Brewing Up A Marketing Strategy

I've had a marketing strategy that I've been bouncing back and forth in my head since I first found out that Win's Books Publishing is going to be publishing my book, and I have to say that I'm particularly excited about it. For those of you that are new to my blog posts, welcome! Also...I've owned two craft beer breweries, and have extensive experience with homebrewing. Stay with me. I know it probably feels like I just derailed the train Dungeon Crawler Carl style, but I'm going somewhere with this.

I want to combine my love for books with my love for beer. The idea I've had in my head is to reach out to breweries across the country, work with them to come up with a recipe that matches the personality of one of the characters from my book, go to them and brew it with them, ultimately have a book signing at their facility when the beer is released, and make copious and copious amounts of content for every single stage of the process. You could say at that point that I would have a plethora of pinatas...I mean content.

I've reached out to four different breweries. One in Denver, one in the city that I live in, one in Chicago, and one in Orlando. The one in Orlando is obviously for my good buddy HalfMetalFox. He's a character in the book, but he's also a real life person, and one hell of an entertaining streamer. Sorry...I got derailed again. One thing you're going to quickly learn about me is that unlike my books...my blogs are just one long stream of my ADHD consciousness.

Of the four breweries that I've reached out to I've only heard from one of them. It wasn't a no and it wasn't a yes. The person that needs to make the decision is out for the week. The other three out of four I had to connect through website contact forms. I hate website contact forms. They're unreliable and the message never arrives on the other end the way you wanted it to be formatted. I'm honestly not holding out a ton of hope with any of those three. MAYBE with the one that's local mainly because I can go to it in person and just talk to them about it.

I'm sure one of the questions is probably why am I already starting to plan this now? That's a good question. Breweries plan their batch schedule out pretty far in advance usually. They have a system. They have a routine. Anything that's going to be slotted into that routine is going to take time to do so. That's why I'm going ahead and getting my name on their radar. I want to be in the back of their mind when they're thinking about planning their recipe schedule.

I really want to work with the one I picked in Chicago. Like, I REALLY want to work with the one I picked in Chicago. I've interacted with them back and forth on Threads for several months now and I finally had a chance to visit their brewery a month or so ago when I went to visit Dandrew. If you go back through either my TikTok or Instagram videos you can narrow it down to three different breweries based on the brewery crawl series. I just really like their beers. I really like their atmosphere. I think they would be perfect for a beer themed around Dirk.

I like to end all of these posts with some kind of call to action. It never really works to get interaction the way that I want it to, but hey...it's worth a shot. Let me know if you know of a brewery that you think might be willing to participate in my little attempt to brew up a marketing strategy. I'm obviously willing to travel, based on the fact that I've picked breweries in Orlando and Denver, but I'm going to have to keep that somewhat to a minimum. I've only been in my current role for a year, and I still haven't built up very much leave. I also have a book tour to plan on release...SQUEE!!! The ideal would be that the book tour somehow lines up with the beer releases so that I can kill two birds with one toaster bath or whatever the saying is.

Anyway. I just wanted to give you some insight into what I'm planning marketing wise. We're still a year away from this book being released. As we get closer to that date I am going to become more and more insufferable. It's basically going to be the only thing I talk about. My Twitch streams are going to rapidly devolve to me just saying "book book book book book book" like some kind of deranged pokemon named book that can only say it's name, because that's what pokemon do right? They only say their name?

Derailed again. If you've read to this point...why? I'm going to write another POV blog this afternoon and then I'll send the newsletter out this evening. We're up to 27 newsletter subscribers. Yay! That's not too shabby for having only been trying to get people to join for two weeks. I really haven't done much to try to get people to join this week either. I'm honestly not entirely sure the best way to market a newsletter anyway.

Maybe I could do some kind of collab with breweries to market the newsletter.