07 Nov How to Market Your Cannabis Business
If you work in the cannabis industry, you understand how competitive it can be. With a growing number of cannabis companies competing for attention, how can you ensure that your business stands out among the rest?
The answer to that question is to develop a comprehensive business marketing plan that makes your brand known to your target customers. This article will help you establish the marketing strategy you need to ensure your cannabis business is a success.
Create Your Cannabis Marketing Persona
Our first marketing tip is not specific to the cannabis industry at all. Instead, this tactic is crucial to nearly every marketing plan regardless of the industry in which you work. Creating a complete marketing persona should be your first step when advertising your business, and it will help guide all your other marketing efforts.
So, what is a marketing persona?
A marketing persona, sometimes called a buyer persona, is essentially a representation of the ideal customer that your business is best fit to serve. The persona is not a specific individual person. Instead, it’s an accumulation of behaviors, interests, traits, tendencies, and desires that your ideal customers typically hold.
There’s no reason you can’t create multiple marketing personas for your business, but limiting the personas to one or just a few can help you maintain a clear focus in your marketing efforts. Making your persona, or personas, allows you to know the exact type of person you’re trying to target via all the other marketing strategies on this list.
Differentiate Your Messaging from the Competition
After you’ve created your marketing persona, you must assume that there are competitor businesses that are attempting to target and sell to the same type of person. As such, it’s vital to perform market research and gain a full understanding of your competition and what they offer.
Knowing your competition well allows you to differentiate yourself from them and create compelling and unique selling propositions for your prospective customers. Strong differentiation is often what causes consumers to choose between one company and the next.
Once you have differentiated yourself as a unique cannabis company, you’ll want to maintain that differentiation through most of your marketing efforts and your branding. Consistent branding not only conveys professionalism but also makes it easier for your target customers to understand your messaging and what makes your company preferable over the other options.
Make Use of Local SEO
Any business that’s marketing today cannot neglect the effectiveness of digital marketing. Digital marketing comes in many different forms, one of the most important of which is local SEO.
The strength of your local SEO determines how high your company appears in search results when customers use Google, Bing, and other search engines. Simply put, if you want your site to show up when customers near you search terms like “cannabis company near me,” a firm understanding and implementation of local SEO is a must.
It may take some time to learn SEO, but the results are well worth those efforts. Alternatively, you can always hire an SEO specialist to help enhance your company’s online presence.
Use Your Website to Educate
Despite the growing prevalence of cannabis businesses, many potential customers still have very little knowledge of what cannabis is, how they can use it, and the potential benefits or side effects they may experience. If you want to stand out as a trustworthy source of cannabis products, providing educational resources is a great way to achieve that goal.
Consider adding a blog section to your website. Your blog can become a dependable way to educate your customers about cannabis and the specific products you offer. This education will make customers that much more comfortable and interested in trying what you offer. High-quality blog content can also help boost your SEO.
Leverage Your Social Accounts
In keeping with the theme of developing a healthy online presence, it’s crucial to leverage your social media accounts as a marketing avenue. As we all know, most people spend many hours on their social media platform of choice. Since that’s the case, it’s wise to ensure your company is present at some point during those scrolling sessions.
If your company does not yet have social media accounts, it’s time to make them. Setting up Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram profiles and posting regularly will enhance your brand visibility and help drive more digital traffic to your site and physical traffic to your location.
Set Up an Email Campaign
One of the most successful modern marketing approaches is called email marketing. These email campaigns all start with actively collecting email addresses from your current and prospective customers.
Once you have a list of emails, you should make a regular habit of sending them promotional information. Consistent emailing will ensure that your customers always remember you as their cannabis company of choice. These emails are also a way of presenting special offers that will entice customers to visit your store.
Don’t Neglect Old-School Signage
With so many effective digital marketing avenues, it is easier to neglect some of the more old-school advertising techniques. However, while less sophisticated, these simple strategies can result in a surprising amount of interest in your brand.
Consider investing in flyers, yard signs, and billboards as a way to ensure your company remains visible in the physical world. You might be surprised by just how many new customers find your company via one of these traditional advertising means.
Engage in Community Outreach
If you have experience in the cannabis industry, then you know it’s no secret that the products you sell carry some amount of stigma among certain parts of the population. To reach the highest levels of cannabis business success, you should attempt to overcome that stigma as much as you can.
One of the best ways to reach that goal is by engaging in community outreach. Try partnering with a local artist of another respected business to set up live events. These events can signal to prospective customers that your business is reputable and legitimate despite any negative assumptions they may have previously held.
Your Cannabis Business is Ready for Success
If you’re a cannabis business and you’ve struggled to gain the attention that your company deserves, the information above should set you on the right track. Implement each of the marketing strategies we’ve presented here, and we’re confident that you soon see more interested customers entering your store or visiting your website than ever before.
