When our industry thinks of marketing, we tend to drift toward sales campaigns. Sexy packaging design. Better guest experience. Bright, bold social media marketing. As a result, we often overlook the most critical way people discover brands in the modern era: search.

GlobalWebIndex, one of the world’s most comprehensive databases of human perceptions and behaviour, has found search engines are the most common way internet users globally discover new brands and products (ahead of television and word of mouth). 

Les Binet, one of the world’s most respected advertising thinkers, has recently found that a brand’s share of Google search predicts future market share.  

Search is a tool to build awareness for your brand, find venues when our memory fails us, and drive delivery from your eCommerce store. 

That means drinkers are searching for your brand, beer and business right now on Google, YouTube, Baidu, Untappd and any number of platforms that offer a search function.

One might be trying to recommend a fantastic pint he recently tried at a beer festival to a friend. He’s trying in vain to find your Session Pale Ale amidst a sea of similarly named beers showing up on Google.

Another is searching on Google Maps to make sure she’s on the way to the right taproom. She loved it on her last visit but couldn’t remember the exact street address.

Search is also a powerful short-circuit between online and offline through that small yet mighty tool in your hand or pocket: mobile phones.

Please don’t take my word for it: a study back in 2016 found that one-in-two beer buyers used smartphones at the shelf in retail stores when shopping for beer. 

You may be sceptical of the power of platforms like Google and Facebook. You might be worried about the privacy considerations of the world’s knowledge (and beer menus) being universally accessible. You may even despise marketing from the get-go.

However, even if you hide your operations under a bridge and take a Fight Club-esque strategy of forbidding your customers to speak of your beer, search permeates every aspect of your business – you don’t know it yet.

Fortunately for you, even if you’re a newbie when it comes to digital, search is an easy nut to crack. 

Assuming your competitors aren’t reading this piece, I’m going to share how easy it is for your business to win those coveted search results like ‘bars near me’, ‘craft beer’, ‘beer delivery’ in your city and country.

Getting A Little Technical

There are two crucial acronyms to know to master your business’ search presence: SEO & SERPs.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the label for what we are discussing. It refers to the strategies and tactics required to improve your brand’s rankings on search engines organically, i.e. without buying ads directly from Google or other platforms that offer search.

Traditionally, this process was all about keywords. People would stuff websites full of terms like ‘brewery’, ‘craft beer’ and mentions of their locations, hoping to outsmart Google.

That’s where the second acronym comes in: SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Savvy marketers today have many ways to ‘break into’ SERPs when someone searches for a given set of keywords.

SERPs are now more complicated. The good old ‘organic’ results for websites have given way to allow Maps, Images and Local Search.

Yes, the ideal to be successful in search is to ensure your site ranks prominently for specific keywords in your country and city. However, there is a whole range of quick things you can do to make your business – particularly locally – be seen by more people, even if they’re searching for a place to grab a beer or a bite to eat.

Auditing Your Search Presence

If you’ve never seriously delved into how your business appears to people when they search for you, the best way to start is by auditing your search presence. 

Let’s go back to those consumer behaviour examples I shared earlier. 

If you search for your most popular beers available at your bars and taprooms, does a presence you own or manage show up first? Do you control the entire SERP, or are there sites that are niggling away at defining your IPA better than you can?

Try searching for your brand name. Are you showing up prominently? What about the terms of your beer you produce, sell, or dishes at your taproom?

What about on Google Maps? Do you show up when someone searches ‘bars near me’, or  ‘craft beer’, in your city?

If you’re doing well on all these measures, you’re doing alright. But if you’re not hitting the mark you expect your business to, read on to learn more about SEO.

The Building Blocks of SEO Today For Bars & Breweries

Early this year, I launched a nano brewery with some friends. As we were only beta-testing our small-run of beer to a small audience of passionate beer drinkers, we didn’t want to (nor could we afford to) build a website.

We were also worried that COVID-19 would get more serious (unfortunately, we were right on that one).

This made it even more pressing to get our brand visibility jumpstarted, as we rushed into venues in Phnom Penh & Ho Chi Minh City.

To get our brand quickly visible for our (hopeful hordes of) customers, we launched a Facebook Page, Instagram Business Profile and Untappd Brewery Profile.

