How do you set your product apart from the competition? Be better than the rest. Not only that but creating and/or investing in a solid marketing plan.

Cannabis marketing can be tricky, considering the plant is still illegal at a federal level. It’s common for social media pages to be flagged or taken down due to promoting cannabis products or advertising the use of cannabis in general.

Check out this guide on how to market your cannabis brand on Instagram, where we dive deep into the rules and regulations of cannabis content on Instagram and how to avoid being flagged or deactivated.

We also took a similar approach regarding rules and regulations in our guide on how to market cannabis on YouTube and WeedTube. This time around, we bring you the ultimate guide to cannabis marketing, including everything from SEO, content, consumer relationships, and more.

Is your brand interested in building a marketing plan? Visit our page on how you can grow your revenue with Herb. Until then, see our complete cannabis marketing guide below.

The central element of cannabis marketing is finding a problem within the industry and creating a product that can fix it. That could be launching a dispensary in a town without any or creating a tangible product that solves issues like sleep, anxiety, pain, etc.

Simply put, find the problem your products can solve and explain to the public how it solves that problem. Lucky for us, cannabis is a problem solver for many. Recreational and medical users looking to cannabis for ease, clarity, pain relief, etc.

Once you know the relevance of your product and how it can solve different issues, only then can you dive deeper into the nitty-gritty of cannabis marketing.

Your brand needs to build a relationship with your consumers and those whose problems you can solve with your products.

Have empathy for your customers and their issues. They must know that your brand provides an unwavering commitment to your customers by helping them ease whatever issue brought them to your page.

One of the most important aspects of cannabis retail is providing your consumer with a consistent experience that they can:

• Expect
• Customize
• Rely on

As consumers begin trusting your brand and your products, they tend to return for that exact same experience they had the first time. When you’re building a relationship with returning customers, get to know things like:

• What is their lifestyle like?
• What do they look for in a cannabis product?
• What terminology, words, or language do they use (e.g., weed, gas, chronic, kush, etc.)?
• What other products do they enjoy/look for?
• Why did they choose your brand/product?

Once you know your customer, you can get to know what they like and what their lifestyle is like. That way, you can apply that to your brand and expand your marketing plan to include things your customer may be searching for.

When it comes to online marketing, SEO is a game-changer. SEO stands for search engine optimization, the process of bumping up your content in search engine rankings.

The higher we rank, the more traffic we land on our page. Increased traffic means an increased opportunity for generating more customers and brand advocates.

You might have noticed that many brands will include a blog section on their page with educational pieces about cannabis. Not only is this helpful for the brand’s existing consumers, but it dramatically increases their chance of engagement by providing content that people are searching for.

If you know a brand or site generating lots of traffic, use them as an example and see what phrases, words, or nuances they use to draw in customers. One essential part of the SEO process is keywords.

The SEO process involves using keywords, meaning words that will bump your content higher in rankings because of their relevance. However, keywords can change, and what’s popular today might not be what’s popular a month from now.

We suggest looking into a keyword research tool like SEMRush, which lets you enter different words to find the most popular and most searched for that week.

This also ties in with understanding consumers’ terminology and language regarding their products. Choose more professional and knowledgeable words like cannabis and cannabinoids to intrigue more formal and elevated consumers.

For recreational users looking for a heavy-hitting product, write how you would speak to them. Use all the lingo they would use, but ensure those words are commonly searched for (e.g., weed, kush, chronic, etc.).

Your goal shouldn’t just be to generate traffic and create brand advocates that refer you to other consumers of similar lifestyles and situations.

On almost every page of your website, there should be a section that invites consumers to drop their email for insider updates, new launches, drops, and news.

It’s an incredibly easy addition to your website and gives your brand an extra push regarding outreach, engagement, and turning fans into loyal customers.

Lastly, we’d like to leave you with a quote that we proudly stand by. “Content Is King.”

This quote is used to describe the effectiveness of consistent and excellent content in terms of marketing your cannabis brand. The more keywords there are in your written content, the better.

But this quote doesn’t just relate to written content. Your social media posts need to be consistent and excellent. Following a schedule to post consistent content dramatically increases audience engagement.

Consistency doesn’t just mean posting the same number of pictures at the exact times of the day. There’s nothing more visually pleasing than a page with consistent aesthetics.

That includes the overall quality of the photo (e.g., high-quality natural images vs. memes) and the post content type (e.g., celebrities, art, nature, etc.).

Your posts need to relate to your brand’s aesthetics. It ensures the consumer’s experience, creates a brand advocate, and keeps them engaged for extended periods of time.

If this guide is helpful and you’re ready to keep your brand growing, let’s discuss a marketing plan. See how you can grow your revenue with Herb.