2025 Brewery Marketing Master Class

Today on the podcast Chris Overlay from Get Hoptimized delivers a master class in brewery marketing.

You'll learn how to build your brewery sales forecast and super charge results with a best-in-class marketing plan.

Key Points

• Sales forecasting best practices
• Brewery revenue drivers and key metrics to simplify planning
• Tools and models to build a comprehensive marketing plan
• Tactics to align sales and marketing to achieve revenue goals 

Resources

• Connect with Chris to super charge your brewery marketing plan, [e-mail]
• Learn more about the financial education network of brewery owners and managers

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today on the podcast I speak with Chris Overlay from
Get Optimize Marketing Agencyfor breweries. We have a very
cool episode here today. We'regonna combine building your
sales forecast with buildingyour marketing forecast, your
marketing plan. And Chris has anumber of wonderful ideas and
profitable ideas to help yousupercharge your sales and

(00:22):
marketing for your brewery in2025. So for now, please enjoy
this conversation with ChrisOverlay from Get Optimized.
Welcome to the Craft BreweryFinancial Training podcast,
where we combine beer andnumbers to provide you with
tips, tactics, and strategiesso that you can improve
financial results in yourbrewery. I'm your host, Kerry

(00:42):
Shumway, A-C-P-A-C-F-O for abrewery and a former CFO for a
beer distributor. I've spentthe last 20 years using finance
to improve financial results inour beer business. Now I'm
helping other craft breweriesto do the same. Are you ready
to take your brewery financialresults to the next level?
Okay, let's get started. Just aquick note, we'll be right back

(01:07):
to the podcast. I wanna let youknow about a new network for
beer industry professionals.
It's called the Beer BusinessFinance Association. It's an
organization of financial pros,just like you, looking to
improve financial results,increase profitability, connect
with your peers, and share bestpractices. So, I'd love to tell

(01:28):
you a little bit more aboutthis. If you are interested in
learning more, please email [e-mail] .
That's [e-mail]. Or
you can visit bbb fassociation.org. That's bbb f
association.org to learn more.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Chris Overlay, it is so good to see you again, and
I'm excited to talk aboutmarketing planning, sales
planning, combining those twosuperpowers. How are you doing,
my friend?

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Oh, man, I'm good.
You know, it's always good tohang out with you , Carrie ,
and , uh, talk marketing stuffand all those things, but so
overall man , we're good . Youknow, we're getting towards the
end of the year and it's , uh,jolly around and everyone's in
good spirits and also it'sbusiness crunch time and all
those fun things. So we're ,uh, we're doing good.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
It's good. It's good. So obviously you and I
have known each other a whilefor folks that might not be

Speaker 1 (02:23):
As familiar with you,

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Why don't you give 'em a little bit of background?

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah, sure. So , uh, my name's Chris Overlay. I am
the founder and CEO of GIOptimized . We are a , uh,
company that helps , uh, craftbeer businesses drive
measurable, quantifiableresults through their
marketing, doing stuff like adsand email and SMS and websites
and SEO we're the digitalmarketing guys. Um, and yeah,

(02:48):
I've been doing this in thisindustry for a few years now,
but I've been in marketing forover 11 years now. So , uh,
we're, we're past the 10 markand been loving it, man. It's a
good career.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
That's awesome.
Yeah, and it's so important.
You know, I work with so manybreweries and you know, my
focus is largely on thefinances and you know, how to
build your plan and then stickto your plan and so forth. But
you know, the plans , you know,numbers is fine, but you need
like these, what are we gonnado? And, you know, marketing
is, is I think, the superpowerto bring more people into your

(03:21):
tap room . You know, buy moreof your beer, buy more of your
stuff, you gotta let 'em knowabout it. So excited to dive in
here.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, especially now, you know, the industry's
going through this tighteningperiod and it's getting more
competitive and, and not justwith other, you know, breweries
out there, but it's, you know,it's bars, it's people's
finances, it's RTDs, it's allthis different stuff that you
have to try to navigate and,and, you know , you have to
fight for for those, thosecustomers to bring 'em in. And
, uh, it's an exciting time.

(03:50):
It's a lot of , uh, you know,in the trenches kind of work,
but I'm sure we'll get intosome of those things as we talk
today. But , uh, it is a funthing and, and an important
thing for sure. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
So for people listening , um, you know, we're
recording this as both. We'regonna do audio and video, so if
you're listening on a podcast,you can check out the video to
see some of the slides andspreadsheets and planning tools
that we've got. Um, but withoutfurther ado, I'm gonna start
just with an overview of kindof my process with sales
planning and sales forecasting.

(04:20):
And then we're gonna turn itover to Chris. Uh, and he's
gonna talk about, you know,marketing planning, and he's
got some really, I think,really good practical tools
that you guys can, can reallybenefit from. Um, so first off,
like with sales forecastingbasics, you know, just kind of
looking at what are your mainrevenue channels, you know, if
you've got taproom, if you'rethrough wholesale, you know ,

(04:42):
really creating a separate planfor each of those . 'cause the
, the underlying drivers are,are very different. You know,
if you think about the taproom,like customers times average
transaction, and, you know,wholesale is gonna be a whole
set of dynamics in terms ofwhat drives that. But it's, you
know, generally, you know,customers and you know, what ,
what kind of volume per outletyou're looking at, how many
placements you've got, thingsof that nature. So we want

(05:04):
separate forecast for each,each revenue driver. And then
trying to simplify it . I'm abig fan of these, you know,
average, you know, revenue perbarrel calculations. I think
they're very easy to use. Um,you know, they're not perfect,
but they're directionallycorrect and they can help quite
a bit when you're doing yourplanning. Um, so just some
things to kind of think aboutand get started. You know, from

(05:25):
a practical example, you know,if you look at your tap room ,
and you can do this with yourown numbers, is, you know, kind
of take your total salesdivided by the total barrels
that were sold to your tap room. And sometimes when I'm
working with breweries, they'renot really sure, you know, I
don't, I'm not sure how manybarrels we push through there.
So I would encourage you to,you know, kind of get that
data. It's kind of important sothat you can measure, you know,

(05:49):
not just for forecasting, butalso, you know, what's the,
what's the relativeeffectiveness of, of monetizing
that beer that goes, goesthrough your taproom. Um,
'cause it's very valuable. But, but sometimes we lose track.
You know, maybe there's,there's foamy beer, there's too
many shift beers, there's beerloss , something's going on
that's costing us dollars . Soif we kind of track this

(06:10):
revenue per barrel, beconsistent, you know , get some
good trends on it. So in thisexample, I'm just gonna say,
you know, maybe your tapper did$600,000, maybe do the math.
You did 500 barrels, it's$1,200 a barrel, so that can be
your stake in the ground forplanning. And then next year,
maybe you're gonna take a priceincrease. You know, you're

(06:30):
going up from, you know, goingup a bucket , pint, whatever,
and you're gonna get a 10%increase, let's say, on
average. So that gets you up to$1,320 per barrel. Now, let's
say that your volume, you know,you may not sell more beers,
but you're gonna sell the sameamount of beers at a higher
price. So let's just say you'restill gonna sell 500 barrels to
your taproom. Now it's justeasy to 500 barrels times your

(06:53):
new per rev per barrelcalculation of 1320 gets you to
660,000. So now you've got, youknow, kind of the starting
point for your, for yourtaproom sales plan. You can do
the same thing on wholesale.
Um, you know, as you know, ifyou're working with a
wholesaler, they tend to talkin case equivalence. But to
keep it simple, I'm just gonnatalk, you know, in barrels for

(07:14):
now, you know, let's sayyou're, you did 300,000 in
sales through wholesale, athousand barrels, $300 per
barrel. So the , the thingsthat strike you right away is ,
wow, $300 per barrel forwholesale versus 12 or $1,300
through the tablet . It's quitea difference . It's the same
barrel of beer costs you thesame regardless. Um, and let's

(07:34):
say you're gonna forecast a 5%, uh, increase in price to $315
a barrel. And let's say you'regonna get a 5% increase in
sales at wholesale. So thatgets you 1,050 barrels. So
again, 1,050 barrels times 315per barrel gets you to three 30
and change. Um, so that's kindathe process that you can use.

