Brewing Up Digital Growth

British craft beer is a brilliant, messy, creative market & digital marketing for craft breweries has never been more important. Over 1,600 independent breweries are fighting for attention, shelf space, tap handles & online sales.

Customers are adventurous, price conscious & ready for a taste experience.

Fastest growing breweries are not the biggest. They’re the ones investing in digital. And we don’t mean they post on Instagram every week. They’re building digital strategies, understanding their customers & using data to make smart decisions.

• 30% of independent brewery beer is now sold directly to consumers. (SIBA, 2025)
• No & Low Alcohol beer sales grew 20% in 2024 vs 2023, with alcohol-free set to overtake ale globally. (IWSR, 2025)
• 54% of UK consumers always research online before a major purchase. (Statista/ONS, 2024)

• Invest in digital skills to give a competitive advantage within the beer industry.
• Create a laser-focused strategy that looks to eliminate budget wastage & offers a compelling value proposition to consumers.
• Use data to shape your campaigns so they land at the right time, with the right message.
• Embrace AI build your website & content strategy around AI overviews & LLM search prompts.

There’s opportunities to drive business growth by building on digital capabilities & strategies. Don’t wait for the markets to improve, now is the time to invest in your marketing whilst your competitors are standing still.

The UK remains one of the most significant beer markets in Europe, worth an estimated £9.5 billion in 2025.

Within this market, craft & independent breweries have been on a remarkable journey. The number of UK breweries surged by over 64% in five years, reshaping what British beer looks like.

There are signs of strain within the industry. In every quarter of 2024 more breweries closed than opened. By January 2026, 1,578 breweries remained active, a net loss of 237 compared to 2024.

This has come down to rising ingredients costs, rising energy costs, shrinking pub numbers, higher National Insurance & cautious consumer spending.

Whilst breweries are closing, consumer demand for independent beer is holding up. In 2025 we saw 55% of UK consumer drinking local craft beer, up from the 47% in 2023 (SIBA, 2025).

Breweries that are succeeding are finding new routes to their customers through ecommerce, subscriptions, taproom experiences & a strong online presence. The route to growth runs through digital & most independent
breweries are not yet making the most of it.

Strengths Rich heritage & authentic brand stories Strong community of dedicated craft drinkers Growing DTC & ecommerce capability Product innovation driving premiumisation No/Lo ranges expand market reach	Weaknesses Limited digital marketing skills across the sector Over-reliance on on-trade (pubs & taprooms) Budget constraints vs. multinational competitors Fragmented SEO & content strategy Low average order values without subscription
Opportunities No/Lo alcohol is the fastest-growing segment Subscription & DTC e-commerce scaling AI-powered personalisation & marketing Beer tourism & the experience economy Sustainability credentials as brand differentiator	Threats Pub closures reducing on-trade tap space Big brand acquisition of craft breweries Rising input costs (hops, grain, energy) Declining alcohol consumption Oversaturated market: 1,641 active breweries in 2025

Understanding you customer is the foundation of any good marketing strategy.

Who the craft beer drinkers

The core craft beer audience in the UK skews male, although this is changing, aged 25-44, urban & digitally active.

More than 80% of beer enthusiasts follow at least 1 brewery on social media & over 70% research products online before buying.

Craft beer is also broadening. No & Low alcohol is bringing in younger drinkers, women & more health-conscious customers. This is an important shift in the industry.

How they buy

In 2023, 68% of UK beer spending came from pubs, bars & restaurants. But that channel is under pressure. Pub numbers are declining & customer spending is cautious.

Direct to customer & ecommerce is a growing revenue stream

Some categories and behaviours are growing strongly.
Understanding these is where the commercial opportunity lies.

• Volume sales nearly doubled year on year
• Traditional style & create craft variations are performing well
• Guinness 0.0 introduced a new audience to stout
• Classic Bitter Ale & Stout grew 15% in value YoY in 2025

Ideas & opportunities:

Stout stories: how your carefully chosen ingredients make a standout stout.

Food pairings: ideal for restaurants, foodies & party hosts to make the most of your brew.

Seasonal releases: how you can enjoy stout all year round or new season variations.

• Alcohol-free is growing with no signs of a fad
• Sales surged 46% in 2025
• Non-alcoholic brewing companies grew 208% between 2016 & 2024
• 48% of UK adults planned to cut their alcohol intake in 2025
• UK government is considering raising alcohol-free threshold to 0.5% ABV to align with international standards which will reduce barriers for small brewers.

• Consumers are choosing quality over quantity.
• Good news for craft breweries.
• There’s high demand for world beers, craft lager & craft stout.

Ideas & opportunities:

Limited editions
Small-batch releases
Brewery collaborations
How your brew differently
Where your ingredients are from e.g. organic or locally sourced

• Breweries are becoming destinations.
• Guided tours, tastings, food pairings, beer festivals create high-engagement experiences.
• Local SEO is critical for this market
  ‘Brewery near me’ had over 33,000 searches a month in the UK.

The market is more competitive as we’ve already illustrated: wholesale volume is decreasing, customers are buying less, there’s more consideration to each purchase.

But this presents both a problem & an opportunity.

There’s more chance of selling directly to consumers as their habits have shifted to purchasing online.

A lot of breweries are also not using digital as well as they could.

• Small independent breweries often have fewer than 20 search appearances
• Sites have not been optimised for mobile shopping, where most consumers are now making their purchases.
• Email marketing is underinvested.
• TikTok is almost untapped by independent breweries.

