Brewery Promotion Ideas That Earn Press, Festival Listings and Local Links

Many breweries promote their products within the brew house: maybe a new brews list on a chalkboard, trivia night, a social media post about a can drop. That essentially goes to people who already know that you’re there. You’re not yet those feeders who are reading the beer magazines, looking over festival line-ups, and finding what’s happening this weekend in your town!

Every time you or one of these locations references your brewery and shares a link to your website, the following happens: If you have a curious reader, you have direct access to your hours, beer list, and events. Plus, search engines receive a second indication that your website is a legitimate, relevant business. Let’s get back to how you can get those mentions, and which ones actually are working.

Give beer media a real story.

Beer writers receive a steady stream of release announcements, and a new hazy IPA on its own is rarely news. Among the many marketing ideas breweries explore, the story is the one about the beer itself: why you brewed it, who you brewed it with, and what makes it different.

Partnerships: Two audiences/coquets when it’s a joint beer of a neighbouring brewery, a local coffee roaster, or a local farm that delivered your fruit.

There is no one and only one way to write a short feature. Your process, ingredients, even if a first lager, experimental hop, barrel-aging,g or spent grain partnership- it works.

People: When making new head brewers or someone who has been at the brewery for a while, make these great subjects for interviews and industry news.

We have edited an anniversary or expansion in time to share the news as soon as it comes, and we have celebrated new taproom openings and medal victories. We have published editors, providing ample justification for publishing due to anniversaries, expansion, new taproom openings,s and medal wins.

Maintain a press page on your site featuring your logo, high-resolution images of your brewery and employees, brief descriptions of your flagship beers, and a contact name. A comprehensive press page helps writers easily access the correct information, request an interview, and helps them link to the appropriate page should they refer to your brewery in their work.

Treat festival and event listings as promotion.

If your brewery is going to participate in a beer festival, the festival will typically have a list of breweries that will be there. A number of festivals have links to the participating breweries’ websites, and some festivals are also posted in festival archives after the festival. This also applies to beer weeks, pop-up beer takes at popular bars, and events for which you donate.

These connections don’t just fall into place or occur through random chance. Once you are confirmed to attend, provide the organizer with your actual brewery name, description, logo(s), and proceed with the web address you wish them to use. This will drive traffic to some landing page that will make sense next year, rather than some disposable page for one release.

If you are hosting anything in the taproom, post it on calendars either locally or on your area news site’s community section, or any beer calendar in your region. These listings help create a positive first impression while building a visible trail back to your website.

Get on the map with local guides and tourism sites

In general, visitors who are beginning to plan their trip first go to the city or region tourism website, then a food and drink guide or a beer trail. This is for the people who will be the first to get in your taproom on a Saturday afternoon.

Tourism boards: See if your city or county visitor bureau has a beer list/beer trail and inquire about being added.

State brewers guilds: Points of membership usually have a listing in the directory, maps, and promotion of events.

Local partners: Local restaurants that serve beer, local hotels, and event spaces may be receptive to promotion in their own guides or blogs.

Business groups: Chambers of commerce and neighborhood associations often have member directories along with links to their websites.

If you find yourself inquiring for a link, be certain your listing info is also consistent. Your brewery name, address, phone number, and opening times should be identical on your website, Google Business Profile, and directories in which you are listed. If you don’t find consistency in the information, this will mislead visitors and make it more difficult for search engines to link all of those mentions together to one business.

Keep track of which mentions actually help.

By this point, after a regular barrage of campaigns over the last few months, there’s a hodgepodge of results from most breweries: An article in a beer magazine, a dose of dozens of festival pages, a tourism listing, a mention from a partner restaurant. It’s hard to keep track of what’s out there, and though more difficult, it’s even harder to remember which mentions to make the following year again.

A simple record management application prevents that from occurring. For every mention, include the Web page URL, exact page, date applicable, and whether it links to your site and which page. A joint spreadsheet is an option in case the list is brief. As it grows, a dedicated backlink tracking tool can keep track of each linking page. All this and more, in one location with Google-related search data.

On what basis does this record allow someone to answer some of the following questions?

Which links are still live? Article pages are updated and archived as per the events’ pages. Regularly checking once or twice a year will help you to see if any links have been removed.

What end pages does the link go to? Home pages might need more love if they are appearing every time you mention the site.

What sends visitors? You can identify your website’s referral websites by reviewing your website analytics, and you can review your pages’ performance in search over time using Google Search Console.

What do you want to emphasize? If one festival (or one guide) is always the draw, then that festival should be added to the calendar the next year.

Don’t lie to yourself about what the data may mean. There can be many reasons why the search performance increases (and decreases), and there’s no single reason why one month turns into a busy month. For a new brewery, the value of tracking lies in identifying patterns over time and understanding what you have earned, rather than crediting any one mention with a sudden sales spike.

Build promotion into your brewing calendar.

Usually, breweries that are regularly covered are the ones that plan to be covered. Outline next season’s releases, and name a promotion step for every release: who might be looking for it, events suited to it, who might share it locally? 

Keep an eye on festival application dates, as well as brew days, and add any award-winning beers to your press page.

Nothing can replace this and great beer and a welcoming taproom! Simply, it ensures that if people read about your brewery or appear on a festival list or local guide, there’s a way back to your door, especially during a promotion week, and that you know which paths people actually use.