8 Proven Marijuana Marketing and Advertising Ideas that Work

Whether you’re operating a dispensary, a marijuana store or any other kind of service related to the marijuana industry, it’s important to use marijuana marketing and advertising ideas that work. Many businesses use things like billboards, Facebook ads, and Google ads, but since there are many restrictions on marijuana advertising, you’ll need to get creative to advertise your cannabusiness.

Fortunately, there are still many effective and impactful ways to boost your marijuana brand. You’ll need to take full advantage of digital platforms and you may even want to seek out a dedicated marijuana marketing service to help you. However, many top marijuana marketing strategies can be carried out without too much investment.

All kinds of marijuana businesses can benefit from these ideas. Marijuana stores can bring in many new customers and even encourage repeat purchases. Stores selling smoking and vaping devices can also use many of the same ideas to reach their target market. Even marijuana-related ancillary services will find many of these ideas useful.

When it comes to good marketing, it’s important to cut out costly, ineffective strategies and focus on ones that will result in more customers, more sales, and improving your brand recognition and reputation. As such, here are eight proven marijuana marketing and advertising ideas that work.

1. Use Marijuana-Friendly Ad Platforms

One of the main boundaries that come with trying to advertise a marijuana business is that many major advertising platforms have strict rules against advertising marijuana. Most companies use Google and Facebook ads to generate buzz for their business. However, both of these platforms reject marijuana ads.

However, there are alternatives. While you may not be able to advertise your business on major platforms such as Google or Facebook, you can use third-party advertising services. You can use marijuana-friendly advertising services that place your ads on websites targeted at your desired demographic.

Not only is this a good way of getting around the problem of being rejected from certain advertising platforms, but it may even work out better. While these ads may not be seen by as many viewers, they’re placed on websites that are much more likely to appeal to marijuana users. As such, you’re more likely to receive clicks and make more sales.

Digital advertising networks such as Mantis and Outbrain are known for being marijuana-friendly. You can launch a successful ad campaign and your ads will be seen on niche websites where you’re likely to gain new customers. This is one of the best marijuana advertising ideas, especially for new businesses.

2. Boost Your Brand With Branded Products

Another extremely successful way to market your marijuana business is to use custom branded products. While it’s more subtle than a direct advertisement, getting your name and logo out there can have a huge impact when it comes to brand recognition and reputation. As more people become aware of your company, more are likely to become customers.

Many types of businesses use this strategy by branding all of their products and packaging. Many even sell merchandise to promote their brand. If you regularly see people with a certain brand on their t-shirt or even on the bags they carry, you’re much more likely to become curious and look into why the brand is so popular.

This strategy works exceptionally well for marijuana businesses, especially as there are so many accessories that you can print your brand on. For instance, you can offer custom lighters, custom grinders, and even custom rolling papers. As your customers use these products around their friends, new people will become aware of your brand and could even become new customers.

You can even give away custom branded products as promotional gifts. Many new companies promote themselves by giving out custom-branded merchandise at events or even as gifts to regular customers. You can get all kinds of high-quality custom marijuana products for your business at CannabisPromotions.com.

3. Utilize Email And SMS Marketing

Email marketing has swiftly become one of the most impactful digital marketing strategies- especially when it comes to encouraging repeat purchases. A survey found that a whopping 91% of American consumers are happy to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with.

You can easily set this up using email marketing software, although it’s important to only send out emails to customers who opt-in. Businesses often include a subscription box on their website, and also offer a way to opt-in to promotional emails every time a customer makes a purchase.

How often you should send these emails depends. According to research, 86% of customers would like to receive promotional emails once a month, although 15% claimed they’d prefer to receive them every day. Once or twice a week usually works well, although you should focus on engaging emails that offer something exciting such as special offers and product discounts. If done right, you can lead your loyal customers straight to another purchase.

Similarly, you should also make use of SMS marketing. Just like email marketing, this involves sending out promotional messages to customers’ phones after they’ve opted-in. Some customers even like to receive push notifications. You can do this using smartphone marketing software. Make sure you send out interesting messages- customers who receive too many uninteresting emails or SMS messages are much more likely to opt-out.

4. Use Social Media Platforms Effectively

While email and SMS marketing are powerful ways to encourage repeat sales, social media marketing is a great way to reach new customers. Social media is becoming increasingly important in today’s digital landscape. A report from Broadband Research found that over half the world’s population uses social media. 

On average, global social media users spend around 144 minutes on social media a day, with some users spending significantly more time online. While many users simply use social media to interact with their friends and see interesting content, it can also be an incredible platform for promoting your business.

