When it comes to brewing beer, listening to your customers is important. If they don’t like the drink, and you don’t take their concerns into your next brew, they won’t come back.
Dan Curtis and Jim Hopkins, owners of Parkersburg Brewing Company, were guests on Positively West Virginia this week. They talked with the host, Jim Matuga, about the company and what it takes to keep it running.
Three tips they stressed were having a business plan, building brand recognition and most importantly, knowing the importance of customer engagement.
Have a business plan.
“Develop a strong, really thought out business plan,” Hopkins advises.
Part of building a business plan includes listing:
- An executive summary (an overview of your business plans)
- Your competition
- Your advantages
- Your disadvantages
- Your audience
You also want to include how you’re going to execute your business plan, which needs to include a financial plan.
A business plan does not have to be 100+ pages. In fact, you want this plan to be read and to be executed. Keep is short and simple.
Build brand recognition.
Once your business is off the ground, what’s your next step? Currently, no one knows about the company. Meaning, no one is buying your product.
Parkersburg Brewing Co. location
Brand recognition is the extent to which a customer can identify a product/service just by seeing the company’s logo, tagline or marketing/advertising campaign.
“We’re really trying to grow the brand and gain brand recognition,” Curtis said.
One way to do this is through social media and knowing the importance of customer engagement. If your brand is visual, think Instagram. If your brand is more content based (words), think Twitter and Facebook. This is not expensive.
Facebook owns Instagram, meaning your company can be advertising on both platforms with one budget and target one audience.
When defining your target audience, ask yourself these questions:
- What are their demographics (education, income level, life events, relationship status, etc.)?
- Where do they live (county, state, country)?
- What are their buying activities (charitable donations, traveling, etc.)?
Now that you’ve got your audience and people are taking notice, start engaging with them.
Know the importance of customer engagement.
Parkersburg Brewing Co. Team
If you are not engaging with your customers, they will feel that you are not listening to them.
This means that your product isn’t being improved to better fit your target audience, your company is wasting time and money and you are losing your revenue.
Social media is an effective way to engage with your customers because it is in real-time. Have a new product launching? Do a Facebook Live! Get live updates of what your customers think.
“We’re committed to listening to our customers and our employees,” Hopkins said.
This company can be found on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Listen to the full podcast here.