How to Conduct Market Research with Cannabis Users

Attracting cannabis customers and maximizing your dispensary profits requires the right approach. Naturally, using the best marijuana marketing methods will help. However, finding out exactly what your customers want and how you can deliver it to them will take your efforts even further. In other words, you should learn how to conduct market research with cannabis users.

Market research is a key part of running a successful business. Before even starting a business, you should carry out extensive research on everything from the location you choose to payment methods to what kind of marketing your target audience will respond to. Even when your business is up and running, market research will help you continuously enhance your success.

Although the legal marijuana industry is still relatively new, you can find many valuable resources for carrying out your market research. You can also use traditional methods to carry out market research with cannabis users. It’s best to use a range of strategies to ensure you collect as much useful information as possible.

Here’s a guide on how to conduct market research with cannabis users.

Ask For Customer Suggestions

If your business already has a regular stream of customers, one of the simplest ways to get feedback is to simply ask them for suggestions. Many customers will be happy to share what they liked or didn’t like about your business. Conducting market research with cannabis users can help you gather these insights more effectively, allowing you to use the information to improve the customer experience your business offers.

Adding a suggestion box to your store is an easy way to do this. Allow customers to write down suggestions on a piece of note paper and add it to the box. Make sure you read their suggestions and take them seriously – especially when it comes to issues that multiple customers mention.

You can also ask for customer suggestions online. Allowing people to contact you via your business website is a good way to collect all kinds of feedback. Customer complaints can help you swiftly resolve issues and make your business better. Conversely, gaining positive feedback will let you know what your business is doing right.

Google reviews can also help you identify what your customers are satisfied or dissatisfied with. Make sure you set up your Google My Business account and make it easy for customers to follow you. Even if you receive negative reviews, responding politely and using market research with cannabis users can help you understand their concerns and make an effort to resolve any issues they have.

Create Surveys

Carrying out consumer surveys is one of the most efficient ways to conduct market research with cannabis users. Not only can you ask specific questions to get the answers you need, but you can collect answers from a huge umbrella of cannabis consumers by distributing your survey online.

Online survey tools like SurveyMonkey and Typeform make it easy for anyone to collect valuable feedback from customers. In most cases, surveys consist of a list of questions with multiple-choice answers – this allows consumers to provide answers quickly with little effort. You can also include text boxes for consumers to add extra comments.

After creating an online survey, you can distribute it via email. You might also want to utilize other platforms, such as social media and cannabis websites. The more responses you can get from cannabis users, the better. You can then analyze the feedback you receive and use it to improve your cannabis business.

Although surveys provide a quick and easy way to collect feedback, conducting market research with cannabis users can give you deeper insights. Surveys also have some shortcomings: many respondents will fill them out half-heartedly, especially if they’re too long or uninteresting. What’s more, surveys aren’t the best option for collecting detailed, qualitative feedback from consumers.

Use Social Media

Social media can help cannabis businesses in various ways. For one, social media marketing is an incredible way to attract more customers to your business. You can also use social media to provide speedy customer service – this will help you improve your customer retention and prevent you from losing loyal customers. You can also use social media for your market research.

Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and X provide an excellent way to communicate directly with cannabis consumers. Not only is this good for promoting your business, but using market research with cannabis users through these platforms can also help you gain valuable feedback. As such, you might want to ask questions to consumers via social media.

For example, if you’re wondering what kind of products you should add to your dispensary inventory, simply ask your social media followers what kind of products they’d be interested in. You might even want to ask weekly questions to boost your social media engagement. Adding hashtags to your posts can help you attract answers from even more people.

Many social media platforms also let you post polls. As such, you might want to host a poll to ask cannabis users which payment methods they prefer or what features they want most in a dispensary. Using market research with cannabis users in this way can help you gather more targeted insights. Of course, you can also use your social media pages to post links to your online surveys and get more responses.

Join Cannabis Communities

When conducting market research for your cannabis company, it’s good to get answers from consumers who are passionate about cannabis. As such, using market research with cannabis users can help guide your surveys, polls, and general questions. A smart way to do this is by participating in cannabis communities.

You can find all kinds of cannabis communities across the internet. For instance, you might want to join cannabis-related subreddits or even seek cannabis-themed Discord servers. You can also join marijuana forums. Cannabis business social networks can also be useful for interacting with cannabis enthusiasts.

These communities are great places to collect valuable feedback from cannabis users. You can ask users all kinds of questions about what they look for in a cannabis business and use their answers to improve your brand. Checking out past posts by users can also help you get a good idea of what cannabis consumers want.