(07:57):
Here's some detailed, I won'tspend too much time on these
models, you know, we'll have'em available for download. Um,
but I kind of like looking atthe trends. So in this example
that I'm showing, you know,I've got last year's actual
versus the New Year's plan, andI want to kind of compare it
month over month. And I wannalook at my major tap major

(08:17):
categories. This is the tappermodel example. So I might have
food, draft beer, retail, beermerchandise, et cetera . You
know, whatever your major salescategories are. Uh, and then we
can just plug in some simplecalculators to say, you know,
what do we think the growth isgonna be on food or draft beer
or retail? And usually I'llstart with the trends. Like,
well , well , what, what wasfood? What did food increase in

(08:40):
2024? You know, did it go up ordown? How about draft beer? And
you can use that kind of toinform what you, you know, the
trend is your friend . So itmight continue, but you also
want to think about what arethe things you're gonna do to,
to drive that trend up, youknow? And that's really I think
where, where Chris and yourplan on marketing is gonna come
in. But this is just a simplemodel that you can use to kind

(09:03):
of help with that. Here'sanother extremely simple model
on the wholesaler side, but Ifind it very useful. Um, you
know , if you dealing withmultiple wholesalers, just list
out , list out what your saleswere to them last year, what
your growth was last year. Andwhen I say last year, meaning
take the current year andcompare it to the prior, and

(09:23):
then you just forecast out yourexpected growth. And I think
it's important to have, again,I've got this sort of notes,
assumptions, action itemscolumn. Like if a trend on,
like, for example, I've got oneof these wholesaler locations
that was down 10% in thecurrent year, but I'm gonna
forecast it's up 5% next year.

(09:43):
Like, well, why, you know, it'slike they say hope is not a
strategy. You can't just, like,it's easy to change numbers on
a spreadsheet, but what exactlyis gonna happen. So I wanna , I
wanna list that out. So in thiscase, I've got, you know,
these, we're gonna have newauthorized products in our
large chain stores, right? Thatcould be the , could be a
reason your wholesaler got a ,one of your brands authorized
in a big, big chain. That's,that's gonna bump up volume.

(10:05):
That makes sense. So those arejust two models that you can
try out , uh, that might behelpful. So , uh, you can get
more detailed . And I, I tendto start very summarized for a
lot of reasons. One, it's just,it's, it's less overwhelming to
me. You know, I love numbers,but it , it's very easy to get
lost in the weeds of this. So Ilike start high level , you

(10:27):
know, looking at that rev perberra , and then get more
detail , you know, look at you, if you're using QuickBooks,
you've got a ton of data. Um,if you've got some sort of
brewery software, you've got aton of data on your sales, you
know, by brand, by sku . Um,and then if you're
self-distributing, you know,you may have that data for the
different accounts. So thesesales plans can start high

(10:48):
level and get very granularkind of depending on, you know,
what you need and what you'relooking for. Um, but that's
just kind of a quick overviewof how you might get started
with your forecast. I thinkit's so important to get it,
you know, on paper , um, notonly so you can kind of plan
out what's coming, but so youcan share this with your team

(11:08):
and say, look, we're, we wannaset some targets and here's how
we've come up with thesetargets. And, you know, then,
then you can kind of deploythose and, and then hold people
accountable to 'em. So thoseare some ways to kind of map
that out. And so, Kristen , Iwanna turn it over to you now.
Like, how do we, like, that'sgreat. Like, okay, we've got

(11:28):
numbers on a page. What are wegonna actually do from a
marketing perspective? 'cause Ithink from my, you know, from
when I've worked withbreweries, it's been like, do
you have a marketing plan? They, they kind of do, but kind of
not really. And it's really,it's not really on paper. It's
not organized. Just a bigadvocate of, man, if you don't
write it down, it, it isn'tgonna happen. Um , so take us

(11:50):
through that. I know you've gota lot of cool stuff to share.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
Yeah, you know, I think that the, you know, one
of the next logical steps withwhat you're looking at on the
sales forecast is saying, okay,this is where we want to be,
right? Maybe some of thosenumbers are like, okay, we need
to get another 5% bump in thiscategory. Uh, the question is
how do we get there? Um, andmarketing is gonna be a huge

(12:14):
portion of that. I mean,there's other stuff involved
too. Like, we have to executeon site , we have to upsell, we
have to, you know, get oursales guys to, to push out to
our wholesalers and, anddistributors and those kind of
folks. But , um, the marketingpiece of it kind of becomes
that roadmap of like, all right, what can we control and how
can we actually do this? Andjust like you've done with,

(12:35):
with your spreadsheets, youkinda have to get , um,
tactical with, with yourmarketing plan. And , uh, what
I'm gonna do is kind of showyou some, you know, a few
different layers here. Likethere's kind of the overarching
annual, here's our yearthoughts. Um, and then let's
break that down and look atlike, what this actually looks

(12:56):
like period to period , monthto month, quarter to quarter ,
and, and what that means foryour team and what things you
should look at. Um, and , andplanning out like how you
actually execute thismarketing. Because you could
have the, the dream, right? Youcould have the best idea and
you could have this side of ,so this is how we're gonna do
it. But if you're not executingmonth to month and actually

(13:16):
doing the in the trenches work,then uh, it's gonna all be for
nothing. Um, and then anotherreally key important part about
all of your marketing is likemeasurability. Um, once you
understand how your campaignsperformed, did they actually
work for you? How well do theywork? Were you profitable? Did
you have return? And, and tohelp with forecasting, you know

(13:37):
, if you do a really good jobwith measuring now, you know,
next year when you start doingsome of the same activations or
similar ones, or even nextperiod, if you're gonna do
something similar, it's like,well, how much do we have to
do? What is our return gonnalook like? What if we spend an
extra a hundred dollars? Whatwould that mean a hundred
dollars in advertising? Whatwould that mean for our bottom
line? And these measurablecomponents help give vision on

(14:00):
that where there wasn't visionbefore. So kind of three layers
there. And , um, yeah, I'lljust kind of jump into it. And
Carrie , feel free to askquestions as I go along. I get
rolling and my momentum goesand, you know , I'll just get
talking. So if you think ofanything , uh, that, that is
ambiguous, then just feel freeto, to yell at me and stop me.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
No , I mean , I like, I like how you said get
tactical with your marketingplan. 'cause I think that's,
that's a , you know , thatresonated with me. I'm like,
yes, absolutely. You know, yougotta , how are we gonna
execute this thing? What areour targets and how are we
gonna get there? So,

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, starting out at kind
of the high level , um, youknow, your , your annual plan
might look something like this.
And I've done this inside of aspreadsheet. I love using
spreadsheets because it makesmath easy. It makes things very
visual. And, and you can mapout month to month to month
really easy. You don't have to,to use a spreadsheet. You could
use Google Docs or put it on,you know, other docs that they

(14:56):
have cool, like canvases andwhiteboards and all that kinda
stuff online that you canfigure out how to use. But for,
for today, let's look at somespreadsheets. So what I've kind
of done here is mapped out kindof a, you know, scenario of an
annual plan for a brewery , uh,an annual marketing plan. And
I'll kind of roll through someof this stuff pretty quickly
'cause I wanna spend a lot oftime in the execution portion.

