Are you struggling to market your cannabis business online?
We all know the cannabis industry is becoming competitive, but acquiring new customers faster and cheaper than your competitors is essential for your business growth.
Whether you are an established dispensary, or a vendor to the cannabis industry, or have a new cannabis business that is struggling to get off the ground and grow sales – online marketing can help increase your customers and become a known brand.
We know it is hard for you to stand out from the pack of cannabis dispensaries offering similar products. However, there is a path to success.
A well-designed cannabis Internet marketing campaign is still the single most effective marketing tactic to grow your business (more on why in just a bit). Many of our clients spend their entire marketing budget in online marketing skipping any traditional marketing tactics (like billboards and flyers) altogether.
Why A Web Marketing Strategy for A Cannabis Business, You Ask?
New Customers Are Online
87% of consumers always have their phones with them day or night.
New Customer Behavior – your future new customers are all online. Online marketing is the most effective advertising to attract new customer leads.
It is an often-cited statistic that people check their phones 150 times per day and spend 3 hours or more on their phones. Those are crazy numbers – you have to be where your customers are, and that is online and on their phones.
We consume media on four screens that are all connected to the Internet (i.e. desktop, phone, tablets, TV).
When people need information, they go online for the answers. Google refers to this as micro-moments – that instance when someone has an immediate need, and goes to his or her phone or desktop to search for a local business that can help them.
The penetration of smartphones has given anytime access of information to people wherever they are and whenever they want it.
Be where your new customers are – online!
Also, the cost per lead of a customer acquired through digital marketing tactics is a fraction of the cost of acquiring that same customer through traditional marketing.
Why Not Traditional Marketing?
Traditional marketing is wasteful and inefficient!
For example, consider a direct mail campaign introducing your dispensary that you decide to send to homes around the neighborhoods closest to your location. There’s almost no segmentation or pre-qualification – this is pure carpet bombing. Nearly all of those postcards will go right into the trash. Your only is hope that your postcard and its message finds your target customer.
The cost per new customer in this scenario can cost hundreds of dollars and more for just one new client (I know because I’ve tracked these results).
Digital Marketing Provides Lowest Cost Per New Customer
Now compare the traditional marketing process to the effectiveness of web marketing for cannabis dispensaries.
Optimizing Your Cannabis Dispensary for Search & Maps
Someone goes to Google to search for a local dispensary nearby. Just the fact that the person went to Google and typed in a search means they are a pre-qualified lead since they had to type in your services – we know they are interested. Now all we need to do is get them to your business!
There are two general digital marketing tactics within Google to capture people searching:
Organic search optimization (Cannabis SEO)
Paid search (sometimes referred to as PPC or SEM)
Organic search marketing for your cannabis business requires a well thought out content marketing that revolves around the questions and queries your customers have and then ties into your practice areas on your website.
Without content, Google has nothing to serve to potential new customers when they search. For example, if you offer recreational marijuana but you only have one generic page on your site that talks about medical marijuana benefits with no page discussing the recreational cannabis, Google is not going to show your business for those queries. (read our SEO case studies – one of which is a online cannabis store)
Social Media Scenario:
We know Facebook is the largest social platform on the web. Marketing to new customer here can be highly effective although quite challenging within the restrictions on the industry itself. However, with the help of a Facebook marketing expert, it can be done.
With Facebook ads, we can find all the adults within 5-10 miles of your business that have interest in Cannabis.
How Much Is Digital Marketing Going To Cost?
This is one of the most frequent questions we receive from our clients – how much should I spend?
The answer all starts with understanding your cannabis business goals for new customers. Things to consider are:
Are you going to do Search Engine Optimization and Local Optimization?
Are you going to run ads on Facebook and/or Google?
In theory, the formula for online marketing of your cannabis business is simple:
- Acquire qualified traffic through paid search or social ads and/or organic search optimization and content marketing (SEO)
- And then convert that traffic to a sale once they find your business.
It does not matter how much you spend on online advertising, content marketing or SEO (related Cannabis SEO case study), if your site is poorly designed for conversion you will not realize as much success as you could have.
Profitable online marketing for cannabis businesses requires that efforts be integrated across online marketing channels: SEO (Google), Local SEO (Maps), Facebook, Email and others.
At 39 Celsius we have years of digital marketing experience. We can help market your cannabis business online!
Contact us today for a free consultation.