Women Enjoying Beer

Marketing Beer to Women, Part 5: Offer Educational Opportunities

Sep 19, 2011

photo by Kate Parks

We continue the series with one of the most voluminous facets of women and beer today: Education. If you’ve been reading along, you’ll know that Education is one of the Three Universal Thruths (Part 1).

Education is the core and foundation of building any business. When you educate your staff and that knowledge is solid, always growing and changing (knowledge is dynamic), move to the customer. Customer knowledge is part of what brings women into your brands, what can keep them there, what maintains their support and patronization of your brand and what also helps them recommend your brand forward to others as well.

It’s also what ties you and the customer together and what makes the customer feel connected to your brand. That’s what you want: Connection.

Are you sitting down? Here’s a partial list of Educational Opportunities for Women.

1. Beer 101/Beer for Beginners – new info on any topic can be overwhelming; starting at square one will help
2. Remedial Beer for the more beer savvy woman
3. CAMFA
4. Describing Beer
5. Offer historical educational opportunities – Herstory of beer and brewing including that women were and continue to be  brewers (include ‘the why’)
6. Hosted female only pre-tappings, bottlings, and tastings
7. Bring in female specialists and guests to offer educational presentations
8. Shatter beer racism
9. Create and give away a beer and tasting guide for your beers
10. Give away beer magazine subscriptions to female clients (growing the education in a gift)
11. Ask your most active female patrons to write reviews to circulate to post on your website
12. Have current reading material handy to occupy time & to talk about
13. Offer food suggestions next to all beers on menu (whether you sell food or not)
14. Host women’s only events for visiting brewers
15. Keep national/regional/local publications on hand that have your business/beers/practices featured in them (article, ads) and flag these sections for readers to easily notice
16. Create an email distribution list; make sure you absolutely protect privacy and max it out at 2 times per month (more = spam)
17. Tours for women – of the brewhouse, taproom, entire operations
18. Sell Brew for a Day (with your brewer) packages for women
19. Solicit the local homebrew clubs for support by female members
20. Host a women’s homebrewing event annually
21. Create a women’s Beer Explorer program – design simple specific events for the Explorers only to encourage learning and patronage
22. Offer women’s Beer School – topics can range from the science & art of beer, to cuisine & culture, to history and a broader world view of beer
23. Glassware classes for women – include importance of ‘beer clean’ glassware

Educational opportunity for any patron deepens that persons reasons for engaging and returning. All this information comes directly from women per our market research. Lack of knowledge leads to trepidation and therefore hence little beer exploration and drinking.

Just pick one and you’ll have started the beer education women deserve and want. You’ve got a big list to start with. There are no excuses and there are women everywhere.

Get busy!!

Marketing Beer to Women Series starts here

Tags: educational opportunities for women and beer