(15:16):
But, you know, for the sake of,of the example, things you
probably wanna map out in your,your annual plan is , all right
, what is our annual revenuegoal for the whole entire
business or for the taproom?
Um, and let's call that amillion bucks , uh, for the
year. Um, your marketingbudget, you know, I , I usually
shoot for about, you know, 5%of annual, like, of your goal

(15:40):
is , should be about what yourmarketing budget is. Now, that
number could fluctuate. Youknow, if you're in a position
where you're well established ,you don't need a lot of growth
right now, you just need to susuh, sustain, then maybe that
number looks more like two 3%,and you can get away with that.
If you're in a highlycompetitive area, or you need
to have a lot of growth thisyear, then you know , you have

(16:03):
to kick that number up. Youknow, you might have it be more
closer to eight or even 10%depending on how aggressive you
need to be in the market andhow much growth you need. Well
, let's say it's about averageat 5%. That means your
estimated marketing budget forthe whole entire is about 50 K.
Cool, cool numbers, but whatdoes that actually mean month
to month ? So what I wouldrecommend doing is looking at

(16:25):
your entire year and thinkingabout a few key things. One is
like, start at the quarterly,quarterly level and think about
like what your, your primarybest marketing activation is.
And what I mean by best is likewhat activation in that quarter
is gonna drive us the mostrevenue and hopefully the most

(16:46):
profit. And that might looksomething like this. Maybe Q1,
your St Patrick's Day event isa big one for you. And Q2,
maybe that's your anniversaryparty, Q3, October Fest, so on
and so forth throughout therest of the year. Then let's
break it down another level. Solet's look at month to month
what our key activations are in. Let's talk about beer

(17:07):
releases at this point, becausebeer releases are gonna be an
important part of your , uh, ofyour operation and of your
revenue. And you break thisdown per month to month to
month in January, maybe you'vegot a dry January anti dry
January leader day thing you'redoing in May. You've got your
anniversary party, September's,October Fest, so on and so

(17:27):
forth. But you probably have anidea of things, you know, if
you sat down and thought aboutit with your team, maybe you've
got your marketing manager,your exec, your your managers
involved, your GM say , allright , what are we gonna do
throughout the year? What areour key nodes out there? Same
thing with with beer releases.
Um, you probably have a goodidea of like, when we're gonna
release certain beers, how manywe're gonna release. Of course,

(17:49):
some of these are not gonna bethat case. You're gonna be
bringing new stuff all thetime. But if you can map out
like your big ones, like you'reprobably gonna do some kind of
Irish stout or something likethat during St. Patrick's Day,
your anniversary party, maybeyou have a bunch of beers that
you release during that period.
Map it out , um, month to monthand in , in period to period .
Then let's take a look at thefinances for this. Um, looking

(18:13):
at maybe last year's numbersand saying, what do we do in
Q1? I like to start at thequarterly level and say, all
right , last year, Q1, we had acertain number this year, we
want that number to be a littlebit better. Or we need it to be
a little bit better based onyour, your sales forecasting
that you, you did per car'sdocuments. Um, and do that per
quarter, you know, and thenmake sure that sums up to your,

(18:36):
your total revenue goal. Andyou're gonna start to see,
okay, there's gonna be certainquarters that are gonna be more
important to us for revenuethan others. You take your
marketing budget for thatquarter, it's that same 5% ,
uh, metric there. So you cansee I've got just our, our
quarterly times 5%, and that'syour quarterly budget. Then
you're thinking back to your,your month to month activations

(18:59):
here and saying , all right ,where do I need to lay the
emphasis in marketing? It'sprobably gonna be around those
key marketing activation nodes.
So in Q1, in this example, StPatrick's Day is that big node
that month or during thatperiod is , is probably where
we're gonna wait our marketingbudget, the same thing
throughout the, excuse me,throughout the rest of the, the

(19:19):
year in your key activationperiods. Now, some of this
might fluctuate, some like forexample, October Fest. Some
people do this pretty early inSeptember. If your October Fest
is early in September, thenyour marketing project , your
weight for that is probablymore so in August. And you
gotta think about this stuff.
It's all right , when are weactually gonna spend these
dollars? When do we need tospend the most money on these

(19:41):
things? But if you map it outlike this, you kind of start to
see, okay, this is how muchI've gotta spend or what I'm
budgeting month to month tomonth to month for the year.
And you know, inside of, youknow, probably an hour or so ,
um, you're gonna have yourselfa rough plan of what do we need
to activate? What is ourrevenue goal? And what does our

(20:02):
marketing budget look like?
Make sense so far at the annuallevel?

Speaker 2 (20:05):
I like how it lines everything up too. 'cause I
think there's, you get thatquestion a lot, like, well, how
much should I spend onmarketing? And yeah, it's easy
enough to say, I've heard thesame, you know , three to 5%,
whatever, and it's gonna vary.
But okay, what now , you know,how, where, when I like how
this kind of organizes, youknow, it starts with, it's
really a strategic document aswell as tactical. 'cause it's

(20:26):
like, well , where are wefocusing and why? So St .
Patrick's Day anniversaryparty, octoberfest, you know,
and then, and then your Q4activations and really lining
up the dollar so that three to5% isn't just sort of this
number we pull out of the sky.
It's now very specificallydeployed to those specific
action items that you're gonnado, gonna do within each

(20:47):
quarter, within each month. Um, and it's even tied into
brands . So I like that too.
It's, it's like, okay, yeah,we're promoting St . Patrick's
Day, but there's a specific,you know, brand or beer that
is, is underpinning this aswell. So it's the Irish stout
or the winter warmer or whathave you. So it's, it's just
got a nice sort of synergy toit, like it ,

Speaker 3 (21:08):
Right, you know, and your budget may fluctuate based
on that beer. Like if you knowthat you have an October vest
beer that dominates and youreally wanna sell the crap
outta that beer this year, thenyou're probably gonna wanna
wait budget for that in thatperiod. Um, you know, so it's
not necessarily programmingbased , although , although I

(21:30):
think marketing activationprogramming, I'm using the ,
the word interchangeably there,you know, that's a huge ,
that's an important piece,especially for the taproom. But
your beer releases, especiallydepending on what you've done
this year , um, or in previousyears, we say, look, we , we
need emphasis on thoseparticular releases. You could,
you could even get granularwith this and say, all right ,
we're gonna release a specialfood item that we do every

