[majorvices]

Certainly can work well. But be careful you don't spend all your 30K on swag or you won;t have anything left for a brewery. 

[nateo]

This is actually a good marketing idea.  By branding items and getting the word out well in advance, people are anticipating your product in the market place before it arrives.  This is why most companies pre-annouce products.  The inability to get a well-branded product actually increases demand.  It a strategy heavily employed by Apple Computer.  They announce something, it goes on sale, it sells out and you can't get one for weeks.  People line up outside the stores just to get one on opening days.  Regardless whether you like Apple's products or not, they get a massive amount of free publicity because of the demand they create prior to and during product launch.

I would think there's some baseline minimum of potential customers for that to work. Apple has hundreds of millions of potential customers, if not billions. So a scattershot marketing strategy that converts 1/10th of 1% into customers would get them a serious amount of money.

With the crazy alcohol regulations in this country, such as prohibitions on self-distribution and the problems in getting your product into consumer's hands, I don't think the same kind of marketing strategies would work for beer. You would probably start off with the only potential customers being people in your town, or within x miles of your town.

I think the only reason those "breweries" market everything BUT beer is because it's impossible to make terrible beer if you don't make any beer at all. I've seen one brewery marketing themselves as "the best beer you can't buy," and I laughed out loud.

[nateo]

[I do not necessary agree with you that brewing is just another business. We all know that it takes the same amount of hours and man power to brew 10 Gal batch or 10 gallon batch.
I do agree that brewing beer is food manufacturing thou.

I just meant that if you can't run a business successfully, how are you going to run a brewery successfully? Regardless of your business, you have to deal with permits, licenses, inventory control, improvements, maintenance, labor, taxes, customers. Now add in the fact that food spoils and breweries are very labor intensive, and running a brewery ends up being a lot harder than running other kinds of business.

[Tim McManus]

With the crazy alcohol regulations in this country, such as prohibitions on self-distribution and the problems in getting your product into consumer's hands, I don't think the same kind of marketing strategies would work for beer. You would probably start off with the only potential customers being people in your town, or within x miles of your town.

Some other non-traditional ways of getting your brand out there is by creating a "Follow the birth of our brewery" blog.  Lots of guys are doing that now.  Also, Facebook can be used to reconnect with old friends who are out of town.  You can create a brewery page for your business there and those out-of-town old friends will probably be interested in it.  And due to the way social networking works, their friends will want to know.  Of course they now have a story about "that guy from high school I knew is new starting a brewery, how cool is that"?  From there you start a Twitter feed and connect all three of these non-traditional marketing tools together.  You'll be surprised how quickly it starts to pan out across the country (and possibly the world).

The best part:  All of this is free.

[nateo]

Tim - I understand the concept. Since it's free, you don't lose anything but your time, so there's no reason not to do it, but how do you turn worldwide interest into cash in your pocket? Your long-lost out-of-town friends won't just send you money for nothing, will they? They still have to go to you establishment to buy your product.

[majorvices]

Tim - I understand the concept. Since it's free, you don't lose anything but your time, so there's no reason not to do it, but how do you turn worldwide interest into cash in your pocket? Your long-lost out-of-town friends won't just send you money for nothing, will they? They still have to go to you establishment to buy your product.

Good point. A small local brewer doesn't benefit monetarily from a fan across the country that has never had his beer.

We actually decided NOT to have a facebook page as a "prestige and mystery" branding. It's worked well. I've had a lot of people show up at the brewery simply because they could not find out enough about us. Also, I hate facebook. So that worked well for me. 

[Beer Monger]

merry a loyer or a doctor.

Or an English teacher?    lol

The Coop I'm with is looking at starting with either a 10 or 15 barrel system.

[Thirsty_Monk]

merry a loyer or a doctor.

Or an English teacher?    lol

The Coop I'm with is looking at starting with either a 10 or 15 barrel system.

Brewing Czech beers. I do not have to.

[Thirsty_Monk]

Tim - I understand the concept. Since it's free, you don't lose anything but your time, so there's no reason not to do it, but how do you turn worldwide interest into cash in your pocket? Your long-lost out-of-town friends won't just send you money for nothing, will they? They still have to go to you establishment to buy your product.

Good point. A small local brewer doesn't benefit monetarily from a fan across the country that has never had his beer.

We actually decided NOT to have a facebook page as a "prestige and mystery" branding. It's worked well. I've had a lot of people show up at the brewery simply because they could not find out enough about us. Also, I hate facebook. So that worked well for me. 

We use Facebook as marketing tool. Instead of connecting lost friends we connect current customers. It Actually works. Twitter is a waste of time.

[Beer Monger]

Twitter is a waste of time.

I disagree.  Twitter can be a great marketing tool - though too many out there just use it to point to their Facebook page.  

Czech mate!   

[Thirsty_Monk]

Twitter is a waste of time.

I disagree.  Twitter can be a great marketing tool - though too many out there just use it to point to their Facebook page.  

Czech mate!   

[majorvices]

Facebook sounds like something a 13 year old girl keeps her makeup in. I just can't get around that. I'm rooting for google plus. We also have not had to use facebook yet. There is nothing it would do for us now. We do piggyback on the facebook pages of a few pubs. but the fact that we don't have one has created an image I actually want.

[Beer Monger]

Facebook sounds like something a 13 year old girl keeps her makeup in. I just can't get around that. I'm rooting for google plus. We also have not had to use facebook yet. There is nothing it would do for us now. We do piggyback on the facebook pages of a few pubs. but the fact that we don't have one has created an image I actually want.

Well...  nobody HAS to use Facebook, but it's great for marketing.  Also, for me, it makes it much easier to stay in touch w/ family 1/2 way around the World on a daily basis. 

I'm on Google+ but haven't really used it yet.  I gotta start...

[morticaixavier]

another cheap resource is various trade organizations, BA for one but also if there is a similar organization for your state it's a great idea to get involved with it. Or hell, organize one! I bet Charlie P could open a brewery and would have to beat the customers away! course we would all be penniless homebrewers but hey.

[tschmidlin]

Well...  nobody HAS to use Facebook, but it's great for marketing.

I think it just really depends.  I have an account, but I don't use facebook for anything.  You can't market to people with facebook if they aren't using it.  If your customers are not the facebook type, then there is no sense in going that route.  Also, in Keith's case, if you are already selling all of the beer you can make why bother doing much marketing?