Generating adequate revenue is the primary goal of every for-profit venture. This makes marketing a crucial part of any business, regardless of the industry.
Interestingly, marketing has changed in recent years. Businesses can barely survive without a digital presence in this internet age, where more than half of the world’s population is connected via the internet.
Today, many businesses are incorporating digital marketing with traditional marketing, while some have become fully digital.
However, despite this upgrade in marketing strategies, the cannabis industry still struggles with branding and promotion due to its illegal status.
Why Marketing is Hard in the Cannabis Industry
Cannabis is still illegal at the federal level in the United States, even though medical marijuana products are now legal in many states across the country. This makes it difficult for cannabis businesses to invest heavily in publicizing and marketing their products to reach more customers.
Nonetheless, cannabis business owners can still use some effective marketing strategies in branding and promoting their products, many thanks to digital marketing. The internet is a gold mine for cannabis companies.
What is Branding?
In its simplest definition, branding is a marketing practice that deals with creating a name, symbol, or design that helps customers to identify and differentiate a company and its products from competitors.
However, branding is more than just a catchy name, logo, or design. Your brand is your promise to clients. It is customers’ expectations when they hear your business name or see your logo. And oftentimes, expectations are formed by experiences.
This means that every interaction with customers is sending a brand message. With that in mind, how you greet customers, talk with them, follow up, promote your products or services, etc., allows you to brand your business.
The experiences (good or bad) that customers gather while interacting with your business will determine what they will expect from dealing with your company.
How to Promote Cannabis Businesses?
Despite the limitations faced by cannabis-related companies, there are still some effective marketing practices that you can use to promote your marijuana business.
The cannabis industry is growing each year, and the global legal cannabis market is expected to be worth around $73.6 billion by 2027.
This shows that the rate of people consuming cannabis products is on the rise despite its illegal status in some regions. It also shows the potentials of the industry.
Here are some of the ways you can market your cannabis company to reach more customers, both online and offline.
Custom Products
One crucial way to promote your cannabis business is by offering customized products. It works every time!
You can imprint your business logo on the side of the products you sell to increase clients’ loyalty. For example, creating a custom rolling tray will be great because most of your users will use it and your brand will be right in front of their eyes.
Customers will become familiar with your brand every time they use your product. Some of the products that you can customize include lighters, rolling papers, herbal grinders, T-shirts, hoodies, tubes, etc.
Branding
As explained earlier, branding is an essential part of every business. It would help if you had a catchy name for your cannabis company and products.
Try to avoid using ambiguous and hard-to-pronounce names. Keep it short and memorable. You can hire a freelance brand name creator for this task if you cannot come up with creative names.
You will also need a simple and attractive logo that customers can easily use to identify your brand whenever they see it. The logo will appear on your website and products.
Lastly, try as much as possible to be polite when interacting with clients and potential customers, since their experiences with you will shape their expectations about your business.
SEO
No online business can survive without traffic, and this is where SEO shines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of getting free traffic from search engines like Google and Bing.
Although it takes some time to start seeing SEO results, cannabis companies can greatly benefit from this strategy if an SEO expert correctly handles it.
Search engine optimization will help increase the online visibility of your brand. Once your website begins to appear more frequently on search results, your traffic will grow exponentially, which will ultimately lead to more sales, all things being equal.
Tradeshows and Networking
While digital marketing is indeed the best way to promote your business in this digital age, it is still crucial for you to also market your brand offline.
Since there are some limitations when conducting traditional marketing on cannabis businesses, unlike regular ventures, trade shows and networking are the way to go.
Attending cannabis trade shows can help get the company’s name out of its stagnating coverage. There are plenty of cannabis events hosted in states where cannabis is legal, so attend as many as you can and connect with people.
Celebrity or Artist Sponsorship
Cannabis companies can get sponsorships from celebrities and artists, no matter how big or small they are. These artists or celebrities could be marijuana users or mere supporters of the cannabis industry.
This will help get your brand and products to the fans of these celebrities, and if your products and offerings are attractive, you will experience more traffic and sales.
Social Media
More than 3.8 billion people in the world are on social media. This makes social platforms one of the best means for cannabis businesses to reach and connect with potential customers.
Unfortunately, almost all major social media networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, etc., do not allow cannabis users to run paid ads since marijuana products are categories under “drugs-related” content.
Nonetheless, you can promote your cannabis organically on these social media platforms. You can do this by regularly posting valuable content such as images, videos, and short articles. You can also pay industry influencers to promote your brand.
Industry-Specific Magazine
Some magazines are explicitly designed for cannabis-related information. This means that you can leverage the opportunity and get your brand name advertised in such magazines. With this, more customers will get to know and learn about your company and its product.
My previous experience was writing for large Media Companies but I am now thrilled to be writing about a niche I am most passionate about. Working with Greendorphin is a dream come true and I now join the mission in educating the masses about the miracle plant, Cannabis
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