really fuel your targeting efforts. If the budget allows for all the different objectives

and then build upon your email campaign by continually refining your distribution lists.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: You can segment out your lists if if you have the ability to send thanks for

the question, Nick.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: I will save this for the end. Actually, but I'm segmenting out the list to be

able to send the most relevant question most relevant emails

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: to your target audience emails that you think might be most likely to

convert. So if you have a wine company and you sell several different types of wines. And you

can segment your list of people who have purchased your sparkling wine and then send a

specific email blaster, set up an email campaign around your sparkling wine purchasers.

Audience.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: so really, just an integrated approach here will help streamline marketing

efforts and then maximize results.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And we always measure results. So on the next slide we calling back to

your mug, Brandon, is there a Kpi for that? Everything should have a kpi for your marketing

campaign. So for brand awareness should always be reflected in your increased social

engagement. If you're running a paid social campaign, you want to look at super efficient cpms

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: for bottle sales. You look at sales, lift across channels, and we want to

see, or an average rate of repeat purchase for a more premium product is about 1.5 to 2 times

per year.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And then in terms of email, we want to make sure that we have strong

open rates, click through rates and conversion rates to show that people when they do open our

our emails, they're actually engaging with them and reading with them versus banner blindness

or ad blindness that we experience a lot today.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And then, similarly, for search, you want to aim for a strong click through

rate and aim to decrease your Cpc. Over the course of your campaign through search query,

optimizations or search keyword optimizations. So if there are certain keywords or audiences

that aren't performing, you might want to pause them and add new ones in. You can optimize

your copy just using different search optimizations to help improve your campaign

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: and on the topic of search. And honestly, all of the routes that you'll see

during Q. 4 are a little bit more premium or more expensive, just because so many advertisers

are live right now. So we just need to balance the roas, which we target for a 1.5 2 or 3 in order

to kind of set realistic expectations that a Cpc. For example, in Q. 4 might be more example

than it is in q. 1. But it is just as important.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And the last thing I'll say on Kpis is just that it can be a little bit money

muddy. T o pull a holistic row as since channels track sales a little bit differently. And maybe

person saw 5 social ads and a video ad, and then they converted on a paid search ad, you want

to make sure that you're taking into consideration all of the different channels within your

marketing strategy that have impacted that sale? So there are

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: attribution platforms that you can work with. Or you can use your analytics

suite, whether it's Google analytics, adobe analytics, or however you track your analytics in

order to help create your own sort of attribution model which can save resources and money at

the end of the day.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: So just the conclusion here, or our main takeaway for ond is that a

successful ond campaign is kind of based off of a holistic marketing strategy combined with

great execution, with strong partners. Strong partners like Meta is a really strong partner,

because they're super efficient, and they have such a robust

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: database, and just making sure that you have the resources available to

support that extra demand during the holiday season, so that you can really ensure that you're

driving the strongest results. During the most important quarter of the year.

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Brandon Crockett: Awesome thanks. So I know this was a little bit more broad strokes and

determining kpis and and general strategies. But for the next session. We're going to get a little

bit more granular, tactical insights, channel strategies and audience building, which is kind of the

name of the game. The more traffic you have going to your website. The more conversions

you're going to have, the the more your bottom line is going to be affected in a positive way.

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Brandon Crockett: If anybody has any questions, feel free to drop them into the chat, and we'll

stick around for a couple of minutes to to get those answered for you. If not, we will send this

recording out, and you should have a copy of the sales decks or the presentation decks. In your

inbox within the next couple of days.

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Brandon Crockett: Any any questions from the audience feel free to drop into the chat.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: I saw one from Nick. Actually, Nick's question is, what's the best way to

target email, email, if you already have them to avoid spam filters. From X brand promo. So

there.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: there's no way to avoid spam filters, unfortunately. But the best way to

target your email is, if you have any characteristics on the customers within your email list, if you

know that they like certain like, maybe they're reposado tequila buyers, if you have, like a

reposado and a blanca, or or different skews of tequila, then you can segment out the list and

create headlines and and content within the email blast that is really relevant to them

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and kind of provide some sort of value. So you're not just saying, Buy

tequila. But you're saying something about how the tequila is made, or providing some sort of

educational piece. For example.

‍

Brandon Crockett: I got a question for you. What is the most impactful channel

‍

Brandon Crockett: that you've seen work for? Our industry?

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: That is a great question. I think impactful. I mean.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: it depends on how you define impactful if you want. If you say brand

awareness. For example, I would definitely say, paid social is the most impactful channel, just

because it is the cheapest way to reach a ton of people within your audience pool, but when

you're looking at lower funnel

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: paid search always drives a really strong row, as because you're reaching

people who have purchase intent, and you're getting in front of them right when they're looking

for something to buy.

‍

Brandon Crockett: And then Nate Nate made a comment. Email marketing. So the the thing that

I always trust your brands when we're speaking, even if it's in your distillery. Or if it's on your

website anytime that you can grab an email, do so, have a pop up, have a call to action, have a

10% off. If you subscribe to an email list

‍

Brandon Crockett: email is almost free. I'm not gonna say it's free, but it's the cheapest way to

get your messaging out there and blast it to the most relevant audience which either have made

a purchase, or maybe has abandoned a cart in the past. So that's that, nate, you're 100%

‍

Brandon Crockett: 100% correct on that.

