The Ultimate Guide To Cannabis Marketing & Branding

Cannabis marketing is any strategy a cannabis business or individual uses to promote their products or services to increase sales or attract new customers. Cannabis marketing strategies can be divided into online marketing and traditional marketing techniques (including print ads and billboards).

Online Cannabis Marketing Strategies

Online cannabis marketing entails getting your brand in front of potential customers through search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising, social media campaigns, content creation, email campaigns, and more. This type of digital marketing allows cannabis businesses to reach thousands of consumers and increase sales. 

Search Engine Optimization: Search engine optimization (SEO) for cannabis is the process of making your website or web page more visible in search results. When you optimize your site, you’ll be more likely to appear at the top of search results, which means more people will see and click on it. In the cannabis industry, the benefits of SEO can increase website traffic and brand awareness.

Pay-per-click Advertising: Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is used to drive traffic to websites or landing pages by paying per click to digital advertising platforms like Google or Bing. While this can be tricky for the direct sale of cannabis products, there are still many PPC options available for manufacturers and other cannabis business professionals. 

Social Media Marketing: Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to promote a product or service. Advertising on these platforms can help you reach your current consumer base as well as new audiences with curated content that speaks to your brand mission.

Email Automation: Have you ever been shopping on a website, only to receive an abandon cart email just a few hours later? That’s no happy accident: that’s a skillfully crafted email automation! Email marketing and automation for cannabis allow your company to sell products and grow your brand without violating advertising regulations. 

Traditional Cannabis Marketing Strategies

Traditional cannabis marketing strategies are still effective but can be expensive and time-consuming. They include print ads in magazines and newspapers; radio commercials; television commercials; billboards; direct mailings; door-to-door canvassing; fliers posted on walls at events like concerts or fairs.

Marketing your cannabis business is the most crucial part of the business, yet complicated. And the legalization of cannabis in more states is doing you no favor. More cannabis businesses are cropping up as a result, and the competition for customers is becoming tougher. So unless you have a unique product or service, you must find ways to stand out from the crowd and gain an advantage over your competition. Here are some tips you can use to market your cannabis business:

#1. Know Your Advertising Rules & Regulations (these differ between states)

To market your cannabis business, you need to be aware of the laws and regulations in your state. Each state has different rules, so you should consult with an attorney specializing in cannabis law before making any major decisions about advertising.

For example, in some states, advertising for a dispensary is much more restricted than marketing for edibles and concentrates. Understanding these differences will help your business not to clash with the authority. State laws can also vary from city to city within a single state. For instance, Denver has stricter rules than Boulder or Fort Collins when it comes to advertising marijuana products (even though all three towns are located within the same state). And while every state has its own cannabis rules, it’s worth noting that federal law supersedes any local rules regarding cannabis advertising regulations!

#2. Identify Your Target Audience & Perform Market Research

Before you spend any money marketing your marijuana business, you need to know who you’re trying to reach and why they should buy from you instead of another dispensary or delivery service. Also, determine what they want from your brand — what benefits do they value most? Conducting market research is the perfect way to answer these questions and ensure you’re spending your advertising budget wisely. You’ll learn about the demographics of your customers so that you can target them with effective messaging. Besides, you’ll know what kind of messaging resonates with them most.

#3. Create Your Marketing Plan

A good marketing strategy will help guide your brand in the right direction, so take the time to develop one before jumping headfirst into any type of campaign. A marketing plan should include goals, objectives, and benchmarks for measuring success (or failure). It can also comprise information about budgeting for different aspects of your business. This includes advertising costs—and how much time each task will require each month.

After creating this document, start making decisions on how best to reach your target audience. You can do this through channels such as social media and print ads. Additionally, you can reach them by using billboards along busy highways where people regularly drive by them while commuting and during rush hour traffic times of the day.

Cannabis Marketing is tough. We get it! Let ThrivePOP help create a cannabis marketing plan and strategy for 2023! Download our FREE eBook below:

#4. Create Your Content Marketing Plan

Once you identify who you want to reach out to, it’s time to create an effective content marketing plan. This includes creating quality posts that inform your audience about your products or services. Here are some tips:

• Create a blog on your website. This will help create an online presence for your business and give people a place to learn more about what you do. Make sure each post is well-written, informative, and engaging.
• Build topic clusters and pillar pages on your website.  A pillar page links to pages with related content, while the associated content pages link directly back to the pillar page. For example, a cannabis consulting pillar page has links to associated website blogs or internal pages that relate to specific areas of the provided service. These clusters of pages then link back within their content directly back to the cannabis consulting pillar page. This is an essential part of your SEO strategy because it builds authority for your website in the eyes of Google because it suggests providing a better user interface and experience. 
• Post on social media. Social media is a fantastic means to connect with potential customers because they can see what you’re up to in real time. For example, if you’re hosting a product launch party or offering a new strain at your dispensary, let people know on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
• Make sure every single post has a call-to-action (CTA). A CTA is an invitation for interested people to contact you directly or visit your website for more information about any given topic. For example, if you want people to sign up for the newsletter on your website or attend an event hosted by your company, ask them to do so via CTA at the end of each piece of content created.

See how pillar pages work with this simple diagram below:

#5. Utilize Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is an approach to cannabis marketing that draws in customers to your brand through valuable content, compelling offers, and quality relationships. Inbound marketing helps you establish a strong presence on the web by producing valuable content for potential customers to discover and engage with you. Inbound Marketing is a strategy where you attract potential customers by providing them with the information they need to decide on purchasing from you. It’s all about creating valuable content that helps people find out more about your business and convert them into sales later. It focuses on attracting traffic from people interested in what you offer without being pushy or overly promotional about it. It’s about providing value to your marketing personas! Developing a marketing persona is extremely important and helps you define your ideal customers’ needs. Creating a marketing persona takes into consideration the customer’s buying process and what is important to the customer. 

#6. Consistently Evaluate the Data

You’ll want to consistently evaluate the data you collect by looking at it regularly. This is important for two reasons:

• The data will help you make informed decisions about your marketing strategy.
• You can use the data to measure your success or failure (or lack thereof) in achieving your marketing goals. There are a lot of things that you need to be tracking.
• Some of these include email open rates, calls from mobile phones, and the number of users who return after visiting once before.
• Make sure you’re measuring metrics that are most important for your business.
• Measuring the right metrics will make your work easier when it comes to evaluation and decision-making later down the road.

Working with ThrivePOP is a great way to ensure you get the most out of your cannabis marketing and branding. ThrivePOP has helped countless brands grow, and we’d love to be part of your thriving journey! We’ve helped companies launch new products, improve their customer service, and increase sales by hundreds of percent over the past year alone. We know that when it comes to cannabis marketing and branding, there are endless options—but which ones are right?

With so many moving parts involved in launching a successful brand, it can feel overwhelming to decide how best to spend your marketing dollars. That’s where we come in: we’ll help you figure out which strategies will work best for your business before you even start spending money! You’ll get access to our team of experts who’ve worked with some of the biggest names in the industry—and they’ll be available 24/7 so that you can ask them anything about what we do or how we work with clients like yours!

In Conclusion