Waterfront Group’s Watauga Lake Properties
Every year, many flock to East Tennessee’s pristine Watauga Lake. The Waterfront Group’s winery, vineyard, and mercantile are poised as unique amenities and experiences for the lake-goers…we just have to get the word out.
On the surface, these three neighboring businesses – the Watauga Lake Winery, Villa Nove Vineyard and the Watauga Lake Mercantile – seem disparate. But their owner, The Waterfront Group, had a vision in mind to package them as sister properties and entice both locals and visitors to the area to enjoy their offerings. Located in a fairly remote part of the state, the businesses offer unique experiences for their patrons and complement each other’s offerings and lake adventure. To achieve this goal, FUEL was tasked with new photography and videography for the properties, new websites, and a comprehensive social media strategy.
Without the luxury of brand awareness from proximity to a larger town or landmarks, FUEL recognized that prospective customers of these businesses would need to see what they had to offer to entice them to journey out. A lack of assets made it difficult to showcase the beauty of these locations or reflect the amazing updates the developers had made to the properties. This greatly limited the businesses’ ability to promote on social, a channel that is crucial to the success of these B2C businesses. Moreover, it meant they didn’t have a way to communicate the value of making the trip out to this relatively remote area.
Meanwhile, with the team handcuffed on their ability to really leverage social media platforms, competitors had far more robust social presences. The Watauga Lake businesses’ lack of professional assets, lack of cohesion in style or content matter, and a small, limited team executing social on a day to day basis highlighted an area FUEL could provide clarity and guidance.
Prior to engaging FUEL, the Watauga Lake Winery and Villa Nove Vineyards had significantly outdated websites that didn’t reflect the new ownership or food and wine offerings. The Mercantile had no web presence at all. This was confusing for potential visitors – and with these remote locations, lack of accurate web presence was holding these businesses back because they couldn’t rely on drive-bys for awareness and potential customers.
The need was clear, but luckily the natural beauty of the lake, backdrop of the Appalachian mountains, along with the impressive offerings of these local businesses provided ripe ground for FUEL to come alongside and put them on the map from a marketing perspective.
For the new websites, FUEL’s strategy was to hone in on the unique offerings and needs of each business to create a collection of businesses positioned as ‘amenities’ on Watauga Lake. A single URL allowed us to create a ‘portal’ to each site and really position them side-by-side. However, each individual site received their own approach in terms of style and, of course, use of the new photography. For example, The Winery’s unique history provided an opportunity to do a very different visual treatment and custom animations. FUEL worked closely with the management team to ensure accuracy on menus and product offerings and how to highlight their events and give potential customers reasons to visit and return. When complete, the three sites accomplished specific goals for their business while feeling like part of the family of businesses and heavily cross-promoting to ensure potential visitors were aware of the sister properties.
Our strategy was to strike a balance between showcasing the uniquenesses of each property, while also maintaining a cohesive look and feel to ensure the three businesses could be packaged as a ‘set.’
Overall, FUEL’s goal with this project was to equip the team on the ground not only with strategy, but practically with assets and tools to promote the properties they know best. The result of our custom photoshoot was three new video ads (one for each property) as well as a professional image library for the team’s use on social and the website. These properties were finally brought to life visually with the photos and videos we provided – these places are ones you really have to see to understand.
With new professional assets and clarity provided by the social strategy in-hand, the lean and mean team at Watauga have elevated their social presence and are experiencing higher engagement rates than ever before, with follower numbers increasing daily. They’re now on par with their local competitors and able to better represent their offerings.
Furthermore, FUEL launched three ‘sister’ websites that provide both the utilitarian information, such as driving directions to the properties and what to expect, along with the fun lifestyle photography that gives potential customers a reason to visit. For the winery and vineyard sites, an integration with a third-party wine retailer site has enabled them to sell wine online for the first time, expanding their revenue streams and offering a convenient option for loyal customers who can’t visit in person.
Ultimately, our efforts supported our clients’ overarching business goals of generating awareness for these sister properties through a better brand experience: photography, storytelling, and clear brand benefits. But moreover, FUEL helped generate footfall with insight-driven strategy and enticing brand photography.
With FUEL’s help, my team and I finally have the assets and tools we need to properly promote these amazing businesses. We are thankful for the practical strategy that we feel we can execute and we are so excited about the way you brought these places to life! If I didn’t work here, I’d definitely want to visit!”
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