(21:52):
year. We do a, a spec . I havea client that does a , a corn
beef and cabbage thing, andthey sell the crap out of that.
They do a Thanksgiving to goTurkey thing, and they sell
that. So it's like, that's akey moment for them. You've
gotta think about that whenyou're, you're kind of mapping
out your budget, and like yousaid, it does fluctuate, and
you're like, okay, this isstarting to make sense where ,
where budget's gonna beallocated. But then there is

(22:14):
another step further of like,okay, now let's actually look
at where these dollars need tobe spent and what this looks
like in the, in the trenchesmonth to month . And that's
where kind of a, a executionstrategy comes into play. And
what I kind , the way I wouldkind of envision this is , um,
and the way we do it is we'remeeting every single month talk

(22:35):
to talk about the next month orthe next couple of months, or
maybe even the next quarter ofmarketing activations and
activities that are going on.
So you could imagine you doyour annual plan and then it's
like, all right , every monthI'm gonna meet with my
marketing team or my managementteam to talk about marketing,
and we've gotta map out certainstuff to figure out what this

(22:56):
actually looks like in reallife. Um, 'cause it's one thing
to have it on the spreadsheet,but like, where does this
actually go when we're, we'restarted? So the , so the
example I have up on the screenright now is like , uh, again,
kind of a , a imaginary exampleof an August to September , um,
execution plan or a marketingplan. For those couple of

(23:17):
months, we've taken our totalmarketing budget for those two
periods based on our annualplan. So we've come back here
and said, all right, you know,for August and September, we're
anticipating to spend about$11,000 in our marketing
budget. Now I also know as abusiness person, putting myself
in, in that shoes, that I'vegot some management costs that
are part of this. Yeah , I'vegot a marketing team I've

(23:38):
hired, I got an agency, I'vegot someone on my staff that is
doing this stuff for me.
They're coming in and shootingcontent, et cetera , et cetera.
There's, there's gonna be some,some management costs from a
marketing level there. Uh , I'mcalling that 5,000 bucks. Maybe
you've got an agency for 1500bucks, 2000 bucks a month,
you've got staff, et ceterathat are part of that that
leaves over about 6,000 bucksin advertising and , and

(24:01):
promotional costs or, or budgetfor, for those costs. Okay,
cool. I've got some numbers inmy mind about what we need to
do and , and what we canallocate to our marketing
strategy here. What is thatmarketing strategy? Well, our
key activations here, numberone is octoberfest event. What
I would recommend that you,here's things that I would
recommend you think about whenyou're mapping out your

(24:22):
execution. First, make somenotes. What is this event even
about? You know, what , whatare the dates? What are, are we
selling tickets for this event?
Where are those tickets beingsold? What's included with this
event? Are we doing a glass? Isthere tastings? Is there food?
Are there other vendors? Isthere music? What's kind of the
highlights of this thing? Uh,what are the notes on it? Then

(24:45):
think about what those , whatall that stuff that you're
adding into there. What is thebenefit to the customer? I
think this is a reallyimportant thing to have a
discussion about. It's like,okay, so what, what is the
customer gonna get value fromhere? And in this case, maybe
it's, you know, they're gonnaget that cool limited edition
glass. There's gonna be beerfor them to drink and , and all
of the benefits associated withthat beer. There's live music,

(25:08):
there's gonna be special food.
These are the value points. Thereason this question exists is
because this is what iteventually fuels the copy, the
imagery for your eventual , uh,marketing assets. Then you
wanna ask questions like, what,what are our tactics? Are we
gonna activate email? SMS? Arewe gonna have an event page? Is

(25:28):
that where the tickets aregonna be sold? Are we using
meta ads? Are we using socialmedia? How are we gonna use
that stuff? Let's talk aboutwhat those channels are and
what those tactics are gonna befor actually executing this ,
uh, this promotion. Anotherreally key , uh, component
here, and this is gonnaeventually lead into the next

(25:48):
section here is , is aboutmeasurement and what this
really means for your, yourplanning. But you gotta talk
about how we're gonna measuresuccess with this. You know, is
it gonna be ticket sales? Is itgonna be opt-ins on a , a
coupon? Is it gonna bepre-orders on my website? Is
there onsite revenue? Probably, you know , there's
gonna be onsite revenue, thesethings, but like, how are we

(26:09):
gonna track that stuff? Um, isthere a coupon code that I'm
punching in my POS system? CanI pull a report on that coupon
code later on so I can see howmuch revenue I drove from the
coupon that I promoted withwhatever promotion for, for
this OCTOBERFEST event? Youknow , we talked about ticket
sales. That is an importantcomponent of this. There's

(26:31):
gonna be e-commerce , uh,transactions. And then what's
nice about doing events is thatit's really easy to pull a
report on those event days andthose time periods through your
POS system . So you can say,all right , right , you know,
we , we did the event all dayfor Octoberfest on September
15th, or, or maybe all two dayson September 15th and September
16th. I can pull a report andsay, this is how much revenue

(26:52):
we drove during that period.
And then that's gonna behelpful for you later on when
you're measuring this. But ifit's a , an event that has a
certain hours associated withit, you gotta pull a report on
that. Again, I kind ofmentioned the coupon code
thing. Can you pull thesereports outta your , how, the
real question is how are wegonna measure success on this?
And , uh, what are thosemeasurable actions for this
campaign? Then let's talk aboutwhat assets we need. This is a

(27:16):
super important one. Are wegonna use a video? Do we have
pictures from last year? Wherethe heck are those pictures?
Are they in Google Drive? Arethey on someone's phone? Do we
need a special event logocreated for this event? Event
pages, flyers, taproom , uh,posters and e flyer TV screen
graphics. Those are all thingsyou want to talk about so that

(27:40):
you know what needs to be done.
And, you know, another, youknow, drill down with this is
like, how long is it gonna takeus to make that stuff, you
know, for us and our agency.
Like, we can turn stuff aroundand, you know, sometimes, you
know, as , as quick as, asthree to five days, but usually
we say, look, we need, youknow, probably about two weeks
to really map everything out.
That's just us though. Whatdoes your team need in order to

(28:01):
create the poster and , uh, andthe flyers and the event pages
and all that stuff, becausethat impacts your promotional
timeline, right? So this is,you , you , I'm getting in the
weeds here a little bit, but Ihopefully you're starting to
see, okay, that we gotta getahead on this, especially if
it's a big promotion.
Especially if we need a lot ofassets. We probably need to
start planning this thing out,you know, 30 days even before

(28:23):
we go live with our assets. Butthat's why you ask those
questions about what do weneed, what assets we need, and
when do we need them? Beyondthat, it's, it's who's gonna do
what, who's responsible forsourcing the assets? Who's
gonna take the photos? What isthe marketing agency gonna do?
Or what is my marketing persongonna do? Who's gonna manage
email? Um, so on and so forth.