‍

Brandon Crockett: Customers that have already visit visited your website and have opted into

giving you. Their email is going to be probably the most impactful, just not as wide.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: And you can even use those people who have given you your email on

other channels, like video when connected TV on social, even insertion display, because you're

able to port those email addresses into anonymize them, of course, and port them into your

platform of choice, and then you'll be able to reach them as an additional retargeting touch

point. So definitely agreed. Email is crucial in in your marketing efforts.

‍

Brandon Crockett: Well, if there are no more questions. I'll definitely follow up with the recording

and some of the materials here, and hope to see you all on the next

‍

Brandon Crockett: more, a little bit more granular topic next this time next week. So Wednesday

and the registration link is in the chat. But I will make sure to send an email blast so that you

guys have that in your inbox as well.

‍

Brandon Crockett: Awesome. I appreciate everybody's time. And let's let's move some product

and sell some booze for O and d.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: Awesome. Thank you for having us.

‍

Brandon Crockett: Thanks, everybody.

‍

Mitch Somach: Thanks guys.

‍

WEBINAR 2 TRANSCRIPT

Brandon Crockett: Now, if you're just joining us for this session, don't worry. You have. You're

you're in for a powerful lineup of insights, and I have some recordings for you that I can send

through afterwards, as you know. O and D is prime in our industry, with more people shopping,

celebrating, entertaining. It's really an incredible opportunity to drive awareness and boost your

sales. But to make the most of it.

Brandon Crockett: a fine-tuned data driven approach across your digital sales channels is

crucial. So today we're going to shift focus into the tactical side of things where we're going to

be discussing how to leverage channel strategies. Reach your audience a little bit more

effectively, allocate your budget for a maximum impact, and in a landscape of competitive as

competitive as O. And D, knowing how to tailor your content.

Brandon Crockett: segment your audience, and using multiple multi-channel marketing to your

advantage, can make all the difference. As I mentioned last time, has a bunch of powerful tools

like corporate gifting subscription services, gift cards, international shipping on demand delivery

services through Gopuff and Doordash.

Brandon Crockett: and even the ability to ship full barrels. So if you're not taking advantage of

these tools, please feel free to reach out to me or your account managers to chat through how

we can add these to your war chest.

Brandon Crockett: These features are not only going to help you increase your revenue

streams.

‍

Brandon Crockett: in addition to providing some fantastic gifting opportunities for the holiday

season.

‍

Brandon Crockett: So today we are joined by Gabriella and Mitch from mushroom media.

Gabriella is the director of digital strategy over there at Mushroom, and she's going to be

sharing tactical insights

‍

Brandon Crockett: so that you can implement these things right away, covering everything from

optimizing paid media channels to fine tuning, your content for better engagement, and by the

end of the session you're gonna have a blueprint for reaching your ideal customers.

‍

Brandon Crockett: enhancing engagement across platforms

‍

Brandon Crockett: and making every marketing dollar count as we head into the busiest months

of the year. We're going to save some time for Q&A at the end, so please feel free to use the

chat, and don't be shy if you want to throw some questions our way. During the presentation.

‍

Brandon Crockett: But 1 1 side I wanted to start with.

‍

Brandon Crockett: and I always ask brands this during a discovery call. So I'll ask Brands what

their favorite brand is. Yes, you've you've realized the power of e-commerce, you probably

should be on it. It's a data collection play. It's another sales channel to generate revenue

streams. But what's your favorite brand outside of your own. Let's just use cost amigos, for

Example.

‍

Brandon Crockett: So on this call, how many folks have been to the cost amigos website.

‍

Brandon Crockett: I don't know if there's a there's a way to raise your hand, but I'm assuming

maybe one or 2 of you have gone, maybe one or 2 times that could be it

‍

Brandon Crockett: so in order for this channel to work.

‍

Brandon Crockett: And I've seen it work across

‍

Brandon Crockett: multiple companies that I've worked with multiple brands. Some some brands

have brought in a million dollars per month. So this is a viable channel. But the only way that

you're gonna get customers to convert on your e-commerce website

‍

Brandon Crockett: is driving traffic. And the only way to do that is through digital marketing.

Obviously, there's some event based opportunities as well. But you need to get folks to your

website to convert and then drive sales. But with that I'm gonna hand it over to Gabby so we

can dive in and get us started with

‍

Brandon Crockett: Channel strategy insights.

‍

Brandon Crockett: Yes.

