Where to start your marketing efforts of your cannabis business can be a daunting task. You’re already swamped with business and inventory, and now to add digital marketing too! We understand that struggle. We want to help get you started in the right direction with eighteen tips to guide you down the path to marketing success this year.

 

General Business Activities

Join Local Groups: Look at Meetup.com for group meetups around topics aligned with your business. Also, a search in google will help lead you to local organizations that have events. Get active, in person in your region and position your business within the community.

Cross Promotions: Look for opportunities to promote your business with other businesses. The bar shop next door could be interested in stocking your CBD infused salve. The natural health boutique in may be open to selling your line of edibles. Be on the look out for event cross promotion opportunity. An example could be a pet shelter to raffle off a gift basket of your company’s CBD infused dog treats.

Cannabis Industry Conferences: Be on the look out for opportunities to attend regional and national cannabis industry expos and conferences. Be sure to attend to the learning sessions at the conferences. View the exhibit hall to see new ideas you can scale for your business. Conferences are an opportunity to make vendor connections and seeking out cross promotional opportunities.

 

Local SEO

Google My Business Account: When someone does a search on Google, often a Google Business Listing will show up as well. You want that business listing to be yours! You also want all the information to be correct. Google My Business lets you post updates to that listing, respond to reviews and more. It’s a powerful tool to use. As a bonus, your business will also now show up on Google Maps.

Online Reviews: Word of mouth has gone digital and the way to maximize your online word of mouth is to get some reviews on review sites and directories. Testimonials on your own website are a good idea. If you want to maximize the effectiveness of positive reviews, you’ll also need to get them on third-party websites. These websites can increase your exposure, and people trust the reviews here more than anywhere else.

 

Organic SEO

Homepage Optimization: In SEO, your homepage is the most powerful, authoritative page on your website. Service and product pages are also important for your rankings and conversions on specific keywords. Yet, your homepage carries the most authority and the content on your homepage plays a huge part in its success. Your goal should be to have at least 400 words of quality content on your homepage.

Optimize Meta Tags for Local Search: Meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page’s content; the meta tags don’t appear on the page itself, but only in the page’s code. Meta tags when used can improve click-through rates from the SERP.

Backlinks: Quality backlinks are important to SEO success. Links are important since Google confirmed that links are a high-ranking factor, alongside quality content. Ranking without links is hard.

Online Directories: Online directories are today’s version of the yellow pages, they are useful. Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, and others all have online directories for businesses. There are also cannabis related sites as well. Your first stop should be to Leafly.com.

 

Your Website and Content

Target content to local customers: If you’re a local dispensary, you want to create content for people in your area, not say for five states over. You can always talk about national issues but some of your content needs to reach the local market. Even you’re a multiple location business owner, there are ways to tailor content to each location. Location relevant content also is a huge help to search and ranking.

Create Video Content: Create a video to advertise your local business. Upload it on Youtube and Vimeo and optimize it to your business and your city. For example, if you own a dispensary in Denver, optimize your YouTube video title and description for a dispensary in Denver and put a link of your website in the video description. Make sure your description should be at least 200-300 words. You can also drop your link of internal pages in the description.

Guest Content Opportunities: Guest content is a perfect way to get more attention on your site. Not only will the author want to share their content, their online community will notice it. You’ve opened your site to a whole new group of viewers.

 

Social Media

Share Local News Important to Your Community: An excellent way to be a part of the online community of your area is to share useful news. Not only is news about your business important but also news the impacts your customers.

Join Local Facebook Groups: Search Facebook groups for topics around your business and industry. By participating in niche Facebook Groups you can make connections with a wide range of people who may be interested in what you’re doing or selling. While sales isn’t the goal of most Facebook groups, you can share products knowledge that is important.

Use Cannabis Focused Social Media Platforms: There is constant growth of cannabis focused social media apps and communities being launched. You can’t get any more focused then being on an app focused just on cannabis.

Connect with Industry Influencers via Social Media: Look for who has attention on social media within the cannabis industry. You can find people who reviews strains and products to experts about cannabis law, activism and more. Start with finding hashtags are around topics you want to connect with and see who has a voice within those hashtags. Search YouTube for people who created content and have a good stream of views and comments.

Leave Comments on Local Related Blogs, YouTube Channels, and Websites: Participate in an active discussion on a forum, channel or blog that is relevant to your business. Also, if your comment provides contextual value to the discussion, share a relevant link. A good rule of thumb, is three comments before you leave a link to your site. Become an active member before promoting your business.

Learn to Love the Hashtag: The hashtag # is how you can not only join conversations across platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram, it’s where you can find leads and built your own branded digital community. There are several cannabis related hashtags to follow, some may or may not fit your business, look them over before jumping in. For using hashtags here’s two tips: Be specific when you use a hashtag in your social media posts. Also, don’t have more hashtags than words.

Social Media Monitoring: When it comes to social, people are definitely talking about your industry. It may be a medical marijuana patient wondering where to get the nest deal or someone who had a bad experience at a dispensary. What people say on social can be positive or negative, either way you can find opportunities to connect. Not monitoring mentions of your business across social media or mentions of consumer needs and feedback is a missed opportunity.

The cannabis industry is growing and changing on a daily basis, being “everywhere you need to be” can be a lot to take on for any small or growing business. With these simple local digital marketing tips, you can easily hold the attention of your audience and increase the chances of getting more leads. We can help you dive deeper into any of the above digital marketing needs. Our experts in the cannabis industry are focused on increasing your online presence with our digital marketing services.