Boosting Profitability Through Better Marketing is Possible

There's an urgent need for better marketing knowledge to help businesses become more successful.

Hi! It’s been a while… and I’m back with a personal story.

I’ve been quiet here since early 2020, and I’m sorry. It’s not because I have nothing interesting to say about the state of marketing in the industry but because I’ve been doing the work and had no head space to write about the work. Happens.

What a lot of you don’t know is that when I left a very well-paying job in 2019, I wanted to pursue a dream, which for obvious reasons, had to wait. I’m talking about bridging the marketing knowledge gap to help businesses become more profitable. And I’m finally pursuing that dream!

The seed was planted in 2014

The first time I discovered that I loved teaching was in 2014 when I got invited to Dijon, France, to teach a marketing class at the Burgundy School of Wine & Spirits Business. The experience was so rewarding for everyone that I got invited back to teach a different class on pricing strategies a month later. That was the beginning of my love for sharing my knowledge and experience in marketing.

Since then, I’ve been returning yearly to MIB School in Trieste, Italy, to teach marketing and branding for small businesses and, when I am in California, to Sonoma State University.

It’s deeply rewarding to see the “aha!” moment on the faces of the students who finally understand why their previous marketing activities didn’t work as well as they expected.

Unfortunately, most industry professionals don’t have the time or the money to attend these kinds of courses. Yet, now more than ever, they need them under the current economic and regulatory conditions.

While the challenges facing the alcohol drinks industry are vast and varied, the industry’s marketing problems could all be summed up in one phrase: lack of profitability.

And all too often, this financial gap doesn’t come about only because of market conditions. It happens because of the knowledge gap.

The urgent need for better business knowledge

In 2002, I went from working in big brand FMCG, to the wine industry — I co-own a small Italian winery. It wasn’t just a shift from the city to the country. It was also a culture shock of the mind as I got more and more involved in the industry.

I understood that big marketing campaigns were never going to happen, but I also knew that you don’t always need big budgets. What you need are knowledge and creativity, and that was missing.

It fired me with a relentless desire to help these businesses catch up with the speed of market evolution and consumer preferences and bring businesses closer to the future.

In these past two decades, I’ve worked with small and big brands, with no-budget to multi-million-dollar budgets. I’ve written articles, published peer-reviewed academic case study, and spoken at conferences.

But all that work is not scalable and is not available to many.

A way to bridge the knowledge gap

When I left that well-paying job in 2019, I realized I wanted to do something about the knowledge gap.

I decided to create an online education-coaching program to help people in the industry arm themselves with the skills they need without the burden of signing up for university—a sort of WSET but for marketing and business. I figured, if WSET is the standard to get a job in the wine trade, why not extend that standard to have a deeper knowledge of marketing and business as well?

My timing wasn’t fortunate, you know, 2020 and Covid… But my desire to launch this education platform just got stronger.

Launching Marketing of Drinks

I am excited to introduce Marketing of Drinks, an online platform that offers my strategy-rich, university-level courses to help wine, beer, and spirits businesses become more profitable.

These in-depth online courses will come with the right tools and frameworks to help professionals develop marketing skills for success. These will be live courses in the company of like-minded people, with practical guidance at every step of the way.

The goal is to offer a simple, more affordable way to give businesses the knowledge, strategies, and skills they need to drive profitability through better marketing.

Helping to put the cart behind the horse

Today, the industry is full of marketing advice on short-term tactics for quick results. The noise is very loud in that space. But that’s like putting the horse in front of the cart, which isn’t very helpful.

Businesses are wasting their money if their tactics aren’t backed by strategy. Boosting profitability comes from applying the right strategies. From small to big brands—It’s all in the strategy first and in the execution later.

And that’s what Marketing of Drinks will focus on, helping professionals become more strategic for better success.

For now, as with every business that launches, it starts small but more courses will be added soon. I take this opportunity to ask you, if you feel like it, to subscribe to the Tips for Drinks blog, where I will continue writing from now on. There’s nothing there yet, but I will continue writing more marketing tips to help you stay on top.

And if you think my first course is for you, please enroll. It starts on April 12. I’d be thrilled to have you join!

Thanks for reading. I’m excited to go after my dream and help professionals and businesses bridge the knowledge gap in marketing.

Cheers!

Réka