Craft Brewers in the Colorado Mountains Find Success and Preferred Lifestyle
Crazy Mountain Brewing Co. seems to be an apt name for a brewing company nestled in the mountains of Colorado. Not only is it more expensive in the mountains in terms of both real estate and manufacturing, but navigating mountain roads (especially in the winter) with trucks carrying beer can seem, well, crazy. According to The Denver Post, owners Kevin and Marisa Selvy chose to open their brewing company in the mountains because they simply preferred being in the mountains and the lifestyle that comes with it.
Crazy Mountain Brewing Co. is finding success regardless of their location — the brewery has undergone multiple expansions and now distributes its product to 15 U.S. states and Hong Kong, Sweden, and Japan. They aren’t the only brewery finding success in the mountains. Telluride Brewing Co. and Elevation Beer Co. are just two more of a string of new breweries popping up in the Colorado mountains that are finding a lucrative niche in the local craft beer business.
What many of these mountain brewers have in common is that their locations are a part of a lifestyle choice. According to Forbes, one ongoing study of what makes small businesses successful led by Professor of Entrepreneurship at Utah State University Mike Glauser is finding three major tenets of small business sensibility. The first fits these successful Colorado mountain breweries well — small business owners locate themselves in small towns because that is where they want to live and do business. Glauser’s study is also finding that successful small business owners are interested in filling a market need, for example, there being a lack of craft brewing companies in the Colorado Mountains. Lastly, these small business owners love doing what they do and getting their hands dirty in the real work of it.
Small business owners might also find a tactic for success in internet marketing. Mountain breweries and small town mom and pop shops are a bit off the beaten path, and one way that potential customers will find them is inevitably the internet. Taking advantage of search engine optimization is a marketing technique that is too important to ignore. An overwhelming majority of online experiences start with a search engine — nine out of 10 of them.
The Huffington Post offers a few tips from the experts on the best SEO practices. A quality website and quality keyword rich content are essential. Being a part of the conversation surrounding your business by actively participating in blogs, on forums, and engaging with customers is also important. Link building is an part of SEO, but these links need to be quality and from sources with authority. Using schema.org tags in meta headers ensures that Google will correctly feature a business when a customer searches for it. Most of all though, keeping up with the current best SEO practices is important.
