The Ultimate Guide to Market Your Cannabis Dispensary

Until federal de-regulation passes, there is one key strategy to maximize your digital marketing efforts, and that is increasing your organic traffic to drive leads to market direct to consumer.

Before diving in, it’s crucial to understand one thing: until federal de-regulation passes, there is truly only one way to be effective with your digital marketing efforts, and that is increasing your organic reach and generating leads to market direct to consumer. Increasing your organic traffic essentially boils down to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to help you rank higher on search engine results pages like Google, and developing a tandem social media strategy to attract people to your dispensary.

Because cannabis is not federally legal, creating paid ads to market your cannabis dispensary is not a real option. You must increase your organic reach.

Organically Market Your Cannabis Dispensary Online

1. SEO

The first thing we will talk about is the most difficult, but it is also the most effective for increasing your organic reach. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a term we use to refer to improving, structuring, and indexing your website so that your site is displayed to users when they search for a term relating to your business on a search engine, like google.

Sounds technical, right? Well, it kind of is. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things you can do to improve your SEO for your cannabis dispensary. We have written a detailed article on SEO for cannabis brands to help you navigate this.

1. Improve the user experience of your website.

In 2020, Google announced an update to their algorithm that included performance metrics in ranking your site. That means if your site is slow, isn’t well organized, has huge bounce rates or low click-through rates, your chances of ranking are lowered.  Your web developer should help you improve these metrics. We are happy to lend a hand as well.

2. Research your keywords.

Now that have improved your site performance, you need to find out what you should be creating to increase your chances of getting seen organically on google.

3. Write blog articles.

Blogs are a great way of connecting with people, and a great way to gain more organic traffic. Now that you know what keywords may bring high amounts of traffic to your site, you can write about these topics. Google will display these articles if your article is relevant to a user’s search query.

4. Know the best practices for On-Page SEO.

There are a few things that we go over in detail in our SEO article, but here is the gist.

• • • Correctly Structure the Headers on Your Website.

      Every page you create should have one <h1> tag and, from there, your other <h> tags should make sure users, google, and other search engines can clearly understand what your page and subheading are about.  Hint: you should be using your keywords in your <h> tags.

• • • Add Alt tags to your images.

      First, understand that the point of alt tags is to help a visually impaired person understand the purpose of your image in the case they can’t see the image. In this case, the text will display, telling the user what the image what supposed to convey.

      Google also uses these tags to understand what your image is about, and it can help Google better understand what your page is trying to teach users and display your page to people looking for answers you provide.

• • • Link to other content.

      Linking out to other pages both on and off your website helps users get the information they need and helps Google understand more about the context of your webpage.

5. Submit your sitemap to google

Your sitemap is an .xml file created by your CMS that provides google with information on your website. While Google will most likely find your site and index it eventually, you should submit this to google manually and request indexing of your pages to speed this process up.

6. Use Google Analytics

Sign up for a google analytics account and embed the code into your website. This will allow you to gain insights into who is viewing your site, what they are doing when they are there, what content is performing well, and many other insights that will help you fine-tune your digital strategies.

Social Media

Social media is a great ally for cannabis companies, but it can also be a HUGE problem when your accounts get posts removals and, eventually, even deleted.

In our article on how to use Instagram to market your cannabis brand, we go into detail about the best practices and huge no-no’s when using Instagram, but we have some tips for using social media here.

• • Create Awesome Content

While there is a balance between quality and quantity, you should always create the best content you possibly can within the timeline you have given yourself.  Maybe you want to share three pieces of content a day, and you have 5 hours a week for content creation.  Use this time wisely and know How to plan and execute an effective content creation session.

• • Think of your intended audience and how you can add value to their lives

Whatever you create should aim to improve the lives of your audience.  You should look to either entertain, educate, inspire, or convince them of something.  If your content is meaningful and you are consistent, you will gain traction.

• • Use Your Insights

Social media platforms provide you with amazing data on who is interacting with your page and what content performs well.  You can learn things like their gender, age, location, and when they are most active on social media.  This will help you determine what to create, who to create it for, and what time is best for you to publish.

• • Create and Use Buyer Personas

Through your google analytics and your social media insights, you should know a lot about your audience.  Create a fictional person (or several) and create content specifically for them.  Give them a name, a residence, a profession, what their interests are, what their fears are, what compels them in their day-to-day life, and create content that addresses this.  You should create for a person and, while it might seem counter-intuitive, the more specific you are, the better your content will perform.  Don’t fall into the trap of trying to create content that everyone will like.  The more specific you are, the better your content will perform because people will feel like it truly resonates with them.

