The Q2 2025 benchmarking report for UK craft brewers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK craft brewers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q2 2025 benchmarking report for UK craft brewers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK craft brewers, including BrewDog, Beavertown Brewery, Siren Craft Brew, Magic Rock Brewing Co., The Wild Beer Co, Cloudwater Brew Co., Ltd, Verdant Brewing Co., Pressure Drop Brewing, Duration Brewing, Burnt Mill Brewery, Unity Brewing Co., and Mondo Brewing Company.

The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online, and quantifies the gaps, risks, and missed opportunities for other beer sellers to win brand exposure, drive traffic online, and even increase in-store footfall, where relevant. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.

To see a preview and contents page of the Q2 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

Q2 2025 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these top 12 UK craft brewers, check out our quick-look table below:

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK live-in care providers or request a copy of the report for the full review.

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What The Industry Research Report Covers

The 70 pages of research benchmarks each site based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.

Driving Optimal ROAS from Paid Media Channels

Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will underperform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing.  Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long-term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.

For Q2 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK craft brewers was £9, with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £4 . This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively.

There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, Beavertown Brewery reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £1, and BrewDog has the highest at £52.

The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, Beavertown Brewery has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £214, and BrewDog has the highest at £464.

By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.

Technical Website Compliance,

Savvy  digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance. Brands within the brewing space will be juggling huge volumes of products for a wide range of flavours and alcohol variations. They’ll want to ensure potential customers can easily find what they need and aren’t met with dead ends if looking for specialist products. They'll particularly want to take care over key pages such as offers, new product launches, stock updates, and ensure that prospective customers can easily find key information.

In our previous audit, Magic Rock Brewing Co., reported 134 404 errors. This quarter, Magic Rock Brewing Co., remains the craft brewer to watch, and they’ve slightly increased their errors to 136. These errors can direct visitors to a dead end, so it’s important all companies regularly audit their website for these errors to reduce the chances of users abandoning their website.

Site Speed & Conversion Rate Performance

When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. Brewing brands will want to ensure they have a fast-performing site that gives off an exceptional first impression to potential customers looking to buy from them or research more about their offerings.

In our previous audit, Duration Brewing reported the slowest mobile site speed (19). This quarter, the mobile site speed ranged between 58 and 15, with Duration Brewing flagging the slowest mobile site speed. Given that there’s been a decrease in site speed for this craft brewer, they could be unaware of the impact a slow-loading website can have on users, such as increasing bounce rates due to impatience.  

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

Domain  authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that is not gained through sponsored ads. For brands operating in the food and drink industry, they should be working with digital PR specialists to identify opportunities and ideas for out-of-the-box, surprising PR campaigns.

A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it is generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. The DA this quarter ranged between 78 and 26, with Unity Brewing Co., flagging the lowest DA score. This UK craft brewer should look for missed opportunities to increase the quantity and quality of their backlinks, such as engaging in guest blogging and building relationships with high-authoritative websites with the same target audience.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions. The cost of living crisis and a drop in consumer confidence is having a wide impact across all non-essential sectors, as customers are cutting back on treats and expendable items. In the case of the food and drink industry, this could mean that customers are sticking to basics, rather than investing in alcohol, too.

Two UK craft brewers saw a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with Unity Brewing Co., and The Wild Beer Co., both reporting the biggest loss (-17%). For mobile, 4 UK craft brewers saw a decrease, with Unity Brewing Co., reporting the biggest decrease (-100%). It can be expected to see a fluctuation in traffic based on device, as some users have preferences, but all brands should ensure their website is suitable for devices with different screen sizes.

Universal Search Opportunity

Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a brand can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. Beer sellers could look to ‘images’ and ‘reviews’ results, in order to build trust with potential customers and help educate them directly from the SERP.

BrewDog remains the craft brewer to beat for the most Universal Search appearances overall (5,565) — a slight decrease from 6,562 in our previous audit. Unity Brewing Co., was previously the brand to watch, with 13 Universal Search appearances. This quarter, this craft brewer has reduced this result to 9. Appearing in Universal Search results can push content higher in search engines, making it more likely online users will visit the website, so all brands should ensure they’re making the most of this opportunity.

The Longtail Keyword Opportunity

Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for brand new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Beer sellers can look to their range of products for inspiration and guidance on longtail keyword strategy, including key terms such as ‘alcohol-free beer’ and ‘multipack IPA beer’ to make their website findable to prospective customers.

BrewDog remains the brand to beat for longtail keyword appearances in position 3 (1,097) and positions 4–10 (1,783) — increases from the previous quarter. All brands should monitor keyword impressions and click-throughs and identify which ones grain tractions and look for areas of improvement.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) hitting over 44 million users in 2023, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019. Beer sellers can use Facebook ads to drive awareness of low-traffic bricks and mortar locations, along with generate visibility on key product lines.

We’ve included screenshots of Beavertown Brewery’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK craft brewer has included branded imagery/video to help make their content more noticeable in a sea of posts.

Top Social Shares & Content

When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Generating informational content will help with longtail keyword performance (and ‘people also ask’ results), and beer sellers can look to include shareable content such as infographics to make on-site content engaging on social media.

Beavertown Brewery has the most Facebook Likes (69,000) and the most Instagram followers (148,000). All craft brewers should regularly monitor their engagement rate, reach and impressions, follower growth, website clicks, and conversion rates from their social media channels.

Website Readability & Accessibility

20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere due to inaccessibility and frustration. Beer sellers should ensure their site is accessible for all.

 In our previous audit, Beavertown Brewery was the brand to watch, with 359 accessibility alerts. This quarter, Beavertown Brewery remains the brand to watch, and they’ve increased their alerts to 371. These alerts can exclude some users, limiting their audience and potentially impacting their overall perception of their brand. 

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q2 2025 REPORT

To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Rory Tarplee..