• 92% of craft breweries use Instagram, Facebook & other platforms for engagement & promotion.
• Instagram is a top channel for product discovery.
• Short-form video content (Reels, YouTube shorts) delivers the highest engagement of any content format.

Search data can tell you what your potential customers want & when they want it.

Generic terms like ‘craft beer UK’ attract high search volumes but are extremely competitive. Big brands & large retailers dominate those results. Trying to rank for them on a modest budget is expensive & slow.

Style-specific and product-specific searches like ‘hazy IPA UK’, ‘craft stout delivery’, or ‘alcohol free craft beer case’ attract buyers who already know what they want. Less competitive. More intent. More likely to convert.

Craft beer search behaviour is predictably seasonal.
Knowing the pattern means you can plan your content & campaigns to land at exactly the right time.

Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Research	30%	28%	32%	35%	40%	50%	58%	70%	85%	90%	80%	68%
Purchase	20%	18%	22%	28%	30%	45%	55%	60%	72%	88%	95%	100%

_{based on UK craft beer search trend patterns. Source: Google Trends UK, 2024-25}

Summer also has it’s own spike. Lighter lagers, pale ales & festivals bring demand in June, July & August.

Taproom experiences & beer garden searches surge during warm weather.

Align content & promotions with these predictable cycles to make your budget work more efficiently for you.

You have great beer, a real story & people who care about what you do.

What you need now is a digital strategy that gets you in front of the right people, at the right moment & turns visitors into loyal customers.

Most independent breweries compete for broad terms & get drowned out by bigger players with bigger budgets.

The smarter play is long-tail keyphrases: specific, intent-rich searches that attract people who have already decided what they want.
A search for ‘craft beer’ could be anyone. A search for ‘best hazy IPA UK delivery’ is someone ready to order.
Building product pages, style guides & gift selectors around these specific terms is where independents can genuinely outrank the big brands.

Your consumers are doing more research before they buy.

45% of consumers report doing more research to make sure their needs are met before purchasing. Your website needs to be more than a shop. It needs to be worth visiting.

Think about creating different types of content that will engage your customers: brewing process stories, brewer interviews, food pairing guides, behind-the-scenes brewery content, collaboration announcements, event write-ups. These create emotional connection, improve your performance on search & AI through longer dwell time & generate the kind of social sharing that money cannot buy.

Google’s AI Overviews now appear at the top of many search results pages & tools like ChatGPT & Claude are increasingly used to discover new brands & products.

The breweries with clear, structured, genuinely helpful content are the ones benefiting. Those with thin product pages & no content strategy are
losing visibility.

Create detailed style guides, food pairing articles & answer FAQs like
‘what is a NEIPA?’ .

These all help to position your brewery as the authority that AI search surfaces when someone asks about craft beer.
It is a long-term investment in visibility that compounds over time.

We work with ambitious marketing teams to build digital capability, make your budget work more efficiently & create strategies that actually drive growth.

Get more from the same budget	We find efficiencies & cut waste so your marketing works harder without spending more.
Get more from more budget	We spot the growth opportunities worth investing in & build the strategy to capture them.
Get the same from less budget	We cut through the noise & refocus your effort on the activities that actually drive revenue.
Deep advisory	We work within your team, on your business, building strategy & real accountability.
Bespoke training	We make training stick. Our programmes drive long-term performance, not just knowledge.
Holistic approach	We blend strategy design with training & advisory to maximise return across all channels.

1. Marketing Review: Discover & Uncover
   We roll up our sleeves & dig under the bonnet of your digital presence. We build a clear benchmark for what good looks like & where your biggest opportunities lie.
2. Growth Plan: Pinpoint & Prioritise
   Anchored in real experience & informed by data, we create a clear strategic pathway to growth. A laser-focused & easy-to-understand plan with the commercial outcomes that matter to you.
3. Advisory: Guide & Strengthen
   We become an extension of your team. Training, guiding & empowering your people to deliver outstanding digital performance. You get decades of digital marketing expertise working alongside you.

Contact Us & we’ll arrange a discovery call.
We’ll bring the insights & you bring the beer?

Sources

The following sources were used in the preparation of this report:

• IBISWorld: UK Craft Beer Production Industry Analysis, June 2025. ibisworld.com
• SIBA: Society of Independent Brewers, British Craft Beer Report and 2025 data. siba.co.uk
• CGA by NIQ: UK On-Trade Beer Data, 2024.
• IWSR: No and Low Alcohol Report, 2025. iwsrdrinks.com
• Mintel: UK Beer Market Report 2025, January 2026. store.mintel.com
• Morning Advertiser: How Popular Is Craft Beer in Pubs in 2025, March 2025. morningadvertiser.co.uk
• Market Research Future: UK Craft Beer Market Report 2025-2035. marketresearchfuture.com
• Google / Ipsos: Consumer Continuous Study, June 2023.
• Accio: Top Selling Beers in the UK 2025. accio.com
• Apex B2B: 2025 Trends in B2B Food and Beverage, October 2024. apexb2b.com
• UK Government: 10 Year Health Plan for England, July 2025. gov.uk
• UK Craft Brewers Digital Marketing Benchmark Reports Q1-Q3 2025. clickthrough-marketing.com
• ICS Digital: Beer Subscription Boxes SEO Strategy Review. ics-digital.com
• DMA UK: Marketer Email Tracker 2021. dma.org.uk
• Statista: Attitudes towards Online Shopping in the UK, 2024. statista.com