‍

Brandon Crockett: let me

‍

Brandon Crockett: stop sharing my screen, and it is all you.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: Thank you for that show.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So so, yeah, I think what we wanted to do today was really dive into how

we approach crafting a strategic recommendation and then best practices for tactical

implementation. So it's a multi-step process that you'll go through when you're putting together

your strategic approach and then crafting your tactical approach, and it includes everything from

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: brand positioning and messaging, setting a tactical strategy, building your

audiences and then setting your kpis to ensure that you're tracking your success. And each of

the steps really helps us build a consistent narrative that aligns our audiences, values, and

preferences with our creative and our approaches so that we can drive those sales that we are

looking for.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So if you go into the next slide, we talk a bit about brand positioning and

messaging. These are really the foundations of an effective marketing strategy, because they

define how we want our audience to perceive the brand and ensure that every interaction that

we have with each of our consumers reinforces our brand image.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So on the next slide we have, we created kind of a mock up example for

you all using a premium tequila brand that is focused on being women led and women run. But

here we talk about or we position the brand as women led T equila Brand positioned as

sophisticated, artisanal and community oriented. And then the messaging highlights, elements

Like

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: 100% blue agave and taps into that narrative of being uplifting women

and aligns the product to those values that would resonate with our audience. And later in the

deck we'll talk about crafting an audience that kind of would resonate with your brand values so

they should play, or there should be some interplay of audience and brand values and

messaging

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: And these 2 things are really important for building a strong brand identity,

because they're kind of the basis of what you'll come back to as you move into brand storytelling

and positioning yourself on channels or custom content channels, and you'll draw back to it as

you write your email newsletters or and kind of everything will kind of use this as a starting point.

Your positioning and your messaging.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So then the next slide we go into brand storytelling and it takes the

positioning a step further. Like, I said. That is where you'll start, and then you'll

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: kind of use the positioning and messaging as a jumping off point, and it

brings the brand story to life and forges more of an emotional connection with your consumers.

So for this example, for the tequila brand. We focus on sharing authentic stories. T alk about it.

Being a female led Brand talking about the heritage of the brand, and the stories go beyond

facts, because we really, with our brand story.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: want to tap into that emotional connection with the consumer because the

emotional connection is really important to help

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: helping guide those decision-making moments when the person is at the

store.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: or they're shopping online for whatever they're they're purchasing to stock

up for the holiday season. Since we're talking about O. And D,

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and so once we have kind of our brand message crafted, we can move on

to our tactical strategy. So the next slide kind of starts going into tactical, and this involves

setting specific campaign goals, segmenting audiences and choosing the right channels for your

brand to appear on. So channels are like the social online video out of home advertising. That's

what I mean

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: when I say channels. And so, for the example, that we'll run through here

our goals were awareness data collection, so kind of bolstering their Crm list to increase their

retargeting audiences and then build custom lookalike audiences to help reach the most

relevant consumer, and then conversion. So bottle sales

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and so by breaking down these goals and then aligning them within the

tactical with the right geographic. So is a tequila, the specific tequila brand going to perform best

in Socal versus northeast versus Midwest Midwest kind of deciding what the right geographic is

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: Then we look into psychographics and other lifestyle segments so

behaviors that a consumer would take or the the target consumer that we've defined, and then

we can ensure that our campaigns are super relevant and very effective in speaking directly to

our target audiences, needs and interests.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and then we can move along to the next slide.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and this is where we kind of lay out or sorry the previous slide, please.

Mitch

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: yes, perfect. Thank you. So this is where we kind of lay out all of the

different components of a solid marketing strategy. So we, of course, need the market analysis,

it's really essential in understanding the landscape that we're operating in. So that's where we

like to start. And we move into our competitor analysis to understand, especially in a crowded

space. This example is tequila.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: T equila is a growing category, so there are new entrants in the market

every week. It feels like so really kind of setting apart from your competitors

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: by understanding who they are and how they position themselves so that

you can carve out a unique space for your brand, and then moving into the customer. Customer

analysis. So that's a deep dive into your customers, behaviors. And then moving into

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: sort of a swat, or a spot which would go into the strengths and

opportunities, while also addressing any weaknesses and external threats, to give you a holistic

view of what you are kind of tackling, and then kind of need to keep in mind the off premise

strategy. So ensuring you have a game plan for driving sales in retail locations where

consumers are making some more spontaneous purchase decisions.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and especially in off premise, will that emotional connection really matter,

because that will help the consumer. Remember your brand, and maybe stand out on the shelf

among 30, 40, 50 other tequila bottles depending on the bottle shop that you're visiting

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and then, of course, digital strategy. Which will outline things like

seasonality. So maybe Halloween, or is super important for a tequila brand. Or if you are

sparkling wine. The summer season might be more important because you get to kind of appeal

to those sports drinkers. Over the summer.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and then Channel strategy kind of dictates where you will reach your core

consumer. If your core consumer is younger, maybe they're Gen. Z. Then you're going to want

to focus on social channels. But if they're a little bit older, maybe you would want to focus on

more traditional media like,

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: some Ctv or linear television or social, just making sure that you're

geo-targeted like on Facebook, for example.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So we're gonna focus more on the 1st 8 pieces. Here, and the rest are are

important to finishing up a strategy. But the 1st 8 bullets here are where we'll kind of focus today.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So moving into the next slide we break down our tactical planning

process. So this is pretty. It's essential to make sure that every campaign you run is intentionally

planned out that way you could be as impactful as possible. So we start by defining our

campaign goals. Like I mentioned before. For this example, we are running through awareness,

data collection and conversion

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and setting clear objectives to allow us to measure success and keep the

campaign focused. Then we dive into segment, audience segmentation. So understanding on a

deeper level where our audience is primarily or where we have the best opportunity to win.

Geographically, we found that when you focus in a certain Geo. For example, Socal.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: For this example it was we put together with Socal. You will have more

opportunity to win, and then, once you have kind of conquered your 1st geographic area, you

can start expanding a bit more until eventually you're advertising nationally.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: also, looking into lifestyle preferences, values and interests. Interests

could be fine dining or ethical production, and trying to kind of figure out what about your brand?

