Should wine companies even have target markets?

It's not always clear. This session of The Wine Marketing Masterclass helps you choose.

Every Wednesday we have The Wine Marketing Masterclass. All previous sessions are in the (paywalled) archive and most new sessions are for paid subscribers.

Remember, this is a COMPLETE MBA course in wine marketing. For just $10 a month. (A full wine MBA costs up to €30,000) you’ll discover sell more wine, more profitably, to more people. And to catch you up we’ve already covered a LOT.

In Market Orientation we looked at…

What Google image searches get wrong about wine lovers, Do you need a trust fund to enjoy wine?, The wine drinker is not a “consumer”… she’s your mum, The “very rare trait” that makes you successful

In Market Research we looked at…

Why wine drinkers lie to you, Even more on the dangers of relying on statistics, In wine it pays to ask weird questions

And in Segmentation we’ve looked at…

If Gen Z is the new “millennials, Why for two days a month we’re all millionaires, And why wine customers are like oranges., The Curious Tale of the Chablis Shagger

And now we’re in Targeting, and we’ve already looked at…

Why I like celebrity wines, How two men and a donkey created a Rioja powerhouse,

And today…

Should wine companies even have a target market?

A few months ago I was asked by a group of stu­dents in Aus­tralia about strategies for ap­proach­ing the UK re­tail mar­ket.

I sug­ges­ted we went through this sys­tem­at­ic­ally. Us­ing a tar­geted ap­proach.

First, we did a bit of map­ping. The cent­ral, vertical axis de­scribes wheth­er the retail­er is fo­cused on Op­tim­iser wine drink­ers – towards at the top – who are those look­ing for the "best" wine; or Sat­is­ficer wine drink­ers at the bot­tom – those who are look­ing for something that's maybe not perfect, but “guar­an­teed to be ac­cept­able”.

Then on the ho­ri­zont­al axis we have the de­mand for floor space in the stores. To the left is a lower de­mand for floor and shelf space. And to the right there is a high­er demand.

We then charted some re­tail­ers and types of re­tail.

In­de­pend­ent mer­chants are at the top. They are an op­tim­iser's dream. That's where you go for the "best" wine choice. And they can be in re­gion­al and mar­ket towns where the cost of floor space is of­ten lower.

At the bot­tom are the mul­tiple re­tail­ers. Su­per­mar­kets. They of­fer wines that are re­as­sur­ing­ly ac­cept­able. If not thrilling. But of­ten in high-val­ue, city cen­tre lo­cations with high de­mand on floor­space. Every wine has to earn its place con­sis­tent­ly.

And there are out­liers. Like He­do­nism, Lon­don's swanki­est wine shop at the top. Or lo­cal con­ve­nience stores to the bot­tom left. And then the pre­mi­um mul­ti­ple re­tail­ers in the mid­dle who have won plau­dits for their wine of­fers.

And you can see a trend line emer­ging. This helps you as­sess where on that trend line you want to tar­get your ef­forts. And how you can help find the tac­tics that will help you suc­ceed in that seg­ment.

So let’s look at an example of someone who did take this sort of strategic approach to building wine sales in the UK.