Nowadays, many businesses boost brand awareness by posting engaging content such as memes, infographics, high-quality product pictures and more on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and more. The more followers you gain, the more likely they are to share your content. The more your content is shared, the more new people will see it.

You can even attract new customers by posting special offers or competitions on social media. For instance, you could offer a prize draw for free products to anyone who likes and shares your Twitter post. This can have a snowball effect, attracting more and more people to check out your products. You could also offer a discount to anyone who shares your page. These strategies can quickly help you gain new customers and followers.

5. Improve Your Local And National SEO

SEO is short for search engine optimization, and it’s one of the most important marketing strategies to use. SEO involves finetuning your online content to make it as visible as possible to your target audience on Google, Bing, and other search platforms. This involves using targeted keywords to ensure that the people who would be interested in buying from your business can find it on Google.

First of all, you’ll need a high-quality professional website. It’s best to seek out an experienced web design service to help you design a website that promotes your brand and encourages people to do business with you. Once you have a website up and running, there are many approaches you can take to boost your search engine visibility.

Local SEO involves making it easier for local customers to find you. You might want to use keywords on your website such as “best marijuana dispensary in Boulder, Colorado”. The more specific your keywords are, the better. It also helps to list your business on Google My Business and make sure you’re visible on Google Maps for any marijuana-related keywords.

It can also help to boost your national SEO, especially if you deliver products such as smoking devices across the country. This involves creating targeted content, building links from other websites, promoting your content on social media, and various other practices. It’s best to find a marijuana SEO service to help take your search engine optimization to the next level.

6. Create Targeted Marijuana Content

Content marketing is an effective marketing strategy that goes hand-in-hand with SEO. It involves creating content that can appeal to your target market, therefore attracting more potential customers to your website and eventually making more sales. Most business websites include a blog, making it easy to create content for their audience.

The best strategy for content marketing is to create strong, targeted content that users are likely to search for. For instance, marijuana customers might search things like “the best strains to treat pain” or “how to roll a joint”. By creating blogs targeted at these search terms, your business can draw people in and advertise your products via your content.

There’s often a lot of competition when it comes to keywords on Google. As such, it helps to make content targeted at specific, niche keywords. That way, you’re more likely to show up at the top of Google for these keywords. You can find out what people are likely to search by using keyword tools such as KeywordTool.io.

You should also be using social media to boost your content marketing. You can share your blogs and web pages via platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. You might even want to extend your content marketing by creating helpful video content on YouTube and shareable images and infographics on Instagram.

7. Get In Touch With Influencers

Nowadays, there are tons of successful content creators and social media influencers on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and various other platforms. These social media celebrities build up huge, loyal followings of users that view their content every single day. Because of this, influencer marketing has become an exceptional marketing strategy.

Influencer marketing involves making deals with influencers for them to promote your products or services on their social media channels. This instantly brings your brand to the attention of thousands of loyal viewers who can potentially become new customers for your business.

There are many ways that you can use influencer marketing for your marijuana business. For instance, you can get in touch with marijuana YouTubers and offer them free products to review. You could pay Instagram celebrities to post images promoting your products. You could offer a percentage of every sale that comes from an influencer.

While the most popular influencers will likely require more money, there are tons of smaller-scale marijuana YouTubers, Instagrammers, Podcasters, and all kinds of other influencers with loyal followings. Reaching out to these and working out a deal for them to promote your products can be a great way to gain many new customers.

8. Attend Marijuana Events And Exhibitions

Another one of the best marijuana marketing and advertising ideas is to attend marijuana-related events. While digital marketing can get you so far, it’s also important to promote your brand physically. Attending events that your desired customers and clients are likely to attend is a fantastic way to boost brand recognition.

With legal marijuana becoming more popular for consumers, there are now many marijuana events. Many of these allow companies to set up stalls or exhibition booths, allowing them to promote their company to consumers.

Marijuana business exhibitions can also be helpful. Not only do they offer educational seminars and a prime place to network, but B2B marijuana services can talk directly to marijuana business owners and make their pitch.

Attend as many events as possible to promote your marijuana business. You don’t have to stick purely to marijuana events, either. You may be able to set up a stall at health events, music festivals or other events where you can appeal to a wide range of people.

Conclusion

While there are some limitations to how you can market your marijuana business, there are also various proven marijuana marketing and advertising ideas that work. These eight strategies can be incredibly impactful for boosting your brand, gaining new customers, and encouraging repeat sales. If you need help with promoting your marijuana brand, check out CannabisPromotions.com.