Will appeal to your core consumer. And then from there we could build

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: different audience groups or define our audiences more specifically and

look at their media consumption habits which will help us decide what channels or I'm sorry

what platforms we would want to be present on. So, knowing their media consumption habits

where they spend time, whether it's on social media or search or content. Websites will help

guide in allocating budgets across the correct channels

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and kind of tailor your approach so that you can maximize every dollar

that you spend.

‍

Brandon Crockett: Just a quick interjection here. So I worked at a beer brand not a couple of

years ago, and when we launched we went really wide instead of deep.

‍

Brandon Crockett: and I'm sure there's some folks on the call who have done the same thing,

but it it applies to digital marketing as well. If you're gonna go super wide, you're gonna end up

casting too big of a net where you don't have enough bandwidth to really

‍

Brandon Crockett: dig into these individual, either markets or channels. And if you're going to go

that route, you're just not going to see the returns. So if you're going to go all in on a particular

channel. Or, I think, more importantly, geographic, that's where you're going to have the most

wins. So don't focus on the widest net. Really start thinking about segmenting your audience,

figuring out which folks would

‍

Brandon Crockett: be most likely to purchase your product and go after those people. Then,

when you have enough data to collect. You're going to see who those people are who's actually

purchasing. And then you're gonna start.

‍

Brandon Crockett: be you're going to be able to create lookalike audiences or retargeting

campaigns that's going to be the most effective.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: Exactly. That's actually the perfect segue into the next section, which is on

audiences so exactly to Brendan's point we'll talk about why, it's important to define audiences,

we recommend usually defining a primary and a secondary audience, so that you can really

focus in on your primary audience while you have a bit of a wider net in the secondary, but not

too wide, that you're just kind of spraying and praying and hoping that

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: the media that you activate will work. And so this is just important to

define, really, strategically and intentionally, who your audience is, because we can't really build

a powerful brand without knowing exactly who we're talking to. So I mentioned values for

psychographics, values and lifestyle habits and kind of what drives them. We also want to think

about age where?

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: We have the biggest opportunity geographically.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and kind of where they are. Maybe. What? What social media platforms

they browse? Mostly on.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: And you can use different tools. There are tools like Comscore Nielsen

that help you do research like this. And then there are general market reports that are

accessible to the public that you could do research on. There are sites like statista that you can

use. So really, just using any resources available. If you have access to wine, spectator

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: industry magazines. Those will typically have really good insights to help

you craft your audiences.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So moving on.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: I think we can actually skip through this slide since we talked about the

demo and the psychographics. So one more slide is where we'll talk about setting our primary

and our secondary audiences, so primary is, who will appeal most to you, and then secondary is

who we will kind of use to help maintain campaign efficiency and kind of to grow awareness. So

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: in this example that we have here on the next slide, we define our primary

audience that we would prioritize for this brand. And so we want a lot of these

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: different pieces of information, the age that we're going after so that you

can set age parameters in platforms. You want to kind of understand if they're socially active.

This example, our socially active and aspirational woman is typically on Instagram, Tiktok, and

Pinterest, and when she is

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: consuming kind of more long long form content on blogs and websites. It's

places like vogue or food and wine or bon appetite on Youtube. She's watching cocktail tutorials

and influencer reviews, and then the mobile apps that she uses are mostly based on event

planning, travel

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and socializing. And then on the next slide we talk a bit about the

secondary audience, which is again important to cast a wider net because we're still staying

within a targeted audience. But we're able to reach those incremental consumers and bring

them into the fold, and then start retargeting these consumers who are still relevant to our core

audience, but might be one step outside of our core audience.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So here we identified affluent professionals and tequila enthusiasts who

have a higher disposable income. They browse on social media platforms like Linkedin and

Instagram, and then their content. Consumption is a little bit different where they

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: focus on sites like Forbes and Bloomberg, and then they follow sites like

the Rob report, and then on Youtube, they focus on in-depth reviews of premium tequila as done

by influencers and experts.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So as you can see, it's a little bit different where our primary audience is

more focused. If you could flip back to the last slide, Mitch, it's more focused on those more

lifestyle habits of our aspirational women, our socially active and aspirational women. And then,

if you look for a secondary audience, this one, although it's secondary, it's more focused on

T equila that way. We added a little bit extra

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: intent targeting for tequila into the secondary audience so that it wasn't

expanding too far away from someone who might purchase a premium tequila

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and then, if you flip to the next slide, we move into setting channel

strategies and kpis so when we have our audience defined, we can explore where those

audiences are spending their time, and then we can go into crafting a robust channel strategy to

ensure that we're using every platform as effectively as possible.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So on the next slide, we have examples of a couple of channels.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: That we would use for a premium tequila brand. So here we'd use social,

both organic and paid.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: Search is important to reach people who are showing intent kind of in the

moment that they're showing that purchase intent. Next, we have email marketing which goes

straight to the person's inbox and is very effective in brand storytelling and then content

marketing another really effective way to tell your brand story and then kind of appeal

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: your Brand's authenticity a bit further to the core consumer.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: And then we have connected TV which is the largest screen in the

household. So it's reaching people who are already leaned into consuming content. Whether it's

the newest hulu or Netflix, TV show or if they're just watching Youtube TV, could be sports on

Nfl,

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and then we have out of home. So reaching people in premium locations.