• • Share Your Content to the Right Channels

The content you create should be relevant to the platform you are using and the audience it is likely to reach.  For example, posting a video reviewing a new cannabis brand probably won’t do well on Linkedin, but maybe it will do well on YouTube.  Similarly, sharing a press release about your company’s quarterly reports probably won’t do well on Instagram, but maybe it will do well on Linkedin and Twitter.

• • Tell People What You Want Them to Do

Do you want them to like and subscribe (can you guess what channel this might be?). Do you want them to share, comment, or save your content.  Tell them!  When you have a clear Call to Action, you will get more of the actions you are hoping for.

• • Create a Call to Action bringing people to your website

If you have created a great piece of content on your website, create a post with a little teaser and use a CTA to get people to your website.

Remember, the primary goal is to get people to your website where they can become a customer.  Create awesome content on your website and then post a teaser or a snapshot of this content to social media with a Call to Action (CTA) for them to check out your website.

Capture Customers with an Incentive to Join

Now that you have increased your visibility on google by improving your SEO, your social media strategy is on point and you are driving people to your site and into your store, a good idea is to learn how to create a lead capture form where people can connect with you directly.

There are many platforms you can use to do this online. Constant Contact, MailChimp, OptinMonster, and many others can be used to create and embed a sign-up form on your website.

Offer an incentive for customers to add their email and/or phone number so you can reach out to them with other marketing incentives to drive traffic and (again, the most important thing) improve the lives of your customers.

It is common to see a percentage off your first purchase for signing up, but anything less than 15% is probably not going to raise too many eyebrows. We all see the “sign up now for 10% off your purchase” pop-ups, but unless we are planning on spending A LOT, 10% may not be enough of an incentive.

Either way, you decide what you want to offer in exchange for a sign-up because this is the key to being able to execute one of the most powerful strategies you can implement to market your cannabis dispensary.

Email and Text Message Marketing

Now that you have captured people’s contact info, it’s time to use it.

Email and text message marketing are extremely powerful tools you can use to market your cannabis dispensary. You can offer deals with links directly to your store page, you can include pieces of content you have created for social media, you can share blog articles that tie people into your story/products/staff.

You have now started a real, one-on-one conversation with your audience.

Text Message Marketing

There are some cannabis-specific platforms you can use to accomplish this.

Alpine IQ, SpringBig, and Sprout CRM are a couple of the biggest ones. Regardless of which text platform you should use for your cannabis brand, there are a couple of things you should know about text message marketing and the cannabis industry.

Many service providers filter out any text messages that include promotional content. This can be done because there are a large number of texts being sent by one number, because the text triggers spam filters, or because your content is promotional. This means that using words like “deal”, “sale”, “offers”, and similar words will not pass through to your users.

The companies that focus specifically on text message marketing have some workarounds, but certain carriers like T-Mobile will completely filter out any messages sent by these companies.

Email Marketing

This is by far one of my favorites. Cannabis-specific platforms like Alpine IQ can also send emails, but the user interface is a little bit more complicated than some of the traditional email marketing platforms like Constant Contact, MailChimp, and the like.

Email marketing is great because it isn’t invasive, it provides a lot of visual real estate for you to showcase your content, and can be set up to share deals, stories, blog articles, and a lot more. What’s even better is you can create interest groups and send specific content to people you know will love it.

Here are some good guidelines to follow:

1. Create good content.

This is the golden rule. Make your shit awesome and make sure it provides value to your audience.

2. Segment your audience

You can segment your audience based on age, gender, or (even better) their favorite products. Make sure you create emails for specific people. You can have an email for bargain shoppers, high spenders, flower buyers, dabbers, and any other type of buyer you can imagine and send them emails that you know they will be interested in.

3.Find the best time to send.

Similar to posting to social media, there is an optimal time to send your emails that will get the greatest amounts of opens. This will take some trial and error, but if you monitor your analytics, you will be able to dial this in.

4. Monitor your analytics.

Whatever platform you decide to use, you should have insights into how many people opened your email, who clicked, who unsubscribed, and so on.  These are valuable metrics to determine what your audience likes (or doesn’t), what times you should send an email, and what CTA’s have worked well in your email

Using Weedmaps and Leafly

Weedmaps

Weedmaps has some massive negatives, but it is still a HUGE asset for companies to reach their target audience.

