How to choose a wine marketing agency: what to ask before you sign

The right wine marketing agency has sold wine before, works in the channel where your sales actually come from, and reports on bottles, club members or trade enquiries rather than likes. Before you sign, ask to see results from a wine business like yours, find out who will do the work each week, and confirm that you will own your website, ad accounts and customer list. Those three answers sort a shortlist of wine marketing companies faster than any pitch deck.

What a wine marketing agency does

“Wine marketing agency” covers five quite different businesses. Knowing which one you need saves weeks of meetings.

Type of agency	What they do best	The number to judge them on
Brand and design studio	Names, labels, packaging, brand identity	Listings won, price point held, shelf presence
Wine PR agency	Trade press, critics, awards, launches	Coverage in the titles your buyers read
Drinks marketing agency	Campaigns for larger brands in retail and on trade	Rate of sale in the accounts they support
Direct-to-consumer specialist	Websites, online shops, email, wine club, search, ads	Online revenue, club members, cost per new customer
B2B specialist for suppliers	Websites, search and lead follow-up for businesses selling to wineries	Qualified enquiries and quotes sent

A winery selling most of its wine through a cellar door and a club needs the fourth row. A new brand chasing supermarket listings needs the first and third. A cooperage or a label printer needs the fifth. Many agencies claim all five, and most are strongest at one.

Match the agency to where your sales come from

Start with your own numbers. Write down the share of last year’s revenue that came from the cellar door, online orders, the club, trade accounts and export. The biggest slice, or the one you most want to grow, tells you which kind of wine marketer to hire.

For most small and medium wineries in the UK, the growth sits in direct sales. Many English wineries sell much of their wine at the cellar door and online, so the website, the shop, Google Business Profile and the email list do most of the selling. An agency famous for award-winning labels is built for a different job. Keep its name for your next rebrand, and hire for the channel that sells.

Seven questions to ask every agency

1. Which wine businesses have you worked with, and what changed in their numbers? A good answer names clients and gives a figure with a timeframe, such as online sales over twelve months. Ask whether you can speak to one of them.
2. Who will do the work each week? In larger agencies the person who pitches is often a director, and the work goes to a team. That can work well. You just want to meet the people writing your emails and running your ads.
3. How do you handle the alcohol rules in my markets? Listen for specifics: the CAP Code age rules in the UK, Meta’s minimum ages by country, the loi Évin if you sell in France, state shipping rules if you sell to the US.
4. Which number will you report on each month? The strongest answer is revenue or qualified enquiries, with spend beside it. Reach and followers belong in the appendix.
5. Who owns the website, the ad accounts, the analytics and the email list? You should. Ask for it in the contract, so changing agency later is simple.
6. What happens in the first 90 days? Expect a written plan with the two or three changes likely to earn the most, in order.
7. What is the notice period? A monthly rolling agreement after an initial term shows an agency that expects to keep you through results.

Agency, freelancer or consultant

The size of the business behind the work changes how it feels to work together.

Option	Who does the work	Suits you when
Full-service agency	A team of specialists, managed by an account lead	You need design, PR, content and ads at volume, and have the budget for a team
Specialist wine consultant	One experienced person, sometimes with trusted partners	You want senior thinking and hands-on work from the same person
Freelancer	One person with one skill, such as social media or design	You know exactly what you need and can manage the plan yourself

Franc Wine is the middle row. Every project is run and done by me, from strategy to the last line of code, and I work in English and French across the UK, France and the US. That suits wineries and suppliers who want to talk to the person doing the work. A brand launching into 400 supermarket stores will be better served by a larger team.

How wine marketing agencies charge

Most agencies use one of four models:

• Monthly retainer for ongoing work like email, search and ads, usually with a minimum term
• Project fee for a fixed piece of work, such as a website rebuild or a brand identity
• Day rate for workshops, audits and strategy
• Performance fee tied to sales or leads, usually on top of a smaller retainer

Ask each agency to price the same first 90 days, in writing, so you are comparing like with like. Ask what ad spend they assume, because media budgets sit on top of the fee.

Choosing a UK wine marketing company

A few things are specific to marketing wine in the UK, and a good UK wine marketing agency will raise them before you do:

• Cellar door and wine tourism matter. Visitors searching for vineyard tours and tastings find you through Google Maps first, so your Google Business Profile carries real weight. I cover this in SEO for wineries.
• The rules are different. Advertising follows the CAP Code, online sales need a premises licence where the wine is dispatched, and duty depends on the strength of each wine.
• Shipping is simpler than in the US. There are no state-by-state shipping permits, so an online shop licensed at its dispatch point can sell across Great Britain from day one.
• Seasons drive sales. English Wine Week in June, summer visits, harvest and Christmas gifting shape the year’s campaigns.

If you also sell in France or the US, look for someone who knows those markets from the inside. A campaign that works in Sussex needs reworking for Burgundy or Sonoma.

What I’ve seen in practice

When I rebuilt the website for Jeff Runquist Wines in California, I put the shop fully inside the site and gave every wine its own page. Online wine sales grew by 245% over twelve months. For Golden State Box Factory, a wooden box maker supplying wineries, Google search clicks grew by 83% year on year.

Both results came from the same approach: find the place where buyers already arrive, then make the next step easy. I also spent 2024 as the winemaker at Tickerage Wine in Sussex, alongside its marketing, so I know how a release date and a picking date compete for the same week.

A shortlist in one afternoon

1. Write down where last year’s revenue came from, by channel
2. Pick the agency type from the table above that matches your biggest channel
3. Shortlist three wine marketing companies with case studies in that channel
4. Send each the seven questions and ask them to price your first 90 days
5. Call one reference per agency before you decide

If you’d like a second opinion before you hire anyone, a marketing audit shows where your next sales are most likely to come from. You can also read more about how I work as a wine marketing agency for wineries and suppliers.