Get Hoptimized Podcast

Send us Fan Mail When we think about Public Relations, a lot of questions come to mind.  As a craft beer business, should you care about public relations? And what the heck does "public relations" really mean?  How can you get started with PR???  So many questions...  In short, YES! You should absolutely care about PR.  To help us understand why and to unpack this marketing concept for t...

Send us Fan Mail A topic that pops up frequently in online craft beer groups and forums is LOYALTY PROGRAMS, and with good reason. There is seemingly a ton of potential value to be leveraged with a loyalty program, but unlocking that value can be tricky.  Enter today’s guest, Jackson Boyer.  He’s an expert on marketing, tech, and has a background in venture capital too. But he’s also doing some re...

Send us Fan Mail Last year, Aaron (cofounder, Bent Water Brewing ) launched Common Hope , the first-ever nationwide collaborative craft beer initiative to bring Parkinson's disease awareness. Bent Water was able to partner with The Michael J. Fox Foundation so that a portion of beer sales will be donated to this important non-profit. Bent Water was able to get breweries across the country to...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine a more creative and environmentally friendly label design process that was also great for smaller print runs... That's what direct-to-can digital printing and the folks over at the Craft Beverage Warehouse are about. Kyle Stephens is one of the founders of CBW. He was kind enough to join us on the podcast to talk about their process and share his thoughts on label des...

Send us Fan Mail West Sixth Brewing is an award-winning brewery based in Lexington, Kentucky. They operate taprooms in Lexington, Louisville, and Newport. Plus they also have a farm in Frankfort.    They've raised more than $1 million for nonprofits. Kelly has been with them since the beginning as their 6th employee (now they have more than 100) and first marketing-focused employee. She'...

Send us Fan Mail Understanding the steps someone takes to become your customer is critical to the success of your marketing strategy. Doing so will help you better communicate with your target audience, convert them into paying customers, and inspire them to refer you to even more people.  Us marketing geeks refer to these steps as the customer journey, and we want to take this opportunity to unpa...

Send us Fan Mail Whether you are speaking to your taproom team or through your phone to your brewery's social media audience, communication is a vital component of your business. So it's not a stretch to conclude that communicating effectively will help you grow your brewery business too. That's why we invited Brenden on the show.  Brenden is the founder of MasterTalk, he coaches am...

Send us Fan Mail Growing your social following is challenging and starting from zero is one of, if not the, hardest part. So let's talk about how to grow from zero with someone who has a lot of experience in this category. Prithvi Madhukar aka The Marketing Nomad has been a digital entrepreneur and business owner for the past two years. She is also a podcaster (Top 100 in Marketing for India)...

Send us Fan Mail What are the best ways to create value with your taproom guests? How do you communicate that value effectively? Answering those questions will help you improve marketing, increase sales, and grow your brewery.  That's why we had Andrew on the show. He has a ton of experience helping breweries uncover that value through his work with Secret Hopper. Andrew and his team have int...

Send us Fan Mail Good copy will increase brand awareness and drive sales by helping you tell compelling stories to your customers. To help us understand more about how to write good copy, we invited Cleo onto the show.  Cleoniki Kesidis is a copywriter with two years of writing experience. She writes vibrant, compelling marketing materials that spark emotion and drive action. Built on storytelling...

Send us Fan Mail This is a special episode where Kary and I each sit in the "interviewee" seat, fielding questions from one another. All in an effort to shed some light on how brewery finance and marketing are interconnected. Kary Shumway is a CPA, former CFO for a beer distributor and current CFO for Wormtown Brewery in Worcester, MA. He has spent the last 20 years using finance to help...

Send us Fan Mail Kendra is a mom of 2, photographer and educator. In 2012 she started her first business, Paisley Layne Photography, and everything changed. What started as a hobby alongside her teaching career quickly turned into a successful business. In 2017 she left her teaching career behind to run her photography business and start the Girl Means Business brand + podcast.  Now she helps peop...

Send us Fan Mail Cyrus is a Ph. D. in Engineering and AI, and a serial entrepreneur with a great passion and knowledge in building platforms, marketplaces, and social apps over the last 12 years.  Cyrus and his co-founder, Devid Benoliel, have built a platform for Instagram growth and marketing which has served over 800,000 businesses, influencers, and those aspiring to become influencers. Current...

Send us Fan Mail What if instead of discounting your prices to make a sale, you used value-add incentives? What might that do for your margins, especially when it comes to beer distribution sales? This is an excellent question to unpack because there are a lot of creative ways to win sales without having to hurt your margins.  Marco Torres is the Founder of MarketingBoost.com, he has helped thousa...

Send us Fan Mail Michael Varda is a super smart guy with a ton of experience in researching behavior on multiple levels. His company, Craft Beer Advisory Services, developed an excellent research report on the consumer behavior of craft beer drinkers during 2021. He's on the show to talk about some of the findings.  More info about Craft Beer Advisory Services:   https://craftbeeradvisoryserv...

Send us Fan Mail An eye-opening conversation about humor in advertising with plenty of great stories and ideas for breweries.  Saul Colt is the Founder and Creative Director at The Idea Integration Company. In his career he has been named as one of the iMEDIA 25: Internet Marketing Leaders & Innovators as well as been called one of Canada’s best community builders and experiential marketers. H...

Send us Fan Mail A former psychologist, Dr. Chris has been a passionate and pioneering expert in buyer psychology and purchase behavior for more than two decades. In that time, he has interviewed, observed, and shopped along with thousands of consumers to discover the underlying factors that govern purchase decisions and buying behavior across a wide range of product categories — from dish soap to...

Send us Fan Mail On January 18, 2022, a bill was introduced that could have a major impact on the way small businesses advertise - including breweries.  For the sake of argument, let’s assume the bill passed. What kind of changes would actually take place with the way you run ads?  --- For more information on Get Hoptimized, check out our website or follow us on social media. www.gethoptimized.com...

Send us Fan Mail What motivates your customers to drink your beer, visit your taproom, or pick your cans off the shelf? This might appear like a simple question, but the true answers are harder to uncover than you might realize.  The fact is, buyer motivation is something marketers spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out, and with good reason. Understanding what motivates someone to cho...

Send us Fan Mail Ultimately, the most important metric related to your advertising strategy is revenue. Any marketer that doesn’t admit that is delusional. It’s the dollars that truly count at the end of the day.  In order for your advertising strategy to drive more revenue, it needs to deliver the right message to more of the right people, frequently enough for them to remember it. Therefore, you...

Send us Fan Mail I wanted to hop on the mic and share some insights from Ad World that I thought were super relevant to the craft brewery industry.  The virtual conference took place last week and featured keynote speakers from all over the marketing industry. I'm going to be sharing more tidbits on social but here are my notes on the big takeaways for craft breweries.  --- For more informati...

Send us Fan Mail Fernando is the owner of Da Boost digital marketing. I know what you're thinking... A marketing company talking to another marketing company, what a snooze-fest. But hear me out... I wanted Fernando on the show so that we could try and give a look behind the curtain, so to speak. Fernando is a super smart dude with a ton of great experience doing digital marketing for compani...

Send us Fan Mail Voodoo Brewing is certainly a company to look to as an example of great craft brewery marketing. Their Instagram looks amazing, they have a beer collaboration with Styx, and have found a way to be both creative and consistent with their label art. CEO Matteo Rachocki joins us on our inaugural episode to share some of his thoughts and key lessons.  For more information on Voodoo Br...