Maybe it could be next to a liquor store or on a main street or a main drag in one of your core,

Geos

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and which each with each of the channels, we have specific objectives,

whether it's to build brand awareness or to drive conversions. And each of these objectives

have Kpis that match up to them. So something like a Ctv would have a higher funnel objective

like

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: video view throughs. And this will appeal to the brand storytelling and

appeal to emotion, helping to kind of plant the seed in the consumer of the brand story, and then

something like Sem is more lower funnel. So you'll look at things like click through rate. And

Roas.

‍

Brandon Crockett: One.

‍

Brandon Crockett: Very quick interject, There,

‍

Brandon Crockett: QR codes. QR. Codes are such a cheap and easy way to

‍

Brandon Crockett: put on a business card, or even connected TV. If you're if you have an

advertisement and you want somebody to go to your website.

‍

Brandon Crockett: just have them scram, scan their their television real quick, bring it to your

storefront. Boom! You could. You could have a potential sale right there rather than just brand

awareness. You're actually converting into sales.

‍

Brandon Crockett: And then you, you could be able to, you should be able to put some tracking

on that as well, so you can get the attribution. Knowing that a customer came in from that

channel.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: Awesome

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: cool.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: Alright.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So we move into organic or we move into channel strategy kind of I can

explain each of the Channel selections and kind of what they're used for. So when we look at

organic social, it's all about building authentic relationships with our audience, you developcontent calendar with specific themes. And then within that content calendar, you want to

encourage user user generated content.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So that will just encourage people to interact with the brand a bit more

and drive increased brand engagement, and it also creates a community that helps people feel

connected with the brand

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and then next we go into paid social. So paid social is really effective and

giving us reach and precision to scale our brand to our core consumer quickly. So by

maintaining an always on presence. So that means on throughout the entire year, or throughout

the entire season, for example, O and D you could keep it on

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: throughout the entire month of October, November, December versus

pulsing, maybe around Thanksgiving December holidays so that would give you an amplified

presence during peak periods, and you would be able to capture more eyeballs and then testing

different creatives ensures that you're constantly refining

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: your creative to get the most out of your budget. So you always want to

take a look at how creative is performing against certain audiences and take a data driven

approach to any optimizations that you make, and this will help you push budget to best

performing content and best performing audiences and then maximize your impact on paid

social.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: Next is search strategy. So search captures intent driven consumers who

are actively looking for products like ours. So for the T equila brand. So with and then with SEO,

we would optimize for organic reach. So while search ads ensure, we're capturing interest of

people who are ready to buy SEO can capture people who maybe are researching to learn

more about tequila brands.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: We would also look into remarketing here is extremely valuable, because

it brings people who have showed interest in your site back to to help them convert on site, or

could be on on your brand site or on an instacart uber eats wherever it is that they are

purchasing on digital platform.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: Next is email marketing, which is a way of nurturing, existing and potential

customers through personalized engagement. So you can segment your email list based on

behaviors and preferences. And that allows us to send them highly relevant content from

exclusive offers. Perhaps you have

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: couple different products in market, you can bundle them together and

give a discount as a special offer, or if you have a holiday wrap on your bottle. That could be

another special offer. You can advertise or you could use it as a place to provide educational

material and kind of build your brand's credibility with your audience.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: we can also segment or create automated sequences for email

campaigns like cart abandoners. Be able to reach cart abandoners, for example, with 10% off

their purchase, help to recover lost sales and then help to kind of boost roi with minimal

investment. When you use those automated sequences.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: Next is content marketing. So content. Marketing helps build credibility

and authority because you get to work with someone like liquor.com, who, if you search like a

Manhattan cocktail right now, I'm almost sure they'll be the 1st recipe that you'll find for a

Manhattan cocktail coming from liquor.com. And so that just shows that they're a super super

credible source. So when people go

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: to liquor.com, they trust what their writers and their editors are publishing,

and that would help boost your brand's credibility in the space.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and then long form content like how to guides or behind the scenes of

making the tequila, for example, in this example, in the distillery or of the agave fields, it kind of

just helps attract a more knowledgeable audience, and then helps position the brand as a

trusted expert in the category, and gives the consumer a little bit more to kind of digest or

comprehend

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: about the brand, and then again, when they're going to make their

purchase decision. And they have. They're presented with 1020, 30, different tequilas. They

might know

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: about your specific, or in this example, the specific agave that this

premium tequila brand uses, and because they know that little fact, and they don't know

anything about any other tequilas they might choose the premium tequila brand.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and then next is out of home advertising, which gives visibility or gives the

brands invisibility in high traffic areas. So you could build brand recognition and brand recall.

