Best Marketing for Breweries

Why Story-Driven Campaigns Are Outperforming Traditional Ads — And How to Build a Brewery Brand That Actually Lasts

If you're a brewery in 2025, you’re not just selling beer. You’re building a brand, telling a story, and creating an experience — one that extends far beyond what’s poured into a pint glass. With so many craft breweries competing for attention across local markets and digital platforms, the ones that rise above aren’t always the biggest. They’re the ones with clarity, consistency, and creative storytelling.

At David Hannah Marketing, we’ve worked with some of Australia and New Zealand’s most ambitious breweries and venues — including Kelp, Lovers Lane, Burleigh Barrels, The Avenue, Coffs Hotel, Gibbons, and collaborations with Sanctus, New England Brewing, and more.

We specialise in building brewery campaigns that don’t just look good — they perform. Here’s how we do it, what we’ve learned, and why most brewery marketing problems stem from one thing: lack of strategy and story.

Want to learn more? Book a strategy session here 

Why Story Is the Starting Point

The breweries performing best in 2025 are the ones opening up their world. They’re showing the brewing process, talking to the camera, introducing their team, sharing raw footage from the taproom — because people don’t just want a product anymore. They want connection, authenticity, and context.

That’s why we don’t start with a sale. We start with a story.

Story-first marketing isn’t a trend. It’s a strategic foundation that drives:

• Higher engagement
• Lower ad costs
• Better retention

More loyal fans and repeat visits

The best campaigns feel like you're being welcomed into the brewery itself. That behind-the-scenes energy creates real buy-in — and real results.

Our Campaign Results

The numbers speak for themselves.

Across our brewery and hospitality campaigns, we’ve consistently delivered:
Cost-per-click under $0.20, with many campaigns between $0.05–$0.08
Click-through rates of 5% or higher — more than double most industry benchmarks
Average website session times of over 3 minutes, showing not just interest but attention

We optimise for outcomes — not vanity metrics — and we work closely with your team to align the creative with what’s happening on the ground.

Common Issues Breweries Face in Marketing

We’ve worked with enough breweries to know the typical pain points. Almost all of them come back to three core problems:

1. Inconsistent messaging
The brand voice changes from post to post. The content doesn’t reflect what the taproom actually feels like. Or worse, the product doesn’t stand out from competitors because the messaging is generic.

2. A lack of structure in content and campaigns
There’s no strategy. Just reactionary posts, boosted content, or underwhelming ads. No clear path from awareness to engagement to conversion.

3. Too much focus on the product, not enough on the brand
The product is important, but it’s not the story. A good beer can bring someone in — but the brand is what makes them stay, come back, and talk about it.

These are solvable problems. But it takes a clear framework, creative direction, and the right media buying to get there.

Common Mistakes in Brewery Advertising

Even great breweries make these mistakes — and they’re often costly:

Hiring social media talent instead of advertising experts
Being great at organic content doesn’t mean you know how to structure a paid campaign. We’ve seen breweries hand over ads to influencers or internal staff without understanding targeting, conversion tracking, or audience strategy — and it almost always leads to wasted spend.

Boosting posts instead of running real campaigns
Boosting a post is not running ads. It’s handing Meta your budget and hoping it lands somewhere useful. With no conversion tracking, no retargeting, and no creative testing, it's the ad equivalent of guesswork.

Running campaigns without knowing the goal
We often ask, “What’s the goal of this ad?” and hear silence. Clarity of outcome — clicks, calls, visits, bookings, sales — is essential. Otherwise, you’re just making noise.

Campaigns Built Around Your Goals

Every brewery has different priorities depending on where they’re at in their journey. We structure our marketing around your goals.

Want more foot traffic to the taproom? We build for that.
Need to boost brand followers and content reach? We’ll structure a growth campaign.
Looking to generate calls or private bookings? We optimise for conversions.
Launching a new beer? We benchmark engagement and track lift over time.

Everything we build is structured through Meta Ads Manager, with real targeting, tested creative, and performance data you can actually use.

Who We've Worked With

We’ve worked with breweries and venues of all shapes and sizes — across Australia and New Zealand — including: Kelp, Lovers Lane, Burleigh Barrels, The Avenue, Coffs Hotel and collaborations with Sanctus, New England Brewing, and more

Whether it’s a local release, a summer event, or building a long-term brand identity, we’ve helped teams translate their taproom experience into digital performance.

Build a Brewery Brand That Grows With You

Marketing a brewery in 2025 isn’t about the best label, the loudest voice, or the biggest budget. It’s about strategy, story, and execution.

At David Hannah Marketing, we help breweries grow by combining creative storytelling with performance advertising. From campaign strategy to ad management, content direction to audience targeting, we work as an extension of your brand — with results that back it up.

Book a strategy session today here, and let’s build the next chapter of your brewery’s story together.