Cannabis & CBD Marketing
For most companies, advertising on platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram is as simple as finding a reputable marketing agency and paying a monthly fee. However, if your company is based in cannabis or CBD, your online marketing opportunities may seem severely limited. The Good News: You can stop pulling your hair out trying to figure out how to promote your cannabis company’s product, service and or brand because it can be done!HOW TO ADVERTISE YOUR CANNABIS BUSINESS:
Running a successful business in the 21st century means you have an online presence. Having a website and promoting / advertising your company online is no longer optional, it’s a requirement. Due to the ridiculous restrictions on running cannabis focused ads, you must think outside the box. There are proven effective methods that you can still utilize to promote your cannabis business.
1. Increase your Google ranking with Keyword Research & Holistic SEOEven with the massive amount of growth in the cannabis industry over the last 10 years there are still plenty of keyword / ranking opportunities. There are an estimated 6.4 million cannabis related searches each month and most of the keywords used for these searches have low to medium competition.
75.1% of all traffic is taken by the top three results of a search. By using keyword optimization and high level SEO, you can move your business higher in search results which will not only increase your website traffic but “direct” traffic of this kind has the highest buying intent.
Steps:
- Setup Google Analytics.
- Register your domain with Google Search Console.
- Identify top keywords being used by you and your competitors.
- Using a tool like ahrefs or SEMrush, identify which words have the highest organic traffic.
- Update / change your keywords using HTML header tags.
- Submit meta data to Google.
- Optimize your websites speed.
- Optimize your websites mobile UI.
- Make sure your SSL certificate and other security is up to date.
- Make sure all social media platforms are linked to and correctly shown on your site.
2. Setup a comprehensive, automated Email Marketing campaignOne of the best ways to increase your revenue as a cannabis business is to make sure you are not wasting the traffic you do have. Getting a potential customer from point A to your website is no small feat. Every time someone clicks on your website, that’s a victory. There is no shortage of cannabis companies online, so treat your traffic right!
The average online business has a 47% Bounce Rate, (bounce rate – the percentage of visitors to a website who leave after viewing only one page). At True Social Marketing we find this number to be unacceptable, a bounce rate over 35% means you are either inaccurately categorized by Google, promoting your business incorrectly, or have a poorly built website.
Working to increase your website visitor’s conversion rate is always a better strategy than just pushing more traffic.
Focusing more on your website visitors will:
Increase your ranking on Google due to positive user signals.
Improve your Google customer ranking by providing more / better customer reviews.
Help you to improve your overall business by creating more open customer feedback.
Most importantly, it will increase your conversions (sales, sign ups, etc.).
Steps:
- Choose your email automation third party service.
- Setup and integrate your new email service onto your website.
- Use the information from Google Analytics to determine best practices / pages.
- Create a sales funnel based on user signals.
- Setup email automation for visitors, cart, checkout, etc.
- Split test your campaigns to increase success rate.
3. Drive more targeted traffic to your website with Paid AdsBelieve it or not you can run ads for Cannabis and CBD products, while there are more limits for these types of businesses, it can be done. Snapchat does allow for some Cannabis / CBD ads to be run if they fall into certain criteria.
With a growing user base of almost 300 million, it is the most established and recognized platform that allows paid cannabis and CBD advertisements. However, finding where you can run your ads is only the beginning. Running a well-oiled, professional and most importantly, effective paid ad campaign is complicated.
If you are new to the world of paid advertisement and do not have the budget to hire a professional don’t be discouraged, you can still run an effective ad campaign, its just going to take some time and money to get it right. When you pay an agency for ad management, you’re not paying for the ad itself, your paying for the years of knowledge required to read, interpret and apply the data collected.
Steps:
- Create a Snapchat business account.
- Read Snapchats advertisement rules and regulations, then read them again.
- Pick out your ad visuals.
- Write your ad copy.
- Build and launch your ad on Snapchat.
- Run your ad for at least 2 weeks.
- Gather all data from Snapchat, Google Analytics & Google Search Console.
- Read and apply your findings to your next ad campaign.
- Rinse and repeat.
WHAT’S THE MAIN TAKEAWAY:It’s not as easy to market or run ads for a cannabis / CBD company, but it is possible. If you take away nothing else from this article, remember this, no matter what type of company you run or what type of advertising strategy you use, its not going to happen overnight. Even companies like Nike, Apple and Walmart had to improve their ads, work on their SEO and split test their email campaigns. At the risk of ending on a cliche, advertising is not a destination, it’s a journey.
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