And when you strategically place your out of home ads and iconic locations, you're able to align

your brand with a premium lifestyle. So it's really important to choose locations where your

target target demographic frequency. Frequents

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: that way. You can create a repeated exposure and really help build a

strong brand presence within a competitive marketplace. So if you have a super premium

lifestyle brand, you might want to place your your out of home in the most premium, or maybe,

like Ritzy, neighborhood in the Geo that you are looking to target.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: And then next we go into Ctv, so Ctv is a really powerful way to increase

brand awareness while consumers are relaxing. They're engaged with what they're watching,

but they aren't really distracted by tons of different ads like they could be when they're

consuming paid social advertising. They're just watching one TV screen. And there's 1 ad that

appears at a time.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: You can also buy Ctv advertising. That's non skippable. So that makes

sure that the user watches your ad to its full completion. And they're able to understand and

digest your full brand message, which again goes back to why it is so important to really PIN

down your messaging and brand positioning, so that when you're delivering your messages in

market

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: it's very clear what your brand story is, and why you are unique among

the other brands in your category?

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: So that just about wraps up our channels. And then we are going to move

into Kpis. Which are critical to know if you're hitting your goals, and understand effectiveness of

each channel. So whether it's impressions for something high level or a high level strategy or

engagements or Cpcs

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: metrics are defined by Channel, and they tell you where you're really

hitting your marks. And you're excelling with your campaign, or where you need to optimize,

because all campaigns aren't always going to to immediately drive 10 roi or incredible roi. There

will always be a process of optimizing your campaigns to adapt to the current marketplace.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And so ongoing measurement allows you to make really data driven

decisions to ensure that you maximize every dollar that you spend on your product.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And then moving into the next slide. And

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: step 5, or we called it, step 5 here. In kind of crafting. A strategy is

defining your budgets and defining your your flighting. So the budget will dictate the reach that

you have against your audience. Will also kind of define how many different channels you would

be able to advertise on, whereas flighting will tell you when your ads will run and if you're

looking to heavy up during specific key selling moments, you would kind of define that within

your flighting.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: So the next slide we have some kind of guidelines on budget scheduling

or budget breakouts. I should say so for smaller budgets we focus on kind of top funnel.

Gabriella DeLorenzo: Awareness. Awareness. So you'll be able to kind of test dB, creatives. But

it's not large enough to nurture leads effectively. So focusing really on those awareness driving

campaigns. And trying to drive that by reach against your audience, or as high reach as

possible.

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and then moving into like a medium size like 5 to 10 K budget with a mid

funnel, you can start working in activities like retargeting additional creative testing. And then

when you have more than 10 K and you have a proper budget to nurture leads. You can start

building in the full funnel of top, middle, and bottom funnel campaigns.

Gabriella DeLorenzo: It gives you more of ability to test your creatives, and then you can

expand your channel strategy outside of just search and social. We usually recommend search

and social as some of our 

Gabriella DeLorenzo: the 1st places that we'll look to just because those are super efficient and

very turnkey. You're able to control budgets and still see some sort of impact on your campaign

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and then moving into the next slide. We talk a bit about flating. So the

timing of your campaign is super crucial. If your brand really pops during Halloween season, you

need to make sure that you're launching your campaigns a few weeks beforehand, when people

are in that planning mindset.

Gabriella DeLorenzo: If you're if you're advertising something that you are really focused on

driving conversions or driving sales during the winter holidays. We're seeing people start

planning earlier and earlier, even in the beginning of November, for something like Christmas or

New Year's. So we'll have to understand that flighting should start as soon as possible in

October, November, December.

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and just kind of identifying those key selling periods and those high

consumer interested dates would make sure that your message lands when people are more

likely to splurge a little, or more likely to be shopping for parties or planning occasions where

they would consume your product. It also helps to increase the engagement and conversion

potential. If you're kind of increasing your

Gabriella DeLorenzo: during these key selling moments throughout the year.

Gabriella DeLorenzo: Hmm. 

Gabriella DeLorenzo: so next we have an example of flighting.

Gabriella DeLorenzo: So here, for this example, for a tequila brand.

Gabriella DeLorenzo: since it is more of a female oriented women led women run organization.

We came up with Valentine's Day. Mother's day. Summer is always big for all spirits, so,

including summer national tequila day. Those national holidays are always an easy win or an

easy place to

Gabriella DeLorenzo: kind of edit your creative. If you have a vodka brand, maybe it's espresso Martini day, or, of course, national vodka day. So you're able to kind of speak to something relevant to that's relevant to the consumers while you're advertising. And then Dia de losMuertos and Halloween could be big for a tequila brand. And then, of course, we're here for October, November, December, planning so focusing on Thanksgiving and holiday that's big for spirits in general

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and then depending on budgets. You could activate an always on strategy

throughout the entire year. So you can look to heavy up your budgets a bit during all of these

different pulse periods that you see. But then, during the times of year, that don't have a don't

have a tentpole occasion, maybe

Gabriella DeLorenzo: beginning of April. You can focus on something like getting ready for a

graduation celebration or any special occasions. Weddings, wedding, planning? Just really

anything that you find in your audience research that would be relevant to your consumer.

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and if we move on we only have a few slides left, but we. The next step is

obviously to launch the campaign. So launching is just the start. After you've defined your brand

messaging and positioning. You've defined your audience and done a full customer analysis and

audience analysis. And then from there you have decided on your Channel strategy. Your what

Demo or I'm sorry what? Geo, you would be appearing in.

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and then what platforms? And then, of course, budgets and flighting then

you move into the launch of the campaign, obviously setting up

Gabriella DeLorenzo: setting up campaigns and platform but you need to always look into

optimization. So I always recommend at least weekly optimizations.

