With the rise of the pandemic, a majority of the on-trade sector has shut down, which for a lot of wineries, means a huge drop in sales. However, taking the situation in hand, most wineries and brands have started offering their customers deliveries and offering curbside pick-up services. This is honestly a treat for customers, it’s like a drive-through for their favorite wines. Who wouldn’t want that? And why didn’t we think of this earlier?

As we all know, visibility is important in this sector. Customers need to know you’re offering curbside pick-up, and besides using social media and the other segments of the internet to make that happen - you can also up your curbside pickup sales by creating effective signage.

Yes, this might take you back to the olden times when you’d see a sign and drive into that particular area. Well, that’s exactly what we mean when we say that as a winery, you need to create effective signage to up your curbside sales.

The question is, how can you create such effective signage that will draw customers to you? What are you going to write? Are you going to use colors? How are people going to see it? These are the questions that you need to answer before building signage for your winery’s curbside pick-ups services.

Let’s take a look how wineries can create effective signage to drive curbside sales.

Big & Bold

The first thing you need to keep in mind when creating signage is that people need to see it. Whether they’re driving by, or walking past, they need to be able to see your signage. If your signage is a small board, with let’s say small black and white letters, people are definitely not going to be able to see it.

So, what you need to do is make sure your signage is big enough to be seen from a distance, while driving and walking. You also need to make sure that everything you put on the sign is clearly visible. A good tip for this is to create your signs in bold capital letters. Capital letters tend to grab the customer’s attention more.

To sum this up:

● Bold signage for people to see

● Capital letters

● Clear words

Colors or not?

Now this is a tough one to think about. Over the years, we’ve all learned so much about keeping things simple to grab people’s attention, but does that mean it needs to be plain? Your sign needs to radiate who you are and what you’re doing - and for this, it needs to have some color to attract consumers towards your winery.

Of course we’re not saying just splash a bunch of different colors on your sign and expect it to attract people, no, of course not. What we’re saying is, think about it strategically. Something plain is definitely not going to attract the customer. Instead, design the signage by using your winery’s branding. As a winery, people will definitely know of you and your logo. Put your logo on your signage, largely and boldly.

Make sure that your sign depicts your winery clearly. People should be able to recognize your winery’s name and logo. So try to put your winery’s colors around the signage. You can even add your best selling bottle to the sign, to make people resonate with it - and also to let them know who you exactly are.

In simpler words

● Focus on using your branding and your winery’s colors

● Show your product to attract people

● Don’t forget your logo! That’s how people will know it’s you.

Messages to resonate with consumers

Another great way to create effective signage is by attracting your customers with messages that they can relate to, or those that they might get attracted by. Here are some of the ways in which you can do so:

● Write up a deal on your signage. With incomes facing trouble, people are looking for offers as much as they can. If you’re offering a strong deal for customers, make sure you put it on your sign. So you can create a bright, bold sign with your winery’s logo and branding, and then have your deal written on it like “$100 for One case of Merlot”. When customers see the deal, it will incline them to call for pickup.

● Tell them what you’re offering. Customers want to know what they can get before they even reach there. On your sign, you can put up names of your varietals for customers to see, so they know you’re selling their favorite varietal. So if you’re selling Merlot and Chardonnay, make sure it’s boldly highlighted on your signage.

● Relate to them with the current situation. People are looking for safe ways to do things right now, even if it is a pick-up. On your signage, you can boldly put “Contactless Pick-up”, or “Sanitizers available during pick-up”, and other phrases that show your customers about your safety. Not only will this incline them to purchase from you, but it will also help you in gaining your customer’s trust during such unprecedented times.