Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
Four lines of revenue, one master distiller, the WET refund admin eats the spare hour
A craft distillery runs four lines off the same still: the cellar door (still-tour and tasting experience, the cocktail-making class, the bottle-and-experience packages, the brand-new-distillery curious crowd), wholesale to bars and bottle shops (the volume business, the relationship-built game with on-premise bars looking for a signature gin and bottle shops chasing Australian craft, with WET wine-equalisation-tax and Excise refund admin every BAS), direct retail (the limited-release single cask sold out in 48 hours, the subscription bottle club, the gift packs at Christmas), and the contract-distilling and private-barrel side hustle (a new gin brand wanting you to distil their recipe, a hotel group wanting their own barrel of whisky for the bar). Each is a different customer, a different sales cycle, a different keyword set. The master distiller is on the still at 7am, on the cut at 11, on the barrels by 2pm, on the cellar-door booking calendar by 4 and on the WET refund admin every Sunday night. The marketing that grows each line (a cellar-door experience landing page per package, a wholesale-to-bars page with the ADA membership and the WET-refund-friendly pricing flagged, a contract-distilling landing page, a limited-release notify list) is the work that doesn't happen between the still cut and the BAS deadline.
Good distillery marketing has four jobs running at once: a cellar-door experiences page library per package (still-tour at $45, still-tour-plus-cocktail-class at $95, gin-blending masterclass at $185, private group experience from $1,200) so the long tail finds you on a Tuesday-morning Google search; a wholesale-to-bars landing page that leads with the ADA membership and shows the existing on-premise accounts as the proof point; a contract-distilling and private-barrel landing page that qualifies the volume, the timeline and the IP, with a structured enquiry form (project brief, volume, target launch, IP arrangement); and a limited-release notify list that converts when the single-cask Tasmanian whisky or the barrel-aged gin drops. Most distilleries do the cellar door reasonably well and let the rest slide because the master distiller is on the cut.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Sets the plan around the four lines that actually grow the distillery: filling the weekend cellar door, booking the cocktail-making classes out four weeks, growing wholesale-to-bar accounts on the ADA-member moat, and closing one contract-distilling or private-barrel deal a quarter. Briefs the other agents so the cellar-door pages, the wholesale landing page, the contract-distilling page, the limited-release notify-me sequence and the still-room posts all push toward the same outcome.
Ships a clean page library so 'gin distillery tour [suburb]', 'cocktail-making class [suburb]', 'wholesale craft gin [city]' and 'contract distilling Australia' find you. Imports your existing site, makes the cellar-door booking form take a deposit on the spot, leads the wholesale page with ADA membership, and qualifies the contract-distilling enquiry on the form before it hits the master distiller's inbox.
Owns the work that decides whether you rank for 'distillery tour [suburb]' and 'craft gin distillery [suburb]': complete Google Business Profile with ADA member flagged, cellar-door experience schema, review prompts after a still-tour booking, and the technical fixes that keep the contract-distilling and wholesale pages indexed. Auto-applies the low-risk stuff.
Runs a Wednesday-to-Friday Meta campaign with a 15km radius for the weekend cellar-door experiences, a separate Google Ads campaign on 'wholesale craft gin [city]' and 'contract distilling Australia' for the wholesale and contract-distilling lead-gen, and a pre-launch sequence for each limited-release single-cask drop. Every alcohol creative is ABAC-checked. The whole point is to fill the cellar door and qualify wholesale leads, not spend when you're packed.
Turns every still cut and every barrel-rack day into content in your voice: a reel of the hearts cut coming off the spirit safe, a carousel of the botanicals on the basket for the dry gin, a behind-the-still shot of the master distiller checking specific gravity, the cocktail-class crowd from Saturday. Builds the distiller-led feed that wins the cellar-door booking, the wholesale enquiry and the contract-distilling lead. Every alcohol mention is ABAC-checked. You snap one frame a shift, the agent drafts, you approve.
Drafts the longer pieces that catch the spirits-curious customer and the contract-distilling buyer between visits: 'what makes a craft gin actually craft (and what ADA membership means)', 'how a single cask of Tasmanian whisky is made: 7 years and 350 bottles', 'a master distiller's honest pick of the best Australian craft distillery tours'. Two a month, in your voice, that bring search traffic in at the consideration stage and double as content the master distiller can share with wholesale buyers.
Your first 30 days.
- Site imported, hosting bill cancelled
- Annual plan against cellar-door, wholesale, contract-distilling and limited-release lines delivered by Sam
- Google Business Profile flipped from 'Bar' to 'Distillery' with full services list and ADA flagged
- Cellar-door experience pages, wholesale-to-bars page and contract-distilling page indexed and ranking
- Wednesday-to-Friday Meta campaign live with a 15km radius and ABAC sign-off
- Google Ads on 'contract distilling Australia' and 'wholesale craft gin [city]' live at a low daily spend
- First fortnight of still-cut reels queued in your voice
- ADA-membership and single-cask blog drafts in your inbox
Distilleries that grow past the trade-show year aren't the ones with the most awards on the shelf. They are the ones whose cellar-door experience page books a deposit before the customer leaves the search result, whose wholesale page leads with the ADA membership and the 14 bar accounts, whose contract-distilling page qualifies a $60k lead before it hits the master distiller's inbox, and whose Google Business profile shows the still room, not a stock botanical shot. Every one of those is a job that has to happen every week, forever, and it is the work that gets eaten by the still cut and the WET refund deadline.
Agencies are too expensive to actually run the cellar-door page library, the contract-distilling lead-gen and the limited-release sequence for a distillery at $3.5k a month. Tools are cheap but you write the still-cut caption at 9pm after the barrel rack. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the pages, post the still room, run the weekend cellar-door ads with ABAC sign-off, and qualify the contract-distilling enquiries on the form. You snap one frame from the spirit safe, approve the week from the still, done.