(28:45):
'cause then that's gonna foldinto you actually assigning
these tasks, right? Okay, go dothis. This is when we need it
by. That's that person'sresponsibility to go knock that
stuff out. Um, you can alsotake a look at your, your sales
goal , uh, on, on this and say,all right , you know , um, uh,
we've got a goal of hitting25,000 this year and our ad

(29:06):
budget is about 2,500 for this, um, for this event in
particular, and this is whereyou kind of have to think about
those weights again and thinkabout your whole entire period.
If we're talking August throughSeptember, I've got a $6,000 ad
budget or promotional budget,I'm probably gonna have
multiple things running duringthis period. Like, for example,
in my annual plan in August,I've got a summer sendoff party

(29:29):
that I'm doing too. So I can'tblow all my budget on
Octoberfest gonna say, well, Ineed to spend some money on the
sendoff party as well. And thenwhat I didn't map out in this,
in the rest of this executionplan is like, you've probably
probably got other stuff goingon too. You've got beer
releases, maybe you've gotlittle smaller events. You've
got bingo night, trivia nightthat you wanna give some juice
behind. So you kind of wannamap all that stuff out and then

(29:51):
go, okay, where is my weightallocation on my budget gonna
be? And just, you know , movethe chips around , um, based
on, on what gains the mostimportance. And again, most
importance means where gonna Imake my most money? ,
you know, can I , uh, you know,I should spend where, where the
return is gonna be thestrongest for this stuff. But

(30:14):
that is kind of the thinkingwhen it comes to your, your
month to month , year period toperiod , uh, execution stuff.
I'll pause there, make sureCarrie is, is following along.
I think if he's followingalong, you guys are following
along. So, making sense so far,Carrie ?

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah, I mean, I like how it goes kind of from high
level to more granular. Andthen the thing that kind of
jumped at me, you know, I don'tknow about the most, but I , I
really like it, is that you,you're marrying up the specific
sales goal for a specificpromotion to the specific ad
budget. I'm not sure we alwaysdo that, right? So again, we'll

(30:49):
say, well spend about 5% onmarketing, but then how exactly
are you gonna deploy that? AndI like how this is very
specific to each event. Like,who's gonna do it? What are
they gonna do? What are thebenefits? How are you gonna
measure it? It just kind ofgives you all the good stuff
all at once. And furthermore,so you can kind of measure,
like you used the word, how doyou measure success? Well ,

(31:09):
this is kind of how you do it.
You know, you , you organizeit, you deploy it. Setting a
specific sales goal. I, I justdon't see that a lot. I love, I
love how that's happening.
'cause this really comes backto the whole point of us kind
of doing this, is, you know,you create a sales plan, you
create a marketing plan, andmaybe sometimes they , the two
just don't jive, you know, butthis is totally sinking them

(31:31):
up. Here's your sales goal'cause you had a sales plan,
and then here's your ad budget.
'cause you know, we've got amarketing spend, but let's make
them very specific to oneanother. So you've got all the
pieces, and then, thenultimately you can measure your
ROI and you know, maybe you hitthe sales goal, maybe you come
short, you know, now you cankind of get a sense from,
'cause you've, you've grabbedall the information like what

(31:54):
were the results of this thing?
So you can, you know,understand and learn from that.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
You know, it's, it's super important and, and very
helpful in like, it's helpfulbecause now you have
visibility. And so many timeswe're shooting from the hip and
it's like, oh yeah, we gottapromote this thing coming up.
But the, it's always a questionof like, how much do we promote
it? And , and how much dollarsdo we dedicate to this? How

(32:19):
much time do we dedicate tothis? Uh , I think it's real
easy to get excited about acertain promotion or something
cool going on in the tap room.
Your tapper manager, oh, cool,we get to decorate. We could do
all this kind of stuff. Youknow, I'm gonna post a bunch of
content about this particularthing. But as a business
person, you know, time ismoney. Money is money as well.
You have to look at this andsay, okay, what needs the most

(32:42):
attention? And that usually iswhat is going to drive the most
revenue for you. And if youlook at your numbers from
previous years, octoberfest isan easy one because, you know,
a lot of people do this OctoberFest thing every year. You
could look at this and say ,what did we do last year? Um,
cool, are we gonna do more thanthat? We want to, okay, let's,
let's allocate budget in timeaccordingly to that activity.

(33:06):
And then if you look at that incomparison to everything else
you have going on in thatperiod , uh, maybe that quarter
and say, look, team Octoberfestis our focus. We gotta make
that about a lot of what we do.
The other stuff is importanttoo, but like, you know, split
out your time and your moneyaccordingly based on what's
gonna mean the most for yourbusiness. Um, and uh, I think

(33:27):
that's a helpful way to look atit. I mean, we, that's a super
helpful thing for us. I saying, what was those days last
year? Oh , okay, you know , youdid about 5K that day. All
right , you know, we should, weshouldn't spend too much then
on that event this year. Um, ascompared to something where
you're gonna have a 10 or a$15,000 day. So that's helpful
for us as marketers too, is tounderstand really what our
benchmark is , um, to , uh, toallocate resources towards. Uh,

(33:53):
yeah,

Speaker 2 (33:55):
I'm glad think that that shooting from the hip
mentality seems to happen morethan we'd probably like. And
you know, sometimes it's justinevitable 'cause business
moves so fast, but it , it'snot , uh, if we don't plan it
out, you know , that's notreally the pattern that we
want, right? We want to be,again, as , as you had said
earlier, get tactical with yourmarketing plan. And, and I

(34:17):
think this really does it. Andyou're right. 'cause a lot of
times we'll be like, you know,what is the relationship
between expected sales and whatwe're gonna spend? Well, we
need to do it. You know, thisis, we always do it. It's our
anniversary. Okay, we need todo it, but are we gonna make
money on it? You know? So beingvery purposeful , uh, can
really kind of get you whereyou want. 'cause that's the
whole goal is like, what are weplanning for sales? But really

(34:37):
what are we planning for? Kindof that bottom line. Are we
making money on this stuff?

Speaker 3 (34:42):
100% . And even if you, you know , haven't you ,
let's say you're, this is a newbrand new event for you, or a
brand new way of, well , Ishouldn't say way is the point
I'm gonna make is if it's anevent you've never done before,
you didn't do it last year, you, there's probably something
else you've done similar thatyou could use as a benchmark.
So, you know, octoberfest maybeis an extraneous example, but

(35:06):
not that much. If you reallystart thinking about it. It's
an event, it's an all day eventon a certain day or a certain
weekend. When's the last timeyou did something like that?
What were your numbers on thatday? And although it's not
gonna be exactly right, it'sdifferent times of year and the
seasons fluctuate with craftbeer . So you can't, you have
to take it with a big grain ofsalt. But you could look back

(35:26):
and say, well, what did we do?
How much did we spend? How muchdid we bring in? Should we
expect something similar inthis case? And how can we tweak
that according to what this newevent or this new promotion is?
And past performance is anexcellent way to, to use , uh,
is an excellent resource forbenchmarking what you're trying
to do right now. Um, so yeah,excellent stuff. Um, let's dive

(35:50):
one more level deeper , uh, andactually talk about
quantifiable, measurablemarketing metrics and how, how
you should measure those, whatmetrics you should look at, and
then how you can actually lookat that stuff to do things like
projections for future years orsimilar type promotions. So
what I've pulled up is, is afew examples of campaigns that

(36:13):
we've run. I've anonymized thedata here as much as I can, but
this is pretty close to whatthese numbers actually were for
these type of events. And I'llrun through them to kind of
give you some, some insight andon what this actually means in
, in the, in the metrics land.
So the first example to look atis , is a large event. This is
a , uh, October Fest esque typeof event. What we did with this

(36:36):
event is we sold tickets forpre-sale. We used like an
Eventbrite system. We soldtickets online for like a month
or two ahead of time. And , uh,pushed ads to that. We pushed
emails to that. We did websitepage. All that SMS app pushes
everything for it to try topush these, these pre-sale ,

