As Sober October, otherwise known as “Ocsober” gets underway, we’re delving into the “alcohol-free” and “alternative drinks” market to explore what it needs to consider when promoting itself to its audience. There’s not just the “getting your product in front of non-drinkers” but a whole host of activities required to support changing mindsets about individuals living a sober lifestyle and encourage retailers and hospitality venues to better cater for this audience.
A sober revolution
In recent years the number of people opting to live a sober lifestyle has increased. According to research from Alcohol Change, almost 9 million (one in seven/17%) UK adults were planning to undertake Dry January in January 2022, up from 8 million the year previous.
Gen Zers, in particular, are adopting a very different approach to entering adulthood than previous generations, either by not drinking at all or drinking less often and in less quantity than older generations. The UK’s largest recent study of drinking behaviours showed in 2019 16-to-25-year-olds were the most likely to be teetotal, with 26% not drinking, compared to the least likely generation (55-to-74-year-olds), 15% of whom didn’t drink.
And according to the media, Sobriety appears to be the new clean eating trend, with an increasing number of headlines and insta feeds discussing sober curious or quitting the drink altogether.
My own journey to sobriety
I myself am one of them. During lockdown, I would reward myself at the end of the day with a glass of wine or gin if it had been a good day without any challenges, similarly I would do the same if it had been a challenging day, which ultimately meant I was drinking pretty much seven days a week.
While I might have only been getting through one or two bottles of wine a week, this was too much for me, and I could sense it was impacting various areas of my life. After another Christmas of having the “flu”, something my body goes through every December when I switch off from running Wild PR, I decided to embark on Dry January and get my health and fitness back on track.
Bar some exceptions for my 40th birthday, which I celebrated recently, I have been sober for almost three years. Yet saying I’m sober makes me feel embarrassed, like I was an alcoholic with a serious addiction which couldn’t have been farther from the truth. I just didn’t like the hangxiety it gave me, and more specifically, a really bad night’s sleep.
Interest in alcohol-free options
Data tells us that there are on average 2.4k searches per month for “alcohol-free” which peaks at 2.9k in December and January.
Whereas more specific search terms can carry even higher volumes of searches, such as alcohol-free beer and alcohol-free gin averaging 6.6k searches, whereas switching to non-alcoholic beer increases the volume of searches to 9.9k! And this is growing across all areas of the alternative drinks market.
So what does this mean for alcohol-free brands?
While many individuals who opt for alcohol-free options can now do so with greater ease thanks to increasing brand presence on supermarket shelves or through online orders, there is still some work to be done to improve those options in the hospitality space.
That being said, drinkers or those new to an alcohol-free lifestyle can often think alcohol-free drinks are just a “waste of money”. A phrase I heard countless times whenever I opted for an alcohol-free prosecco, for example.
Ongoing awareness and education about a sober lifestyle are crucial if the market continues to grow. As a result of this, not only can they increase direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales, but encourage the hospitality industry to enhance its non-alcoholic drinks offer.
How can the alcohol-free industry increase market share
No longer do consumers want the non-alcohol options such as Coca-Cola, J2O or alcohol-free Becks (no offence, Becks, I’m just not a lager drinker). Something I experienced at a recent Champneys spa weekend! An email to their management is in draft!
This is evident from the opening of Dry Dock, an alcohol-free pub in Weymouth, which saw a gap in the market for adults who wanted somewhere to socialise without the pressure of alcohol.
We will soon see more of these up and down the country, and perhaps we will see a seismic shift in the leisure and hospitality offer in university towns considering that demographic purports to be the least likely to drink.
Increasing brand awareness and enhancing online presence
A structured PR strategy can help you achieve increased brand awareness and improve your online presence through enhanced keyword rankings (SERPs).
For example, in the last five years, searches for non-alcoholic beer have more than doubled (Source: Google Trends). This is also a low-difficulty keyword, currently dominated by the likes of supermarkets, which means it’s a relatively easy win if you are willing to put the work in.
Doing in-depth research on the keywords available to you and understanding the volume of searches can drastically increase the amount of organic and referral traffic visiting your website. For example, alcohol-free has a search volume of 2.4K and a difficulty of 31, yet non-alcoholic has a search volume of only 190 and a higher difficulty of 43. Targeting ‘alcohol-free’ in this case could be more rewarding and easier to achieve.
This needs to be considered for both your on and off-site content strategy, whether individual web pages and blogs or activities such as PR.
What PR tactics could you adopt?
Gift Guides
Now is the perfect time to pitch your alcohol-free products to gift guides. Christmas gift round-ups generally always include alcohol products, so this is a fantastic opportunity to counteract that, especially if you are gifting someone who is either alcohol-free or might be planning to do Dry January.
PR Mailers
Topics such as “How to have an alcohol-free Christmas”, “Top 10 Tips for going Alcohol-Free”, and “Famous people you didn’t know were sober”, targeted to publications which your target audience consumes, can be a great way of promoting yourself as a key authority on topics which matter to your customers.
At the same time, this is a great way to slide in those keywords you want to be ranking for and get links back to your website.
PR Campaigns
If you’ve been reading our Behind the Byline series, you’ll understand that your stories don’t specifically have to be tied to your brand. Consider your target audience and what appeals to them. Whether it’s things like “The best places to hike in the UK” or “Restaurants with the best alcohol-free options”.
Social Media
Aside from potential customers, journalists are regularly stalking Instagram and TikTok profiles to identify trending topics which they turn into press stories which can amplify your brand awareness and social following even further!
WANT TO IMPLEMENT THIS FOR YOUR BRAND?
As a non-drinker, I have many other ideas for alcohol-free or alternative drinks brands, so if you are interested in discovering how to raise your brand profile and increase your sales, then book a free exploratory call by clicking here.
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