Gabriella DeLorenzo: usually media agencies will have eyeballs on campaigns

Gabriella DeLorenzo: every day, so that you know exactly what you're spending on a daily

basis. So I always keep track on a daily basis, and then we do check ins on performance at

least weekly, if not biweekly, 3 times a week to ensure that the campaign is effective as

possible, and then by monitoring performance you can adjust things that aren't working. Maybe

you see certain

Gabriella DeLorenzo: copy or creative elements that just aren't performing. You can pause those

out or tweak them a bit. Perhaps targeting is not allowing your campaign to give you the

performance that you wanted. Maybe we tweak the audience a little bit and we test out a new

audience and kind of see what works until you kind of hit a sweet spot.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: or maybe you're running your campaign for a long period of time, and you

have audiences in play in October that maybe don't make sense in December, so it's just kind of

a process. Once you launch your campaign of being super nimble, staying in touch with the

campaign and making sure to avoid any media waste and make those optimizations to really

drive performance.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And then finally, I know, be if or if you do, one more sorry. I talked through

both of the slides at once. Analytics and

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: reporting talked about a few times, but this kind of goes hand in hand with

optimization because you will have Kpis defined before your campaign launches, and we'll kind

of compare performance against our Kpis. And by reviewing these different metrics you can

identify strengths in your campaigns that you want to really blow out of the water and take

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: full advantage of and then weaknesses that you want to kind of pull back

on and then build on successes. And you'll take all of these learnings that you find throughout

your campaign, and we'll apply it to the next campaign. Help keep refining your approach as you

keep growing your brand

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: through ond and beyond.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: and that brings us to the end.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: you know we have just a few minutes left.149

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Brandon Crockett: Yeah. So if you guys wanna use the chat function? I know that not everybody

can see it. But 1 1 question that came in was asking you to review the resources for market

research.

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Brandon Crockett: So I know I know you mentioned like rob report and

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Brandon Crockett: food and beverage.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: yes, you broke.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: You froze a little bit. But resources for market research. I usually like to

pull from you like you said, food and beverage, magazine, wine, spectator, and then statista

usually has some really good results, and there are a lot of like one off studies that we use to

kind of define or bring in data points about our target audience.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: I'm trying to think of the study. But I can definitely follow up.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: With you, Alan, and kind of let you know what some good resources are.

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Brandon Crockett: What do you think has the best results

‍

Brandon Crockett: for market research?

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: For market research. I wouldn't just pick one. I I always like to use

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: different a bunch of different resources to.

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Brandon Crockett: Looks like Gabby froze up, Mitch, you have a.

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Mitch Somach: Yeah for market research. I mean, there's a bunch of public available

information. Some of the stuff is like paid for services you have comscore. You have Nielsen, IQ

status things like that. But we typically aggregate data from a variety of sources and cross

reference multiple touch points that way. You're able to get somewhat of consistent data with

how we do our research and build our audiences and so forth. It's not one single

‍

Mitch Somach: source. It's aggregate. And then it's also important to keep in mind. Some of this

is just industry, best practice and and knowledge and skill sets within the industry right? So you

know, someone like Gabby, who's been in the industry for a significant amount of time, is able to

pull some of this data just from previous campaigns and successes. She's run versus being able

to identify, you know, new market research or new, let's say, emerging brands

‍

Mitch Somach: that have, you know, new challenges and problems that.

‍

Mitch Somach: you know, there maybe are no direct precedents. So it's it's point being it's a

very, you know, boutique approach right? It's a we work with brands on a case by case basis.

Not just kind of a a bucketed template model. It's understanding brand initiatives and their and

their expansion goals. And from there putting together very boutique plans. T o get them, you

know. Step one step, 2, step 3, but really to help them, you know, scale.

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Brandon Crockett: Then Alan had a really good question that I'm sure everybody on the call is is

thinking the same thing, and you kind of alluded to it. It's case by case. It's brand initiatives. But

what what do you think you need for a successful campaign? What kind of budget are you

looking for if you're focusing on e-commerce.

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Brandon Crockett: Gabby

‍

Brandon Crockett: loaded question.

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Mitch Somach: I mean, I have my own thoughts. I'm sure Gabby has her thoughts, too. It

depends on the scale of the brand. If you're smb, emerging mid market global brands. But,

Gabby, why don't you go ahead with like, let's say, Smb, emerging brand, where do you like to

position brands for budgets?

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: I think so. There's a lot of things that go into or factor into budgets, I think

during October, November, December, budget should be

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: like maxed out as much as possible, just because there's so much clutter

in the marketplace. So it's hard to say one. But I think with like 10 to 20 k. Per month. It's a good

place where you'll be able to support both paid social and paid search as well as a bit of email

marketing. So that's where I would start. But of course

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: they're not. All brands have budgets that are that big. And so even if you

have something as small as 5 K. You could still run an effective paid search campaign. It's just

important that you give your campaign time to ramp up and keep

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: whenever you launch a campaign, you're learning for the 1st couple of

weeks, so it's hard to see immediate success. But as long as you are able to run a sustained

campaign for 4 to 8 weeks you should start seeing positive performance

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: and budget.

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Brandon Crockett: Cool. Back to my initial question, what's your favorite brand? How are you?