(36:57):
uh, tickets. In total, we didabout 15,400 in pre ticket
revenue. The number of ticketswe sold was 280. Um, with this
campaign, we spent about alittle over $1,200 in ad spend
. Cool. Those are all thingsthat are pretty easy to
measure, especially if you havean e-commerce system there. Now

(37:19):
let's talk about what, whatthis actually like some like ,
uh, performance metrics here.
The first one I'm gonna talkabout is a return on ad spend
or ROAS roas, as US marketerscall it. What this number is,
is a relationship between thedollars you spent and the money
you brought in. You take the,the revenue divided by your ad

(37:40):
dollars, and that's gonna giveyou a ratio number. In this
case, it's 12.41. What thattells us in layman's terms is
that for every dollar we spenton ads, we brought 12 back.
That's an excellent ROAS, anexcellent roas . Um, for this
campaign, you want that numberto be more than a one. If it's

(38:02):
an exact one, that means forevery dollar you spent , you
got one back. This isn't aprofitability number. So you
definitely want the RO ads tobe more than one because you,
you have like other costsassociated with this thing.
You've got fixed costs , you'vegot , uh, uh, operational
costs, you've got marketingcosts , uh, as well with this.

(38:23):
So keep in mind that ROAS is anadvertising return. Still, it's
an excellent metric for seeinglike how well that our ads
perform. Ideally, you probablywon't . I mean , it depends on
your promotion, but like, youdefinitely want that to be more
than a one at least, but youprobably want that to be more
like a three, a four, a five toone ROI . That's kind of how
you read it, is a , you takethis number and then you say to

(38:45):
one . Um, so in thiscase it was about a 12 to one
ROAS. Another important metricis average value. You know ,
this is basically taking thetotal tickets you sold divided
by the number , uh, excuse me,the total revenue divided by
the total tickets. And thattells us that we , that, you
know, our average ticket valueis about 55 bucks. In this

(39:06):
case, that's valuable,especially for forecasting,
which I'll get to in a second.
So pin that for, for now.
Another important metric forforecasting and for just
general performance, whenyou're kind of analyzing this
event versus your last eventversus whatever other promotion
is CPA or cost per acquisition,this number tells us how much

(39:27):
it costs to bring in that sale.
You take your , uh, ad spend,you divide your total ad spend
divided by your tickets sold,and that gives you the cost per
acquisition, which in this caseis about four and a half bucks.
So that tells us, you know, it, it costs us about four and a
half bucks to bring in thatticket sale. Now, before I get

(39:47):
into projections and how to usethese for, for future analysis,
let's take a quick trip to likewhat ROI looks like and why
that's different. So in thiscase, we have to factor in
onsite revenue for this event.
So we're gonna take ticketsales and our onsite revenue.
And that number in this case isabout 29,000 bucks for our

(40:09):
costs . That includeseverything. So marketing staff
fixed everything in, in thiscase, that event costed this
account about $22,000. So the ,you do a division of those two,
you take your total rev dividedby your total cost, and now you
get a return on investmentnumber, an ROI number. Now that

(40:30):
number, if that's a 12 to oneROI , you blew it out of the
park better than anybody elseever, ever. You want this
number to definitely be morethan a one, but it's probably
gonna be closer to that one, touh, three to one ROI . And this
is more of a profitabilitynumber , um, because you're
factoring all rev divided byall costs. Um, and in this case

(40:53):
it was a 1.32 to one. So this,this, this overall campaign,
including all costs was aprofitable , uh, activation. So
you've seen the differencethere between ROAS and ROI .
Yes ,

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yes. Yeah, I like that. And , and because it,
because it does go back to whatwe were talking about before.
It's like a lot of themarketing we can directly tie
to, or our goal will be to tieto the revenue growth, gotta
have that. However, all ofthose we're really, what we're
really looking at isprofitability. And the ROI does
that nicely and I like to you ,so the total cost, including
marketing of the 22 grand inthis example, you know, I'm

(41:26):
guessing people can, you know,you're gonna have to draw some
estimates and some averages,but you know, you know what
your rent is, you know whatyour utilities are, you know
what you're paying your staff,et cetera, et cetera. So you
can, you can kind of get yourhands around that and say,
well, on average, this is whatit's gonna cost. And then you
can kind of bake that in. Soit'd be pretty darn close to
what, what the actual numbersare. Yep .

Speaker 3 (41:49):
And you're probably, you know, for this event, they
had music there, they had othervendors and stuff. It's like,
are we spending money on that?
We gotta factor that in. Um, soit , it's also a , uh, uh, you
know , uh, it's worthmentioning that This number is
good to share with yourmarketing team, whoever that

(42:10):
is, and say, look, you know,these are our costs associated.
We need this event to be thisbig in order to cover all these
costs, including yours. Um,it's not just about roas. A lot
of marketing folks are like,oh, ROAS is, is what we did. We
had a four to one return on adspend. And yeah, that's, that's
good. We want have a profitableroas, but it , it , it's not

(42:32):
helping you grow if you're notprofitable. So even if we had
this 12 to one roas, if theyended up having too much costs
here and the , and their ROI orthey didn't drive enough
revenue collectively to justifythose costs, and the ROI was
less than a one, it was like a0.8 or something like that.
Something has to be changed. Wehave to optimize somewhere. Can

(42:53):
we move , be more efficientwith our advertising and reduce
our ad spend? Am I paying toomuch for marketing management?
Or maybe there's other businessthings that need to happen
there too. Are we, are weoverstaffed? Did we, you know,
is our beer costs too high? Andsome of that stuff doesn't
matter to your marketingagency, but still, like for us,
you know, me in particular, I'mlike, look, I I want you to be
winning. So key me in on theROI number so I know are , are

(43:17):
we doing stuff that works?
Because what I can also do as amarketing person to say, okay,
this type of event, it's soexpensive that the, the juice
just isn't worth the squeeze.
So let's rethink how we promotethat, what kind of events we do
in the future, and , uh, so onand so forth. And that's what
a, a good, good , uh, marketingpartner will do for you. But

(43:38):
anyways, okay, so let's talkabout projections here. For
something like this, let's sayyou're looking at last year's
number. You did a good job, youhave these numbers, and you're
like, okay, we wanna do more in2025 for October Fest. Let's
say our new goal here, insteadof doing, we did 15,000 this
year in pre-sale ticketrevenue. Let's say next year I

(43:59):
wanna do $18,000 in pre-saleticket. I I'm gonna increase by
, excuse me, by about 2000,3000 bucks. Okay, cool. What do
we need to do to get there?
Well, let's take a look at ouraverage value. Let's assume
that's probably the same, isthat if we are still getting
about $55 per ticket, how manytickets do we need to sell?
Well, that's a , a simpledivision of our total revenue

(44:20):
divided by our average value.
In order for us to hit that, wehave to sell 327 tickets. Okay?
What's our cost per acquisitionon that? Well, let's assume
that's probably gonna be aboutthe same at $4.43 per
acquisition. We know we need tosell 327 tickets. It's gonna
cost us about $4, four and ahalf dollars per ticket to

(44:43):
bring it in. That means ourmarketing spend needs to be
about 14,049. So in this case,about 1450 in order to pull
that off compared to our adspend for this year at about
1241. So we gotta spend aboutanother 200 bucks in order to
sell that many more tickets.
Now, are these numbers exactlyhow it's gonna pan out this
year? Not necessarily. Yourcost per acquisition may go up

