Zephyr Conferences

Marketing at Beer, Wine & Food Influencer Conferences

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In our last week of our 10-week Successful Marketing video series, Allan discusses why and how brands should sponsor beer, wine and food influencer conferences.

Why market through influencer conferences:

  1. Information on marketing and communications: sponsors get good information they can apply to their business (i.e. email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, etc.)
  2. Make in-person connections
  3. Assess whether influencers are a good fit for you: meet a large variety of influencers and choose which work best for your company
  4. Reach multiple micro influencers at once

International Food Blogger Conference

2019 Well-Known IFBC Attendees had on average:

  • 8,568 Twitter followers
  • 29,124 Instagram followers
  • 32,978 Pinterest followers
  • 125,424 Facebook followers
  • Total of 196,094 followers per blogger or 3,921,880 for just 20 influencers
  • This proves sponsoring an influencer conference can give you reach into a large number of influencers, some of who have large followings.

Seven Tips to Succeed at Sponsoring an Influencer Conference

  1. Pick the Right Conference: pick general or niche industry conference – niche is more likely to provide the connections you’re looking for
  2. Set Expectations Properly: immediate results are unlikely
  3. Attend and Interact
  4. Take Advantage of Benefits: often sponsors won’t fulfill their tasks of a sponsorship (i.e. write a blog post for the conference website) and miss out on the full sponsor benefit
  5. Don’t Self Promote Too Much: people do not want to be told they should purchase your product; they want to be given a reason to have a connection with you
  6. Engage on Social Media: if someone tags your company on social media, repost, comment, like the post, etc. to take full advantage of your opportunity
  7. Follow Up: email those you connected with or utilize the attendee list your sponsorship provides

Conferences in a COVID-19 World

  • Is the conference communicating their COVID-19 precautions?
  • Sponsorships are more pertinent now more than ever – influencers need content and conference organizers need support after a year of no conferences

Zephyr Conferences

  • Three influencer conferences: Wine Media Conference, International Food Blogger Conference Beer Now Conference
  • We’re COVID-safe: negative PCR test or vaccine to attend
  • Influencers get a discount for writing about sponsors – this ensures sponsors get ROI

Our Presenter

Allan Wright is founder and president of Zephyr Conferences. He has been organizing these conferences, determining content, and securing speakers for 13 years. Allan also has 24 years of experience running his own small company and an MBA in Entrepreneurial Management from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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Successful Marketing Video Series

Week 1: Effective Websites
Week 2: Local Marketing
Week 3: Survey Your Customers
Week 4: Consumer Reviews
Week 5: CRM & Email Marketing
Week 6: Social Media Marketing
Week 7: Video Marketing
Week 8: Public Relations
Week 9: Influencer Marketing

Beer Bloggers Conference and Wine Bloggers Conference Renamed

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We at Zephyr Conferences have talked about rebranding our blogger conferences for years. Eleven years ago when we started the Wine Bloggers Conference as one of the first niche blogging conferences in the world, blogging was new and hot. But even back then, change was in the air as the most debated subject at that 2008 event was whether this new thing called Twitter was going to die a quick death or change the way people communicate.

Fast forward eleven years and we are proud our wine, food, and beer blogger conferences are still going strong. Blogging, despite its many death announcements by pundits, is not going away.

Rebranding of the WBC and BBC

Yet we all recognize blogging is only one form of communicating and that our conferences also attract non-blogging writers and social media users. For years we have discussed changing the name of these three conferences and have now made major steps by rebranding two of our events.

We are rebranding the Wine Bloggers Conference as the Wine Media Conference and the Beer Bloggers & Writers Conference as Beer Now.

We have two main goals we are trying to achieve with these name changes:

  1. Better Represent Our Attendees: Almost all our attendees not only blog but also use social media. Many write about wine or beer for print publications or on contract for businesses as well. So calling the conferences “blogger” conferences is not really accurate any longer.
  2. Be More Inclusive: There are social media users and writers who communicate about wine and beer but who do not blog. While we feel the conference content is applicable to social media influencers and non-blogging writers, we want names that reflect that.

We did not make these changes in haste, nor without great consultation among our communities. The new names (and websites URLs) will be more accurate and more inclusive. We have also kept our existing graphics, the megaphone man and beer man standing on kegs, which keeps our ties to our original name.

Let there be no mistake. We love bloggers and believe blogging has drastically altered the landscape of beer and wine writing. But with these name changes, we hope to continue our support of beer and wine bloggers while opening up our conferences to others.

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