In some cases, you can also use these communities to promote your surveys and polls. However, keep in mind that some communities will have rules against posting surveys or promoting your business. Actively participating in a cannabis community and using market research with cannabis users is the best way to collect valuable feedback.

Host Focus Groups

Conducting your market research face-to-face can help you get some of the most in-depth qualitative feedback from consumers. Many companies carry out focus groups where they use market research with cannabis users to ask their target market questions, gauge their reactions to products or services, and gain valuable insights into what consumers want and need.

As such, hosting a focus group with cannabis users is a smart way to conduct market research for your cannabis company. You’ll want to start by figuring out exactly what questions you want to ask consumers. You might also want to show customers samples of your products to see what they think about them.

When it comes to recruiting people for your focus group, you can use many of the same methods you’d use for getting survey respondents. For instance, you can advertise your focus group via social media, email marketing, or even by posting in cannabis communities. Using market research with cannabis users in this way can help you gather more relevant insights. Since focus groups usually require people to sacrifice some of their time, you might want to offer an incentive for them to participate.

Although conducting focus groups takes more effort than using online surveys and polls, you’ll gain high-quality feedback in the process. While you can carry out focus groups yourself, you might want to enlist the help of a marijuana marketing or market research company. They can help you figure out the right questions and even recruit focus group members for you.

Research Your Competitors

If you want to keep your customers satisfied, you should also keep an eye on your competitors. Even if your business is doing well, competing businesses might be doing something better or even offer something to customers that you don’t. As such, competitor analysis should be a key part of your market research.

Checking out the products your competitors offer is a good place to start. For instance, you might find that competing dispensaries offer product types that you don’t, such as cannabis-infused bath products or marijuana beverages. Using market research with cannabis users can help you understand which products or price points are most appealing. You should also check out their prices—sometimes simply offering more products or better prices can help you steer customers away from your competitors.

You should also analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. For instance, maybe you’ll find that one of your closest competitors offers online ordering for collection or in-store touchscreens for swift orders. Following their lead can help you gain more customers. Alternatively, you might find that they offer slow customer service. Answering customers faster can help you become the leading business in your area.

Competitor analysis is a highly effective way to find out what your target audience demands. Learning from the triumphs and mistakes of competing businesses, combined with market research with cannabis users, can help you improve your business to the point that your brand becomes the best option for customers. Make sure you do this continuously—there’s always something to learn from other businesses.

Check Your Sales Statistics

Collecting sales statistics can be incredibly helpful for cannabis businesses in various ways. For one, it can help you keep track of your inventory and ensure that you always have popular products in stock. However, your sales statistics also play a part in your market research. Analyzing data on your sales can help you identify all kinds of customer trends.

For instance, checking data on your sales might reveal that edibles and tinctures are becoming increasingly popular for your customers. You can then add more edibles and tinctures to your inventory and even focus your marketing efforts on these products. You might also discover interesting seasonal trends or find that specific brands sell particularly well.

All of the sales statistics you collect can help you identify what your customers want without even asking them. As such, it’s a clever way to continuously improve what you offer to customers without hassling them for extra feedback. You can also identify mistakes in your product strategy and learn from them.

Analyze Your Website Analytics

Naturally, you’ll need an efficient way to collect analytics on your sales. Many cannabis businesses nowadays use cannabis POS software. Not only do these digital tools make buying products easier for customers, but they make it especially easy to gather valuable data on what you’re selling.

Having a cannabis business website isn’t just helpful for attracting customers from Google and promoting your products. It can also help you collect all kinds of insights into consumer behavior. You can use your website analytics to figure out exactly what customers are looking for. You can then use this to enhance your marketing efforts and even improve your sales strategy.

Google Analytics gives you a range of useful information on how users interact with your site. You can also use Google’s Search Console feature to find out which keywords and search terms people used to find your website. Using this information can help you discover a lot about your audience.

For example, you might find out that many customers find your dispensary website by searching for “organic cannabis products”. You can use this information to offer more organic cannabis products. If a lot of viewers are finding your website by searching for “cannabis in Aurora, Colorado”, you can improve your content marketing strategy by focusing on local keywords.

Your website analytics can also help you in other ways. For example, if you find out that customers spend the most time viewing blog posts that have images and videos, you can add more visual content to your website. You can also update your most popular posts with links to your product pages to encourage more sales.

Conclusion

Knowing how to conduct market research with cannabis users will help you enhance your business success. Market research can help you gain more customers, improve customer loyalty, improve your brand reputation, and even attract more investors and business partners.

All of these methods can help you with your market research. You might also want to consider other methods, such as drawing inspiration from studies and surveys on the cannabis industry. For more information and resources for running your cannabis business, visit Cannabis Promotions.