The Cannabis has an industry-wide stigma and some tight regulations to work within and trying to draw customers to your cannabis business or products can feel like a continuous uphill battle. This is one industry where you often cannot turn to social media paid advertising or most forms of traditional advertising.

Even in Colorado, where recreational marijuana use is legal, you have to prove that more than 70% of a TV station’s audience is over 21 to have your ad legally considered. And if you can, most networks will still shoot you down anyway. So, with marketing’s traditional route limited, what can you do to get the word about your cannabis brand out there?

Look for social media users and bloggers in your area who are talking about marijuana and the cannabis industry. Find the ones with the most followers and likes and ask them to give your cannabis product or business a shout out. Watch your own social pages grow, and your customers grow. Sounds easy enough, right?

But there’s one piece of the pie we haven’t mentioned: actually, getting the influencers to give you a shout out. While it’s nice to believe that just asking politely will work because influencers are just not unaware of their power. These social media influencers usually won’t give you a shout out if you have nothing to give in return. So how can you get them to give your brand some love?

These 3 methods can help you get local influencers to promote your brand:

While this is the most traditional route for getting cannabis industry influencers on board, it’s also one of the harder ones in the marijuana industry. Because marijuana is so strictly regulated, you’re going to want to make sure your gift isn’t breaking any laws.
Good news– if you’re in Maine, Massachusetts, Colorado, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington or Alaska, where recreational marijuana use is legal, it’s ok to give some (usually up to 1 oz) to your local influencers as a gift.

Be careful, though. Having marijuana is legal; mailing marijuana, however, is not. You’re going to want to deliver this product by delivery, by hand, or by inviting the influencer to stop by.

Influencers overall care about one thing: growing their follower base, gaining name awareness.

For an influencer, being able to pass a discount on to their followers means attracting more people to their work, and the more followers they have, the more discounts they get. It’s a cycle that proves to be very useful for the influencer and often the partner brand.

Offer the influencer a hefty discount of your product or at your business. Also. give them the ability to pass those savings on to their followers. If you can turn their growing follower count into your growing follower count, your brand is going to be in good shape.

This won’t always work for smaller cannabis brands with a low customer count, but if your sales are already strong, you may be in a good position to offer local influencers a cross-promotion deal.

What this means is simple: if they promote you, you’ll promote them.

A typical exchange could mean the blogger/influencer offering your cannabis brand or products a shout out once a week, in exchange for you incentivizing your customers to follow their blog.

Because following a blog is easy, your customers are likely to participate. Because shouting out a cannabis brand is easy, your influencers are likely to participate, too.

These three tactics are a good place to start if you’re hoping to work with local influencers, but don’t be surprised if you have to use more than one, or if they ask for a fee. Like any other media outlet, being an influencer is a business; you can’t expect them to work for free.

On the plus side, if you can get your influencer marketing rolling, you’re likely to enjoy a ton of likes, follows, and customers.

By following this guide, you are setting yourself up for success through brand awareness from local influencers. Keep your network expanding and you may even become an influencer yourself.