CBD Marketing for Beginners: How to Grow Online
By: Rachel Garland
Are you ready to grow your cannabis business online?
Then it’s vital to have a game plan in place!
Cannabis marketing is a big challenge for most companies.
After all, you’re operating in an environment that is not only highly regulated, full of grey areas, and constantly changing…
You’re also dealing with a space that has MAJOR advertising restrictions.
So, what’s a small cannabis business owner to do?
Get creative and be strategic!
Discover step-by-step directions to build your cannabis marketing game plan from scratch.
Create a CBD Marketing Plan
To successfully grow your cannabis business online, you need a game plan.
What does this look like in action?
Simply put, it’s getting clear on:
Who you are
Where you are
Where you want to be
How you plan to get there
Your cannabis marketing plan is like a road map.
It tells you which direction to go along with how you’ll measure your progress, and where your final destination (or end goal) is.
A lot of businesses make the mistake of flying by the seat of their pants when it comes to their marketing.
While you’ll need to act and adjust quickly to changes in the market, you also need direction.
Ask yourself - what is the higher purpose of your business?
Get laser clear on what you and your team are trying to achieve.
Creating a cannabis marketing plan will help you do exactly that!
Keep reading for seven steps to get started.
1.) Evaluate Your CBD Business
Clarity is key to successfully marketing your cannabis business.
Therefore, the first step you should take when building your game plan is understanding your business inside and out.
A few key questions to consider:
What three words best describe your business?
What makes your brand different from the rest?
What kind of experience does your product or service provide?
The better you understand your business, the stronger your marketing plan will be.
Pinpoint the stand out features of your cannabis or CBD business to position your company for success.
2.) Identify Your Target Audience
If your target audience was in a room right now, could you accurately describe them?
Cannabis companies that try to reach everyone end up reaching no one.
Define your target market to set your business apart.
One of the most effective ways to do this is by creating customer profiles.
Let’s use an example to put things into perspective:
Say you run a cannabis edibles company in Oklahoma.
Instead of just saying your audience are residents of your community, outline exactly who you’re trying to reach.
To put things into perspective, let's say you identify three main types of people your edible business is trying to attract:
Edible Lovers
Dispensary Customers
Special Events
Whenever your business runs a promotion, you cater your advertisements to one of these three target markets.
By getting specific exactly on who you’re trying to reach, your marketing efforts have greater impact, thereby building your brand and driving more sales.
3.) Check Out Your Competition
Who is your biggest competitor?
Being aware of what sets you apart from your competition will help you stand out, online and off.
Here are a few important questions to consider:
Who are your top 3 competitors and why?
What are their products or services?
Where are they advertising their business?
What are their top strengths?
How about their biggest weaknesses?
Who are their most important customers?
Answering these questions will give you more insight into your competitors along with the unique value your brand offers.
Use this information to dominate the market and set your business up for long-term success.
4.) Set Your Top CBD Marketing Goals
By marketing your cannabis or CBD business, what are you trying to achieve?
Chances are, you want more people to know about your brand and purchase from you.
Yet!
If you want to crush your goals, you need to be as specific as possible.
Just saying you want to make more sales isn’t an effective plan.
So what should you do instead?
I recommend setting SMART Goals
S - Specific (what are you trying to achieve?)
M - Measurable (how are you going to measure your progress?)
A - Achievable (are the goals you’re setting possible?)
R - Relevant (how does this goal support your business’s higher purpose?)
T - Timely (what deadline are you setting?)
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you run a CBD store in Tennessee.
Your top selling product is a 200mg tincture.
In fact, you can hardly keep it in stock because it’s flying off the shelves.
Which is why you decide to order double the amount of inventory than you normally do.
A great SMART goal to set would be:
I want to increase our 200mg tincture sales by 15% by the end of the 2nd quarter in order to expand our customer base and profitability.
Notice how specific this goal is?
That’s the aim here, to be as detailed as possible.
This way you identify exactly what you want to achieve to grow your business.
5.) Select CBD Advertising Strategies
Once you’ve set your goals, it’s time to define how you’re going to get there.
Meaning:
Select which promotional strategies you plan to use.
There are a wide variety of platforms you can advertise your cannabis business on.
Some of the most popular options include:
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
LinkedIn
Does your company need to be on all of these platforms?
In a perfect world, yes.
In reality, NO.
Let me explain:
The more places you promote your business, the better.
After all, you want as many people as possible to come into contact with your company.
However!
There are only so many hours in a day and there are only so many advertising dollars available.
Hence why it pays to be selective.
I recommend if you’re starting out, focus on the top three platforms your target audience is spending the most time at.
This will diversify your strategy (AKA you’re not putting all of your eggs into a single social media channel like Instagram, for example)
Plus!
You will be directing your efforts to the most valuable outlets, thereby maximizing your marketing efforts.
6.) Establish a CBD Advertising Budget
How much do you plan to spend on advertising each month?
Establishing a clear budget will help you put your funds to the best use.
Yes, even your small cannabis business needs to define how much you plan to spend on marketing,
Advertising is a must for every business.
Large corporations never stop promoting their products or services and neither should you.
In order to grow your cannabis business, you need to stay relevant.
One highly effective way to do that is by continually promoting your business, building brand, and expanding your reach.
Set a monthly advertising budget to invest in the highest ROI (return-on-investment) marketing efforts to boost your business.
7.) Put Your CBD Marketing Plan Into Action
You now know some highly effective ways to create your cannabis marketing game plan.
But it doesn’t end here!
As a matter of fact, it’s just getting started.
Once you have your game plan ready to go, it is time to start TAKING ACTION.
You can read about something…
You can plan for it…
But until you take action, it is just a thought.
Purposeful action is what separates the best from the rest.
Growing you cannabis business takes day in and day out effort.
Success doesn’t happen overnight.
But through consistent effort…
YOU WILL GROW!