This quickly got us on Google. Searches for our brewery name even began to show a particular outlet of a Saigon craft beer chain where we were launching, the result of us mentioning their address so many times in our social media posts – Google is smart.

“If you’re struggling for inspiration, start interviews with your brewers, updates of tap changes and write-ups of the stories behind new beers launching soon”

There’s a lesson here for established businesses. Post more about your venues and beers on platforms like Instagram, Untappd and Facebook. It is a quick and easy hack to start owning searches related to your brand and product.

While Facebook, Instagram & Untappd do require a time investment, the return (amplified by each platform’s individually established SEO effectiveness) justifies getting active.

If You Do Have A Website…

A couple of decades back, building a successful website was chucking up a few basic pages, stuffed with keywords and most likely an ugly design. Today, if you want your site to be successful, it is all about giving people a great user experience.

That means loading fast on whatever device they use (mobile, desktop and tablet). It also means offering interesting, fresh content about your brand, products and venues.

Google now prioritises the mobile version of the site when it indexes (i.e. processes your site for ranking). That means you should be designing your site’s experience first for mobile, then for desktop. 

Loading speed on mobile should be fast, the text should be legible, and buttons shouldn’t be too small for those of us with chubby fingers.

On the content front, ‘high-quality content’ is all about original, well-written pieces. Target to write at least 500 words per page or blog you create – and make it even longer if possible. 

If you’re struggling for inspiration, start interviews with your brewers, updates of tap changes and write-ups of the stories behind new beers launching soon. On venue pages, talk about the story behind the location, when it was founded and what is so special about it.

To maximise SEO impact, pair writing with excellent quality photography and video. 

It is also useful to add sharing buttons that make it easy to post onto channels like Facebook & Twitter, which act as ‘signals’ to Google that your content is popular.

A simple search for “Craft Beer Downtown Singapore” shows a host of venues for the thirsty drinker to choose from.

Conquering Local Search

Google’s importance is particularly critical when it comes to local search. Google is handily the most popular search engine in most parts of the world, only eclipsed by Baidu (which follows many of the same practices outlined in this article).

Among the most critical improvements (or builds) for your brand’s visibility on Google is to set up your Google My Business (GMB).

Whether for your brewery taproom, bar or even as a B2B manufacturing or distribution business, GMB offers the cheapest and easiest way to win local searches for your business – particularly if you have a unique name. 

You should claim GMB for all your offices and venues, and then add as much business detail to each location. 

Google offers a plethora of ways to describe each location – from highlighting vegetarian options and high-chairs through to public transport options and contact information. If you maximise these, you will be seen more frequently on the SERP, particularly locally.

This will help even with unbranded searches like ‘beer near me’, mainly if you optimise your GMB to include menus, promote reviews from your customers, and tap into the ‘Post’ feature that resembles a social media post (but on the Google SERP).

Tapping Into Video…

Another easy trick to get more real estate on SERPs you want to win is is building a YouTube Channel. 

YouTube is a search engine in its own right, and Google also uses it for indexing video content. 

A good start on YouTube would be to create a Channel, adequately branded with your logo and brand name, ‘About’ information and links back to your website. 

If you don’t have video content to share, start by recording videos of your presence at beer festivals or live music events you host. 

Even if you’re in the B2B side of the beer industry, you can interview your founders and leadership team on the story behind the business, and the highs and lows along the way. 

If you have a brewery, interview your production team in action – perhaps they could share a video every time a new brew goes into production.

The SEO trick on YouTube is carefully infusing the titles & descriptions of your videos with keywords related to your brand (think your brewery and product names) and our industry (think “craft brewing”, “craft beer”, etc.). 

Before You Leave…

Think for a moment about other activities you could undertake to make your beer business visible on search.

• Submitting press releases to local digital publishers is a quick and easy way to show up. Even better, build relationships with editors of food & beverage, even lifestyle, publications in your city. Getting mentioned on high-quality local publications is an excellent way to get more visibility with drinkers. 
• Doing a collaboration beer with another brewer who has a great website? Ask to write a guest blog on their website, and sneak a link back to your site in there. Links from better, industry-relevant sites help improve your rankings.
• Ensure your physical locations, whether they be the brewery or your taprooms, are easily found on super apps like Grab, Uber and GoJEK. Ridesharing platforms are crucial local search engines for people getting around, so your venues and office must be in the correct location and have the right names.