Craft beer has become increasingly popular since 1980, with the industry’s highest growth happening in the last ten years. By 2021, the craft beer industry accounted for a quarter of the US retail beer market at 26.8 percent.
While some people prefer to drink alone at home, most people love drinking in the company of friends. So building a sense of community among your customers can help ensure that they will always return.
However, building this sense of community involves taking deliberate steps to bring your customers together. But worry not, as this guide offers ways of bringing your customers together at your brewery.
Work on Your Customer Experiences
Every customer-based strategy should always start with offering the best customer experiences. Irrespective of how best you do everything else, poor customer experiences will crumble every other strategy.
When a customer is happy on their first and consecutive visits to your brewery, the more likely they will convert into a loyal customer and the more likely they will be willing to share their experiences with friends, family, and colleagues.
So, before you even think about bringing your customers together, focus on ensuring that individual experiences are at their best. That way, all other strategies will have a strong foundation to build on.
Create a Strong Online Community
In today’s information age, life happens on the internet, making it a good place to start when bringing people together. Leveraging the power of social media is the most effective way of building an online community around your brewery.
Start by creating engaging content around your brewery, such as your offerings, activities, etc., and have your audience, who, in this case, will be mostly your customers, make contributions by commenting.
Rather than have you be the initiator of all conversations, you can allow your audience to be initiators and then act as a moderator. If your customers can get comfortable around each other on the internet, they will be more at ease when meeting in person, making your community-building efforts much easier.
Hold Events at Your Brewery
Most beer lovers want a place to engage in another activity while enjoying their drinks. These activities include music, watching football, karaoke nights, trivia contests, etc.
The type of events you hold at your location should depend on several factors, such as your clientele demographic, the size of your location, and revenue. You do not have to start big if you are a startup. You only need to be creative enough to incorporate an event your clientele will love.
Timing for your events is also critical. For example, you can’t have a music concert on a Monday night, considering that most customers will need to be at work in the morning. Instead, it would be best to slot such an event for the weekend.
Membership Club
Building a strong customer experience is great. But even the best customer experience will not have all the customers returning. One of the most effective ways of having your customers return is by offering special perks for your loyal customers.
You can achieve this by building a membership club where they enjoy special discounts and offers that are not accessible to other customers. Candidates for the member clubs should be based on a customer’s loyalty.
When building your membership club, you do not want to have a one-day customer join the club as it would lose its feeling of exclusiveness. But you could let them know they could get into the club along the way. Most people want to be a member of an exclusive club, and once they are in, they will want to stay.
Why Bringing Your Customers Together Is Important
There are many reasons why bringing your customers together is important for a brewery or any other type of business. But the most compelling reason is that it creates a sense of community and belonging for your customers.
When people feel connected, they are more likely to stick around and continue supporting your business. Connected customers can be loyal brand ambassadors you do not have to pay.
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