(45:05):
or down. Your average ticketvalue may change. There could
be all sorts of things thatimpact these numbers. But if
you're looking at marketingbudgets for next year and
saying , well, you know, wereally want to have a better
octoberfest or whatever eventthis is, how much do we need to
spend? Well, let's not justpull a number out of the hat.
Let's take a look at our pastperformance. Let's look at cost

(45:25):
per acquisition. Let's look atour average value and let's
make a , a reasonableestimation. So we're not just
saying , yeah , throw another500 bucks at it and see what
happens. It's like , oh , it's, it's actually c . So, you
know, that's how you would usethese numbers to, to form some
kind of projection, right? Yep. I like that. Um, now, you
know , a couple more examplesfor you on this front is, well

(45:48):
, what about other stuffbesides an event? Um, here's
some of that for you. So here'san example of a a four pack
presale that we did. Basicallywhat was going on is, is , uh,
this brewery was selling , um,like a specialty four pack . We
put it up on their website. Wehave a , in fact, I'll show
this to you. So we, we havethis landing page for this

(46:09):
imperial stout. We , uh, have apackage where you pre-buy it.
So you buy it online and thenyou come pick it up in the
store when it's ready. So thisbeer is not even actually on
the shelves yet. We'repre-selling 'cause we know this
is gonna be kind of a specialtything. And we've thrown in a
little extra value here sayingyou'll get a free four ounce
pour onsite when you pick thisup. The beauty about this is

(46:30):
that it's an e-commerce flow.
So, you know, and why that'sbeautiful is that we have
really good tracking. When welook at things like Google
Analytics or uh , uh, megapixeldata, we can track that data
all the way back through toads. Um, so in this case, let
me actually flip back over tothe spreadsheet here. When we

(46:52):
ran this promotion, we did ads,we did email, we had some texts
, that kind of stuff. We soldabout $1,200 in pre-sales for
this four pack . Total ordersis about 51 orders. Now, one
anecdote here is that becausewe tracked really well with
ads, we knew how much of thatrevenue was associated with
ads. So about $500 of it camedirectly from ads, the other

(47:16):
revenue came from otherchannels, right? So now keep
that in mind because we'regonna look at a ROAS
specifically to, to ad spendhere. So also because we did a
good job with e-commercetracking, we know, know we sold
about 19 of those packages viathe ads. Our total ad spend 90
bucks. That makes our ROAS ourroas . Keep in mind we're

(47:38):
dividing ad revenue, revenuefrom ads divided by , uh, ad
costs . So that's 500, about500 divided by 90 is about five
to one. So five to one returnon ad spend on revenue
generated from directly fromads. Our average value, it's
about 24 bucks. 'cause we took500 divided by 19, and our cost

(48:01):
per acquisition was about $5.
We took , uh, our ad costs ,um, divided by our , uh, number
of orders. It cost us aboutfive bucks. So overall, this
campaign actually was reallygood. The pre-sales were great.
We knew that we covered , uh,and we had more revenue driven
from email and SMS. The nexttime we do this campaign, let's

(48:23):
say we actually wanna drive$800 from, from , uh, ads.
Okay? There's our $800projection. Our average value
is gonna be about the same 24bucks. That means we've gotta
sell 33 of these orders fromads in order to hit that $800
number. If our cost peracquisition stays about the
same, that means next time wegotta spend about 167 instead

(48:44):
of 90. And this is a greatexample of like something that
isn't necessarily tied to anevent. It's like, okay, we did
this four pack presale, maybein two months we do another
four pack presale, or we do itagain next month and we do
wanna sell more. So how muchmore money do we need to spend
next month on this? This is howyou put those things together
and you could apply the samekind of tracking formula to ,

(49:08):
uh, really many different kindsof promotions. Um, whether
you're doing e-commerce eventtickets, it doesn't necessarily
have to be tied to a revenuecomponent. The revenue
component helps withunderstanding return on ad
spend because we can see howmuch money was driven in from
ads or how much money. It'svery clear to see this in an
e-commerce kind of analytics ,uh, system. But, you know,

(49:31):
let's say you're doing , uh, acoupon where , uh, you're
offering a coupon download onyour website. We did this for
like a buy one, get one pints ,um, for a client. Uh, the way
that works differently isinstead of that revenue being
tied to the e-commercetransaction online, you pull

(49:51):
that number , um, you have topull a report from your POS
based on that coupon code. Sosomebody comes in, they say,
oh, I got this, this email thatsays I gotta buy one, get one.
That should be a punch code inyour POS . Later on after the
promotion's done, you pull areport and say, okay, how much
revenue do we generate onorders that included that
coupon? Well, what , it's about800 bucks from those orders.

(50:15):
Then you run through the sameprocess. How many coupons have
we redeemed? How much did wespend? What's our ROAS on that?
What's our average value? Howmuch did it cost us to bring in
every single one of those , uh,coupon , um, redemptions. Um,
another metric might you mightlook at here is, you know,
total coupons downloaded versushow many were redeemed. Uh,

(50:36):
that's a nice number for you, anice percentage number. And
what I'm doing there is saying,okay, we, we actually drove 120
coupon downloads, but only 25of them actually came in and
redeemed. That's a 21%redemption rate. So next time
we do a promotion like this,okay, should we anticipate
about a 21% redemption rate?

(50:56):
Okay, let's work the numbers.
How much revenue do we wannabring in? How many coupon
downloads do we need? What'sour redemption rate need to be?
Um, so on and so forth. Uh, but, uh, you know , like I said,
it doesn't have to be tied to arevenue , uh, item
specifically. Um, but you dowant eventually pull those
numbers in somehow, right?

(51:16):
Whether it's redemptions onsite through the p os or , uh,
maybe it's event bookings. Youknow , if you're using an ad to
drive, you know , uh, peopleinquiring about private events.
Okay, let's look at how manyprivate events we booked over
the course of a month. What wasthe revenue on those? Where did
those come from? Did they comefrom ads? The ones that came
from ads? Uh, uh, how muchrevenue was there? Let's look

(51:40):
at ad costs , cost peracquisition , return on ad
spend. ROI could be a factorthere, so on and so forth. So
hopefully these examples arekind of putting the nuts and
bolts in place , um, for you.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
I like , yeah, I like the models for 'em. 'cause
they're straightforward. Andhonestly, the more you went
through 'em, the more itstarted to make sense to me in
the , in the acronyms can kindof stick for people. So I think
there's some benefit to that.
But it's also , um, you know,so once you've developed the
model, so you get sort of artand science to it, right? So
this is the science, likehere's, here are the actual,
here's the actual data , uh,here's what it's telling you.

