How Digital Marketing is Key to Growing New Consumers for Cannabis Businesses
In states with legal marijuana, dispensaries are popping up on the local neighborhood corner and cannabis users are flocking to the new spots as they open. Now more than ever, it’s important that cannabis businesses stand out among the crowd, especially to attract new consumers.
In 2021, a new target audience is emerging in the cannabis industry. It’s no longer just your typical “stoner” stereotype. The new user wants to know more about cannabis and may have no prior experience with it. They are well-educated, often female and are researching health benefits, new brands and different products. These consumers are treating cannabis similar to people who do a wine tasting or go to a local brewery to see what type of flavors appeal to them.
Standing out from the crowd of cannabis businesses and attracting these new consumers can be accomplished simultaneously using a strategic digital marketing campaign across the right channels. After all, consumers are spending more and more time with screens — whether they’re scrolling social media on their phones, playing games on their tablets or streaming a TV show through their TV. Using digital marketing, you can identify a specific target audience and educate them with your brand message on the platforms where they are spending most of their time.
How do you do that? You need to target the right audience with the right message throughout the consumer journey. As you start thinking about your marketing strategy, let’s break down the key digital marketing solutions you should focus on.
DIGITAL BRANDING
The best way to get your message in front of the right consumer is to first build a specific audience, create your brand message and utilize the right distribution methods to deliver your ad to your audience during the consumer journey. Digital branding tactics include:
Keyword & Contextual Targeting. Display ads and OTT/CTV video messages are used for this type of retargeting. Use this tactic to target a new consumer as they are researching and educating themselves on the latest cannabis industry.
Cross Device Matching. Find consumers with both online and offline behavior that would fall into your specific target audience and deliver your ad to them through all devices and inventory available as part of the programmatic auction.
Geofencing. Target consumers who are visiting locations that someone in your target audience would visit. These locations could include other dispensaries, coffee shops and even gyms. Consumers who enter the geofence can be served a very specific message to their mobile device through a wide variety of apps.
With these tactics, it’s not about what websites or apps the consumer is on to deliver that brand message, it’s about following a consumer’s path and delivering your message wherever they may be. Limiting yourself to a specific website makes it much harder to reach the right audience.
CONTENT MARKETING
Content marketing is, essentially, free information that your business shares that educates, entertains and engages current and prospective customers. It could be a video, a social media post or a blog post.
It’s a great way to establish your expertise, build trust with your target audience and enhance the credibility of your brand. Blog posts specifically can also improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO).
Content marketing is extremely important in the research stage of the consumer journey as more new users are researching and educating themselves on this evolving industry. As consumers research, search engines will look for content with the best information and the right keywords. With a high-quality blog, consumers will be driven directly to your website for the answers to their questions. Then they can explore your products!
The ability for brands to educate about cannabis is key to growing a new consumer audience for cannabis products.
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
Social media is not just about posting on social platforms, it’s about growing engagement with your audience and building a community. After all, nowadays a business’s brand is 100% built on social media.
Social media can be a challenge for many businesses, and the cannabis industry has its own challenges due to restrictive policies on the major social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. These policies make it even harder for dispensaries and cannabis brands to build up their following — and they change all of the time, often without warning.
It’s not as easy as hiring a 22-year-old who likes to scroll through Instagram in their free time. To be successful on social media, cannabis businesses have to have a very strategic approach and full understanding of the rules and regulations for cannabis businesses on social media. Otherwise, your business runs the risk of being ineffective on social media or getting shut down.
Hiring a professional digital marketing partner can be very helpful for cannabis businesses because it takes the guesswork out of the changes. A good partner stays up to date on these, so you don’t have to. A good partner also can create an effective social media strategy and compliant content and coach your team on how to do it too.
Having a professional manage your social media will give you a step up from your competition.
STRATEGY
Strategy often gets left out of digital marketing proposals, but we believe it’s the most important part of a digital marketing campaign. It’s crucial that there is marketing strategy behind every advertising tactic, and that all of the strategies fit together like a well-done puzzle.
The true strategy often begins after the partnership begins with any marketing agency. For us at Cannabis Digital Solutions, it’s a combination of creating benchmarks to know what a good return on investment is, using the monthly reporting data to see how the campaigns are performing, optimizing campaigns based on the data, and analyzing the data to establish exactly who your new audience is.
Digital marketing is the most effective way to deliver your brand’s message to new consumers who are most likely to become paying customers. There are a wide variety of solutions that you can use, but it’s important for cannabis businesses to make sure their marketing is compliant with legal and platform-specific rules and regulations.
Want to know more about how Cannabis Digital Solutions can help grow your cannabis business? Contact us today to schedule a time so that our team can learn more about you and your business.
