90-Day Marketing Plan

1. Executive summary

Every activity for the next 90 days, what it costs, and when it happens. Built to do two things Alex cares about, in order:

• Grow the size of the brand (awareness, credibility, on-premise presence in Texas).
• Grow our social and owned audience, and tie it to revenue (not follower count, but demand that shows up as depletions and reorders).

Five programs carry the 90 days: Content and Asset Production, Texas Tech Partnership Activation, Website and Owned Digital, Paid and Influencer, and PR / Press. The website work is built in-house, so it lands at no external cost. Paid media is a dial Alex sets month to month. Everything is measured against a three-layer scorecard that ends at depletions.

2. Objectives and how we measure

We do not report vanity metrics. Followers and impressions are not outcomes. In the US three-tier system Santos Dioses cannot sell direct to a drinker, so the truth of whether marketing worked is depletions (cases the distributor pulls through to retail and on-premise) and reorders. Social and content sit at the bottom of the ladder as leading indicators that predict those depletions.

Layer 1 - Revenue truth (judge us on this)

Depletions by market and account, reorder rate, retail doors, on-premise menu placements, retail velocity (units per store per week).

Layer 2 - Demand leading indicators

Branded-search lift (people Googling "Santos Dioses," the cleanest demand proxy), store-locator (/find-us) sessions and clicks, newsletter list growth, quiz completions, "ask-for-it" signals from accounts.

Layer 3 - Content efficiency (not vanity)

Engagement rate and saves/shares (intent, not follower totals), influencer promo-code redemptions, email open and click rate, and cost-per-asset produced.

3. The programs

Program A - Content and Asset Production

The asset library the whole plan runs on, reused across website, social, ads, trade materials, and PR for a year.

• A1. Studio bottle library (ship-to specialist). Ship all three bottles (Reposado, Blanco, Añejo as available) to Tom Crowl Photography (Westminster, MD), a dedicated spirits ship-in studio that shoots real video pours and 360 spins, not CGI. Every angle of every SKU plus motion, with documented chain-of-custody. ~$2,500.
• A2. Texas Tech location shoot (Lubbock). One 2-day engagement, current bottles at the stadium and iconic campus landmarks. An emerging local Texas shooter ($400 to $900/day) rather than a senior commercial rate. ~$1,500 for stadium and campus combined. Imagery captured now, held for public use until the content lane opens.
• A3. Dallas bartender video series. A shoot day with our Dallas bartender on tequila education and his signature Santos Dioses cocktails, cut into a series of clips. ~$3,000 (below the $5,500 we paid the Dallas photographer for the two opening-event days).
• A4. On-premise and off-premise trade assets. Shelf-talkers and POS, table tents, signature-serve cards, case cards, staff-education sheets. Design in-house ($0); print and production ~$2,500. All POS at fair market value within the $300/yr per-retailer tied-house cap; no paid menu placement.

Program B - Texas Tech Partnership Activation

Santos Dioses is the Exclusive and Official Tequila Partner of Texas Tech Athletics (four-year Learfield agreement, term begins July 1, 2026), the single largest brand-building asset we have. Authorized derivatives: Red Raiders, Official Sponsor, Guns Up.

Proceeding now (non-public): co-branded bottle mockup and POS creative built against TTU's strict mark rules (no distortion, effects, or unapproved lockups; zero student-athlete NIL); game-day activation planning (South End Zone LED, club-area branded bar, Raider Alley); the A2 location imagery held for release.

Staged to fire on lane-open: the partnership announcement moment (our biggest earned-media lever); a Guns Up social series; Fan365 digital banner (1M impressions) and lead-gen sweepstakes (250K) routed to email capture; a game-day press event, participation cost ~$2,500.

Program B external cost ~$4,000. Contract signage and media are already inside the Learfield deal.

Program C - Website and Owned Digital (in-house, $0 external)

Built in-house on the existing stack (Vite/React, Supabase, Vercel), staging-first and reviewed to production. No agency or developer spend. Brand blue is used sparingly and never as an accent; the site palette stays black, white, and warm-neutral.

