After a lot of deliberation and hard work, you have finally set up your marijuana business and it is in full swing. How do you grow your business?
There’s only one answer to that – Marketing.
Despite what kind of business you start, irrespective of the niche, marketing your business yields the results and growth that you visualize for your business in the long run. However, what you need to realize is that marketing your marijuana business involves a lot.
From strategizing to implementation, there are a lot of things that you have to be mindful of. This post will walk you through the top 18 marketing tips to grow your marijuana business.
1. Verify your Google Business Profile
Most marijuana business started as local businesses, which means that your target audience is the people around in the state and city. Having a verified Google Business profile is thus important.
You have to create one using the Google My Business account and then verify your ownership of the business from there.
The better you optimize your Google Business profile, the easier it will become for you to market your business to the target audience. Search engine optimization for your business profile and your website is crucial for pushing your business in the right direction.
2. Sort out a functional website
When you are starting your marijuana business, we’d recommend taking it online. The offline business will only take you so far. So, leverage the power of the internet and create a website.
However, when you are creating a website to target a wider spectrum of audiences, focus on creating a functional website. The last thing you want is to create a website that crashes and doesn’t allow seamless order placing.
We’d recommend hiring a website developer to take over this process. Also, when setting up a website, optimize the website so it runs equally fast on mobile phones.
3. Focus on Search engine optimization (SEO)
There’s no growth to a business without SEO. If your business’ website or business profile doesn’t show up on Google’s search result, people won’t even know about your existence. That’s not something you want for yourself or your business.
So, focus on implementing SEO every step of the way.
SEO isn’t one thing. It isn’t just about stuffing your website with relevant keywords. Instead, it focuses on optimizing every part of the business’ listing on the internet for maximum exposure.
Try to focus on location-based results because that brings maximum growth for your marijuana business in the long run.
4. Create a Business Blog
Marijuana is a concept that not every people is aware of. Everyone knows what it is and what it does but they might not know how to use it for maximum benefits.
Depending on which niche of marijuana business you are venturing into, we’d recommend that you indulge in an informative business blog too. This will make all the difference, especially in bringing in a lot of your target audience to your business.
Besides sharing information on the blog, you can also leverage it to maximize your promotions to your target audience. Blend your business blog to your brand’s voice because that’s what makes all the difference in the end.
5. Share your Content
Simply creating informative content on your business blog isn’t enough if you don’t promote it.
You can use the generated content on your blog and use that to cross-promote across other platforms, be it on social media platforms or via newsletters.
Use the content to attract more interested customers who are willing to share their emails for a printable guide or a freebie. Also, with credible and viable content on your platform, you can leverage that to get backlinks to your business blog for further credibility.
6. Use Google Ads
The organic growth of your marijuana business is optimal. However, when you start a business from scratch, achieving that isn’t easy. You’d face a lot of roadblocks trying to take your business from 0 to the top.
So, why not tweak your way of marketing and run Google Ads. Contrary to what you think or what people say, running ads for your business isn’t a bad thing.
Instead, it is a shortcut that can connect you to your target audience more quickly. The use of Google Ads allows your business to pop up on top of the search engine whenever someone searches with keywords related to your business.
This enhances visibility and promotes better sales and conversion for your business.
7. Optimize your business listings
When leveraging the internet for your marijuana business’ growth, you need to make use of local directories and listings.
Creating a listing isn’t enough, especially if you don’t optimize it. So, this is where you need to step in and do the work.
Besides ensuring that your listing has all the relevant information, you also need to ensure that your listing is attractive and brings in more and more of your target audience.
Also, keep track of your listing so you can fix any inaccuracies or mistakes that pop up now and then.
8. Encourage your customers to leave reviews
Today’s consumers are driven by user-generated content. Every single consumer is now mindful of the products they purchase. Instead of blindly relying on the brand, today’s consumers rely on reviews.
So, the easiest way to grow your business is by encouraging your customers to leave reviews and testimonials. It could be on your website; it could be on your Google business page or it could be on your social media platforms too.
Reviews enhance your brand’s credibility and also create trust among the audience, something that can contribute to the exponential growth of your business.
9. Engage with the reviews
Simply getting the reviews for your products and stacking them to the side isn’t enough. Instead, you have to respond to them.
This encourages more and more audiences to share their reviews in real-time, something your marijuana business will encourage in the long run.
