Traditional Strategies

Traditional strategies are important to keep in mind for every business as well. The Lawton Ridge Winery is young and small enough that it definitely needs to keep in mind many traditional marketing strategies. Some of these strategies include: word-of-mouth, advertising, personal selling, and public relations.

Word-of-Mouth Marketing

For a small business such as the Lawton Ridge Winery, word-of-mouth is essential. Much of their business is going to come from someone who told someone else about them. This is where building a relationship with their consumers is essential. By making a customer truly care about them, and feel like he belongs with the Lawton Ridge Winery, he is going to go on and share that feeling with others. This can be done through personal selling, newsletters, and some methods of advertising.

Advertising

Since the Lawton Ridge Winery is so small and local they can pretty much just focus on the local markets. By advertising in local papers they will be able to reach a significant part of their target market.

Outside of their local market they need to just look at publications that advertise southwest Michigan wine in general. For example, if Wine Spectator magazine does an article about Michigan wines, Lawton Ridge Winery wants to know about that and advertise in that specific issue. The rest of the year it is probably too expensive to be worth advertising in these big publications.

Billboards are a bit expensive, but it may be worth investing in one or two for Lawton Ridge winery. The winery is not located far off of I-94, one of the most traveled expressways in the state, and advertising to all of the traffic that otherwise would drive by, not knowing about the winery would be effective. There are already several billboards for St. Julian’s Winery in Paw Paw, so they are getting the majority of the drive by traffic right now.

Television advertising is probably too expensive for the Lawton Ridge Winery to worry about right now. It may reach a few consumers that radio and newspaper don’t, but most of their target market likely will be reachable without spending the money on television.

Personal Selling

Personal selling is an important and effective method of selling products such as wine. Consumers like to be informed about a product such as wine before they purchase it, and personal selling makes this easier. The Lawton Ridge Winery is already accomplishing this through their tasting room and appearances at wine festivals.

Public Relations

Informing the public about a business through news channels is important. It makes the business seem more legitimate and helps to inform them of current events. The Lawton Ridge Winery has been doing this and needs to continue to do so. Many wine consumers are interested in current events, so when they see an article about the winery in the paper, they are likely to take notice.