How many times you've been to that brand's website? You need to be spending money in order

to drive traffic in order to convert sales, and then this channel will pay for itself eventually. But

unless you're spending money on these channels.

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Brandon Crockett: It's simply just gonna sit there and it's not gonna work. I I know that brands

often get frustrated, that their e-commerce channel isn't bringing enough or not enough, but it's

not bringing in what they expected

‍

Brandon Crockett: in the beginning. But it really all just comes down to brand awareness and

driving traffic.

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Mitch Somach: And yeah, and ultimately, budget is the

‍

Mitch Somach: dictator of what channels are applicable, right? Like running content marketing

efforts. Or, you know, TV connected TV or linear TV efforts are, you're you're strapped by how

much available budget you have, not just for your media spend. But also, you know, for the

campaign structure and setup and strategy, that's all part of the process. And so just saying, Oh,

it's O and D planning for that, you know. Let's say

‍

Mitch Somach: beginning October, or even sometime in, you know, late Q. 3, you're, you know,

kind of strapping yourself to a rushed project versus really identifying. Okay, what are your goals

and expectations, because a lot of the times performance during O. And D also sets up fiscal

budgets for next year right? And so, being very cognizant about how you spend dollars and

expected results, for you know.

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Mitch Somach: let's say current ond will often dictate, you know, budgets for next year

performance for next year and set baseline for you know what you're kind of going up against

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Mitch Somach: ideally. We're seeing growth of the brand year over year and digital is one of

those channels to drive that awareness, that extension of your tasting room. And so brands

entering new markets usually utilize digital to kind of pepper the new markets they're going into

in order to start driving some awareness before their traditional sales efforts. Let's say, boots on

the ground, right are activated in those regions through experiential.

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Mitch Somach: through tastings, through activations, things of that nature. So digital is not in a

silo. And it shouldn't be looked that way. It's a very holistic program that needs to be captured

with a deep understanding of what the brand is trying to achieve. Right?

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Mitch Somach: So that's

‍

Mitch Somach: th. Those are the discussions that we're having with brands to really understand

their goals. And then we back into

‍

Mitch Somach: all of the strategy and tactical components that Gabby has done a fantastic job

of just going over.

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Brandon Crockett: Then Alan asked, if we have any success stories, so we will definitely follow

up with some case studies and and some

‍

Brandon Crockett: prime examples of brands that are doing this really? Well.

‍

Brandon Crockett: yeah, well, if there are no other questions, I'm gonna make sure that

everybody on the call gets a recap of the recording, and I'll get some decks together and case

studies. And yeah, you guys should all have that information in your inbox by Friday. And then, if

you want to schedule some time with either myself at Excel pay or the team at mushroom

media, you'll have our contacts there as well.

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Brandon Crockett: Awesome. Well, I appreciate everybody and have a great and successful O,

and D

‍

Brandon Crockett: you know, there is one more question. Would you consider Youtube to fall

more into content, marketing or organic social. That's a great question.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: You know, I actually wouldn't consider it either. I would consider it a video

partner. Just because all of the content on it is video. And when you buy Youtube

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: it's it's always going to be 6 second bumpers or 15 second or 30 seconds.

So when I do my channel planning. I would allocate for Youtube budgets within our video

budgets.

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Brandon Crockett: And then the the second piece of that was putting unpaid video out there

assuming that it's gonna be viral kind of could be the same as Tiktok, but with with paid you

have a lot more control. And you can really

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Brandon Crockett: dial in your

‍

Brandon Crockett: community engagement

‍

Brandon Crockett: and you get the right message out there, not not leading, leaving it up to a

short 30 second clip or an influencer. You have a lot more control and and tell your brand story a

little bit more eloquently.

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Brandon Crockett: Yeah, I mean with.

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Mitch Somach: Need it.

‍

Mitch Somach: Go ahead, Gabby.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: I was just going to tack on to that also with paid when you're doing

something like social trying to drive virality, you can drive views of the video as a campaign

objective. So you can as much budget as you want will help dictate how many views you can

get. But you can drive millions of views over the course of a week or 2 to help kind of boost.

Your view content of a certain video or view count of certain video.

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Mitch Somach: And with paid. The benefit of paid is you drive reach. We can't do that with

organics socials, whether it's on Youtube or Meta's platform, or Linkedin, or what have you? So

you have to be very cognizant about how you're spending those dollars unpaid to reduce that

media waste, which is why so much strategy and planning goes into that and daily

optimizations, week optimizations and so forth. But yeah, very holistic.

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Gabriella DeLorenzo: And it would. Sorry. One more thing is, we're talking much. It would be

targeted reach, which is important because you're not potentially delivering the video to

someone who doesn't really have any interest in your brand. You're delivering your video topeople who will, you know, will be interested in your brand because you've defined that

audience.

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Mitch Somach: That's right.

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Brandon Crockett: Perfect, I think that's that's a nice way to put a bow on it.

‍

Gabriella DeLorenzo: What's up?

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Brandon Crockett: I appreciate you guys and look for that email within the next couple of days,

with all the resources you could possibly need and our contact information. If you'd like to

continue the conversation.

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Mitch Somach: Thanks guys.

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Brandon Crockett: Thanks everyone, bye.

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