(52:14):
Here's how the leverages youcan pull. But then there's the
creative side or that art sidewhere it's like, because I
guess I didn't really thinkabout like this . Like I
usually focus so much onevents, large event because
it's like, that's usually wherewe're putting our emphasis. But
no, I mean, you've got allthese other things you're
selling, you know, why not do a, a four pack ? I mean, I love
, number one, I love the lookat that beer. I was getting

(52:35):
thirsty just looking at that .
Um, and it's did a great job

Speaker 3 (52:38):
With the asset.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 (52:39):
It's , it's beautiful. And, you know, tell
people about this stuff andthen do it through e-commerce
so you can track it. But I likepromoting different things that
you're offering. So the coupon,the four pack , I mean, you
could, you could go as far asyou want with this, I would
imagine. And then you can, andI'm gonna say this and you can
tell me what you think aboutit, but, you know, kind of
planning this stuff out. Imean, it's already kind of on

(53:00):
your overview on your, your 12month deal, but you can sort of
pre-plan a lot of this stuff.
Um, 'cause it , it again takesaway that shooting from the hip
or sort of flying by the seatof your pants. Like, what are
we gonna do mon next month? Ah, well, you know, I don't know
, we can, so I mean , you'vealready kind of thought about
it and you can stage some ofthese things and then rotate

(53:22):
in. 'cause people wanna bepresented with different
options, right? I don't wannabe constantly barrage with the
same, but if you give me , oh,it's a four pack this month, or
it's a coupon that month, it'san event the next, that's kind
of cool. Sort of varies it upand, you know, keeps it
interesting and hopefullyultimately drives, drives that
revenue

Speaker 3 (53:40):
And it helps you understand what works. You know
, um, how many times have youlaunched a, a discount? You say
, oh yeah, we're gonna do buyone, get one pints, or we're
gonna do dollar off orwhatever. And you're like, we
put it out there and did thatwork? Did it not work?
? You know, I don't know. Um,at the end of the day, we , we
think we're supposed to do thisstuff, but what actually worked

(54:02):
, and it just takes thediscipline of saying, okay,
we're gonna do this. How are wegonna track that? Let's make
sure the POS system has thetrackability piece of it. If
we're gonna promote this on thewebsite, let's make sure we've
got tracking on the commerceside and we're looking at that
through our ad channels. We'relooking at that through Google
Analytics. And then we look at,you know, those revenue numbers

(54:24):
there and compare that to allthe marketing effort we put
into it versus what we got inreturn. And you'll find out
that certain stuff just doesn'thit. Um, and then you can
dissect it from there. That's,that's what's so much fun about
like, marketing for me as likethe data nerd guys. I'm like,
okay, great. The coupon thingdidn't work this time. Well,
why didn't it work? Was it partof , uh, the marketing

(54:46):
strategy? Did we not put thisin front of the right people?
Did we not launch it in time?
Or was it the website? Did wenot communicate value strong
enough or was it the offer inand of itself? Did people just
not care about this particularoffer? The data though, allows
us to see that stuff , um, muchmore clearly. And , uh, the
more data you have, the betteryou get at these things. And ,

(55:08):
um, yeah , I was just on a ,uh, on a Brewers Association
presentation yesterday, twodays ago, they were doing their
2025 , um, predictions. And themetaphor that they use , I
thought it was brilliant, isthat the brewing industry
previously was the , uh, fieldof dreams industry where if you
build it, they will come. Youknow, if you just have a

(55:28):
brewery, people will comeknocking on your door. And it's
not that anymore. It's movedinto the money ball . Uh, a
phase of the industry, which ismuch more tactical. How do we
do more with less? How do wereally make these things work?
And like you, you think aboutMoneyball and, and analytics
and all that. Like, this iswhat that looks like is let's
dive into it. Let's gettactical, let's get granular

(55:50):
and see what's working andwhat's not, and figure out
where we can, we can actually ,uh, drive margin for our
business. And, and yeah, I justlove that metaphor.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Yeah, that's that's good. That's a good way of
relating it. So, you know,you've done a really nice job
of presenting , um, a verytactical marketing plan and ,
and in , in many wayssimplifying it for us, right?
But it's not simple. So maybetell people a little bit about
how you work with your clients.
You know, what does that looklike? So if somebody's

(56:20):
interested and reach out andsay , all right , Chris, I get
it. Uh, very cool, but howexactly might we work together?
What does that look like?

Speaker 3 (56:29):
Yeah. You know, so , um, we wanna look at things ,
uh, you know, as holisticallyas possible here and, and
analyze what, you know, toolsand, and , uh, tactics you're
using for your marketingstrategy. What's gonna work
best for you? So is thatadvertising? Is it email? Is it
SMS? Do you have an app thatyou're using? What do the app

(56:49):
pushes look like in there? Um,you know, we, I guess there's
kind of like multiple layers toour, our marketing service. On
one hand we're a planningsupport team. So , uh, we'll
help you map out what thatmonth to month plan looks like.
We'll help you map out thatquarterly and annual plan and
talk about things like whatpromotions should you run?

(57:10):
Here's what we know , uh, isworking out there and what
we've seen work. Here's whatwe've kind of seen not work.
Here's ideas for you. Let's gothrough that brainstorming
process and map this wholething out. Um, then we're one
part execution partner here. Doyou need help getting the
emails out, designing thecollateral for those, writing
the copy for those? Um, do youneed help running the ads for

(57:30):
that stuff? How do you even runthese ad campaigns? How do you
set up target audiences and,and campaigns that you're not
just dumping money into meta'spockets and Zuckerberg's
pockets as little as you can,right? You're not wasting , uh,
you're always gonna have alittle bit there and
Zuckerberg's gonna continue toget richer, but, you know, how
do you really leverage theseplatforms to drive performance?
How do you set up theconversions and the tracking

(57:50):
for these types of campaigns?
'cause this is all data nerdstuff, you know? And if you're
good at it and it's all stuffyou could figure out if you had
plenty of time and infiniteresources, you could do it, but
chances are you don't. So , uh,that's what we're here for, is
to help you manage and, andnavigate these things, and then
run those campaigns and, andtalk to you about what worked,
what didn't work, here's whatthe margins look like, are we

(58:11):
winning? And , uh, we keeptrying to do that stuff. So the
simple version of that is we'rea marketing agency for, for,
that specializes in craft beer,but it's really all of those
nuts and bolts and themanagement of all the details
that , um, we bring to thetable for you , um,

Speaker 2 (58:26):
Critical , critical stuff. So why don't you , um,
and we'll share this in thenotes and whatnot , but give
people your email contactinformation, how they can get
in touch.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
Yeah, sure. So website's easy,
[e-mail] , um,like the hop , um, and , uh, my
email is [e-mail].
Uh , we got lots of resourceson site. Um, you can find , uh,
me, you find , check out ourblog. We've got a podcast.
Carrie's been on it multipletimes. There's great stuff

(58:56):
there. Um, you can find me onLinkedIn and, and on the
socials and all that stuff too.
And I'm always down to chat. Sohit me up and , uh, we'll set
up some time and, and answerquestions. I'm a big fan of
that. It's like, let's, let'sjust talk. I'm not gonna, you
know, charge you a consultingfee to, to jump on my calendar.
It doesn't work like that. SoI'd rather talk to you and give
you a fair shake about what youneed and what what can work and

(59:18):
, um, take it that way. So ,uh, hit me up, dudes.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
That's awesome.
Chris, thanks so much for thetime.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
Yeah, of course, man. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Thank you for listening to the Craft Brewery
Financial Training podcast,where we combine beer and
numbers so that you can improvefinancial results in your
brewery. For more resources,tools, guides and online
courses, visit k craft breweryfinancial training.com. And
don't forget to sign up for theworld famous K Craft Brewery
financial training newsletter.

(59:47):
Until next time, get out thereand improve financial results
in your brewery today.