As of the writing of this article, Weedmaps receives nearly 4.5 million organic visitors a month. No need to say anything more.

Weedmaps allows you to be found by users, sell products directly on their site, and even configure delivery all from the Weedmaps site. You can create sales and discounts through their platform, configure your menus, embed those menus on your website, and more.

From the customer’s perspective, this is convenient, which is why it is so popular.

The downside of Weedmaps is it is expensive to run and, depending on your market, may not bring the ROI you need to make it worthwhile. The user interface on the backend is also not nearly as user-friendly as you would expect from such a successful company.

Furthermore, if you want to have premium features on the Weedmaps page, they essentially auction these spots to the highest bidder (and it is very expensive to begin). This means you could pay 3,000/mo for a premium spot (on top of the required monthly fee required to display your profile), then someone could come and say they will pay 3,500/mo for your spot. Weedmaps will come back to you and tell you that you have to pay more than 3,500/mo if you want to keep it. Not a cool business practice in my opinion, but I get it.

Regardless, if Weedmaps brings in tons of customers directly through their site, raises awareness of your dispensary, and potentially brings customers in where you can create a relationship with them directly, it might be worth it for your business.

Leafly

Are you ready for some crazy numbers? As of writing this, Leafly brings in nearly 11.7 million website visitors organically per month!

Leafly is one of the best websites on the entire internet for information on cannabis strains, which is where they shine. You can get information on nearly any cannabis strain you can think of and can even find dispensaries through strain pages, making it a user-centric powerhouse for people searching for information and products.

What’s even better, you can sell directly through their platform and even appear on strain pages (if you offer the strain at your dispensary). You have access to create menus, embed these menus in your site, create sales and discounts, and more.

It is very similar to Weedmaps and will come with a cost. Again, you will have to decide if you using Leafly for your dispensary and the high price tag (no pun intended) is worth it for you and your business.

What I will say is that the user interface for the business owner is much cleaner than Weedmaps and the pricing structure for premium ad placements seems much more fair, giving an equal share of voice to paying dispensaries.

Print and Radio for Marketing your Cannabis Dispensary

Going to traditional marketing strategies makes sense for some businesses. The upside is that you have more freedom in what you can say and do when you compare it to social, you often have assistance in the creation process from the publication companies, and you have the potential to reach thousands of people a day who see or hear your ad.

The downside (and this is a big one) is that it is very hard to measure the results of these types of strategies.

If you are a marketer, you want data. You want to know who saw your ad, who took action after seeing it, what time was the best, etc. With print and radio ads, this is hard to determine.

A workaround is to add a QR code to your print ads to a new landing page you have created. You can then see how many people have visited this page from Google Analytics and determine how effective the ad was because only people who scan the QR code will be able to access that page. The issue with this is that they may see your ad and go directly to your website manually instead, and there is no way you would know this. 

Discount codes can be used as well, providing people who see or hear your ad to save by inputting a code onto your website. Again, maybe this is too much work, maybe they just go directly to your site, and maybe they forget to use the code.

Regardless, there is still a lot of potential to use these methods if you have some ad spend you can push towards a strategy that you can’t monitor. It may still be effective for your business and there are some ways to measure the effectiveness if you are clever.

Conclusion

While there are many strategies you can use to market your cannabis dispensary, the most important things, in our opinion, are improving your SEO so your page ranks higher on search engine results pages, developing a social media strategy to grow organically, and using cannabis-specific marketing platforms to leverage traffic from other sites. This means more organic traffic that will bring people in for the long term.

Using social media is a must if you want to market your cannabis dispensary, and that is because it is one of the few ways you can get organic traffic.

Creating a lead capture form on your website will drive deeper connections and greater opportunities for you to reach your audience.

Using the leads you have gathered, you can begin to market directly to your customers with content that will improve their life and experience with your dispensary.

Using third-party e-commerce platforms like Leafly and Weedmaps could bring in some major flow to your dispensary, but come with a large price tag.

And, finally, traditional marketing strategies are always an option and still have some huge possibilities for your business.  

In the world of marketing, it is about strategizing, creating, publishing, monitoring, analyzing, and then repeating or altering your strategy. This is the circle of marketing, so enjoy the ride and make great things.

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