Traditional forms of advertising are great, but as the world moves further towards technology, having an online presence is becoming increasingly important. There are only 24 hours in a day, and you can only spend a fraction of that time on your digital presence, so how do you beat dispensaries and ecommerce CBD companies that already have a strong digital presence online?
Here’s some important things to keep in mind when developing your digital marketing strategy for your dispensary or ecommerce CBD business.
- Review the laws – Cannabis legislation moves at a breakneck pace, this means you need to be on the lookout for potential legislation changes including things like the SAFE banking act, along with local and state-level legislation. Along with the legality of your CBD or cannabis products, there are also special rules for advertising. Search engines like Google and social media like Instagram and X(formerly twitter) are constantly changing their rules and expectations surrounding cannabis and CBD.
- Set a budget for your digital cannabis advertising campaign – It would be amazing if all forms of advertising could be free and effective, but like most things in life, you need to pay more to see the best results. It is important to set aside some amount of money as an advertising budget and do your best to stick within that budget. This means picking specific channels of communication that will give you the best return, and being ruthless when you notice you aren’t getting the ROI you’re expecting.
- Know the KPIs – This works in tandem with your budget, don’t just throw thousands of dollars at a cannabis marketing agency without knowing what you’re measuring. Check in with the agency you’re working with or thinking of working with and ask them what KPIs they track for each of your campaigns. It’s important to be cognisant of the fact that not all campaigns are run with the intention of driving a sale. Some campaigns exist solely to increase a consumer’s awareness of your product and make them more likely to think of you and purchase your product down the line when they’re ready to make a purchase, not to turn them into a shopper five minutes after they’ve been exposed to your ad.
- Keep your website up to date – Many digital campaigns set a goal of driving traffic to your website – if you don’t have a sleek website that makes people want to click around, they will leave your website. The same way you keep your dispensary or home clean, your website needs to be clean and appealing to potential customers.
Go with an omnichannel approach
Putting all your eggs into one basket and only running display advertisements or only having an SEO campaign is like trying to drive a car with only one wheel. It takes a minimum of 7 different touchpoints to convert a person into a customer, and it takes continuous touchpoints after the fact to keep your brand at the top of that customer’s mind the next time they want to purchase cannabis or CBD products. This means running multiple campaigns and efforts at the same time, ranging from local events to display advertising to email marketing. Doing all of these takes much more work than just doing one, but the more engaged you are with your potential customers, the more engaged they will be with you.