Responding to the reviews is also an amazing way to promote your business in the long run and add credibility to your marijuana business.
10. Leverage every social media platform
Not just Instagram, every social media platform is good for your marijuana business growth and equally needed as well. Instead of sitting back and doing nothing, we’d recommend that you prioritize every social media, including Facebook.
Since marijuana is a local item of interest, you can find a lot of your target audience there that you otherwise might be missing out on. Not just new customers, Facebook is also an amazing way to engage your older customers that you probably didn’t expect was possible.
Also, Facebook and Instagram allow you to run targeted ads that can further expand your brand’s exposure and extrapolate the credibility of your business. So, make the most out of it.
11. Share videos on YouTube
Besides running a business blog, we’d recommend sharing videos on YouTube too. It isn’t very effective, to begin with, but allows you to showcase the behind the scenes of your business scene.
You can also use it to amplify your audience’s knowledge about marijuana and its impacts. You can use YouTube to monetize your content as well.
The possibilities are endless when you know what you are doing. Also, while you are at it, ensure that you use your YouTube content to promote your products within the CTA that indulges your audience to buy them.
12. Conduct giveaways on Instagram
Another effective way to grow your marijuana business, bring in more sales and an engaging audience is by conducting giveaways. As weird as you think, people love free products, and that’s exactly what you have to make the most use of.
Also, when conducting giveaways, prioritize the loyal customers and audience first. You want to keep your customers intact on your social media.
And, when they win and feel appreciated, chances are that they will consider making future purchases from your marijuana business. Sounds like a deal, doesn’t it?
13. Get your hands on Pinterest
While we are on the topic of social media, we can’t forego Pinterest. The platform, although quite underrated, is an amazing marketing tool, especially for niches like the marijuana business.
You can share your image-based content with suitable links on Pinterest and then use Pinterest marketing techniques to amplify the post.
The more people see your posts, the wider your outreach will be with the business. Again, it is a hit or miss. So, you’d have to put your thought into it and see if it makes a difference to your marijuana business’ growth.
14. Hop on Tik Tok
If you live in a country where Tik Tok isn’t banned or restricted, make the most use out of it. We can’t stress this enough but video-based marketing techniques are gaining rapid traction and you need to make the most use out of it.
With Tik Tok, you can target a very specific demographic of the audience and enhance your credibility as a brand. However, you’d need creativity to make things a possibility, or to make your content go viral.
However, there’s no saying that you can’t make it big, provided that you do things the right way on the platform.
15. Join online groups or forums
The marijuana community is extremely enthusiastic and dedicated. This is to an extent that you have a range of amazing forums and groups online. You can find them on Reddit, or even on Facebook.
Instead of being an outsider, hop in. Not only can you leverage these forums to share and promote your marijuana business, but you can also use them to collect information.
There’s no better way of tracking user requirements better than groups. You can get to know what the audience is looking for and then implement the right strategies for maximum traction.
You can also get valuable ideas about your next product launch from these forums and make your marijuana business cater to the needs of the people directly.
16. Try influencer marketing
Finding collaborative opportunities with influencers with a marijuana business can be difficult. However, if you are selling products that contain extracts of CBD or other marijuana by-products, you can use influencers to promote them.
However, you do need to have a budget to spare for these kinds of marketing models, especially because they don’t come for cheap.
So, instead of sitting back, reach out to influencers with your target audience. You can approach them with the deal and then plan things from there.
17. Use local press
With the marijuana business, you want to reach a wider mass via the internet and the local audience via the local press. So, set aside a marketing budget for that too.
This is a more traditional form of marketing but it can make a lot of difference in the long run. You can enhance your offline sales and even onboard bulk orders from local stores that need resources and sellers.
Reach out to good press houses that have a wider reach in the local community. If needed, save up before you invest.
18. Network with the right people
Lastly, you have to network to spread the word. When you network with the right kinds of people, it becomes a lot easier for you to reach the right spectrum of audience.
You can attend networking events for local businesses and share your business ideas and pitch. You can also contact the small businesses and the customers directly in such events to further promote your business.
Networking can open up a lot of marketing avenues for your marijuana business that you didn’t think was possible.
If you are starting a marijuana business, growing it is equally important. With the right planning and proper implementation, you can take your business from nothing to the top. So, what are you contemplating? Implement the right tricks for maximum growth of your marijuana business. We hope this post gives you a comprehensive idea about all the strategies in one place.