• Cocktail recipe section: add the hub/index page, expand the live library from 3 to the 12 canonical signature serves, fix the prerender indexing bug. ~3 to 5 build days.
• Educational section (/learn): a hub adopting the additive-free explainer with room for how-to-taste and agave/NOM basics. ~2 to 4 build days.
• Tequila quiz (flavor-finder): interactive multi-step, 6 to 8 questions, scored shareable result, captures email into the newsletter and featured in the Welcome email. ~4 to 6 build days. The top-of-funnel demand engine feeding Layer 2.
• /find-us store-locator: the conversion target for all social, email, and trade QR traffic (Texas does not allow inbound DTC spirits shipping, so every path ends at find-it-near-you).
• Design uplift (parallel track): polish pass plus 2 to 3 homepage concepts for Robb to choose from.

Newsletter / CRM (Resend, 1,015 subscribers): activate the built-but-not-live 5-email welcome drip; launch the monthly newsletter; the quiz adds a new capture source into the same list. No CRM migration.

Program D - Paid and Influencer

• Micro-influencer content: 2 to 3 Texas micro-influencers paid once for whitelisted video. ~$2,000. All disclose (#ad at caption start), all talent 25+.
• Meta partnership ads (the dial): run influencer and hero content to a targeted Texas audience. Start at $2,000/month, scale on proof. Audience set to 21+; Instagram and Facebook only. A 3-month flight is ~$6,000.

Program E - PR / Press (already approved)

The $15,000 launch-window PR budget is already scoped and Robb-approved (Alex sign-off pending): press samples, media kit, Tequila Matchmaker verification, trade wire, headshots, pinch-hit publicist, contingency. Regional Texas press is the target, positioned as a Texas launch. Shown for a complete picture; not net-new spend.

4. Budget (consolidated, 90 days)

Website is delivered in-house at no external cost. Meta spend is a dial, not a fixed cost. The PR budget is already approved.

5. Schedule

6. Assumptions, gates, and open items

• TTU content-lane gate. No public Texas Tech references until Robb opens the lane and TTU comms clears it.
• Newsletter drip activation is a pending Alex/Robb decision; the plan assumes we turn it on in Month 1.
• Account list for /find-us and trade distribution comes from Robb.
• Stadium access for A2 is assumed covered by the partnership; a location fee would be additive.
• Compliance guardrails baked in: Meta 21+; brand-level medal claims only; never "copper" (stainless steel); acres not hectares; no blanket "additive-free" claim until verified; unsubscribe and 21+ footer on every send; always "Santos Dioses."
• Unresolved, flagged not blocking: ceramic vs glass bottle, retail vs trade-only 3-pack, brand press-face, Jorge press availability.

7. Gap analysis, and more we can do

A pressure-test of the plan. Each item is a recommendation, not a decision made.

1. On-premise bartender network beyond one Dallas bartender. Depletions in premium tequila are won behind the bar. A small Texas bartender seeding program (the Reposado Paloma pushed onto menus across the Dallas beachhead, education sessions, a cocktail feature) is the single highest-leverage add to move cases. Compliant when paid for content and education, never pour volume. Recommend adding.
2. Retail and on-premise sampling. The 200ml Variety 3-Pack is a trial weapon; tastings convert faster than any ad. Worth a small allocation once retail-vs-trade-only is resolved with Alex.
3. Tequila Matchmaker verification (already funded in PR). Get additive-free verified early. It unlocks a real premium claim we cannot currently make, and it is cheap. Sequence in Month 1.
4. Awards as third-party proof. Enter the fall competition calendar (Eddie is an access node via the Las Vegas and Miami Spirit Awards). Cite at brand level.
5. Store-locator SEO and Google Business. /find-us only converts if people can find it. Claim Google Business and register the page for search.
6. The origin and craft story, not a founder face. With the brand press-face unresolved and Jorge's press use blocked, lead editorial with the estate story: NOM 1622, ~1,655 estate-owned acres in the Highlands of Jalisco, 72-hour brick-oven roast, no added sugar or coloring per the master distiller. Publishable now.
7. Close the email-to-revenue loop. Quiz to email to drip to /find-us is the owned-media flywheel. Route the drip's D21 email and the quiz result to the store-locator with tracking.
8. Measurement infrastructure before spend, not after. If UTMs, branded-search tracking, and influencer codes are not live before Month 2's Meta flight, we cannot attribute results and the whole promise breaks. Least glamorous, most important.