Cannabis Organic Marketing
Building a cannabis brand is about building a community as passionate about the plant as you are. It’s about telling your story in a way that resonates with your target audience and knowing how to reach them.
Whether you’re a medical card provider looking to differentiate your practice and attract new patients, a cannabis dispensary seeking to increase sales, or a cultivator or processor building brand recognition for wholesale and pull-through retail demand, we’ve got you covered!
For Southern Crop, the challenge was how to grow a cannabis cultivation & processing brand and balance leading-edge science with community connection.
Our team provided:
- Fractional CMO services to guide marketing strategy
- A rebranded website with new content, social media, and email.
- A podcast to demonstrate expertise while connecting with the community.
- Support for grassroots marketing, including merch and print for events.
- Sizzle reels and social media, as well as SEO services
Results:
- Sales growth and increased market penetration
- Traction with podcast for cannabis community engagement
- Videos as effective tools to support B2B sales team
- Social media account growth
Cannabis Marketing Fundamentals
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- Paid Ads: Competition for attention for cannabis brands can be intense. Paid ads are a key top-of-funnel strategy. These may include marketplaces like Weedmaps for retail, Leaflink for wholesale, as well as presence with local advocacy organizations. And what if we told you that we can find any audience who has searched for your products or services, fits the right demographic, and perhaps has physically visited any location within the past 3 years to within 200 feet and serve ads directly to their mobile device? If you can describe where to find your target clients, we can reach them! We’ll get creative with our content to keep you compliant with state regulations.
- A Website That Converts: Your website needs to load in 3 seconds or less, look great on mobile, and tell your story in a way that sets you apart from other brands. Storytelling is our specialty. We’ll spend time with you to understand what truly sets you apart and deliver a message that resonates with your prospects.
- Local SEO: Your business needs to be on the map. This is accomplished by creating keyword-rich listings in hundreds of online directories, gathering reviews, and geo-optimizing your website. It is one of the most cost-effective and fastest ways to be found and should definitely be part of your strategy.
- A Newsletter & Blog: Find a way to regularly connect with your clients or patients, and fellow community members by sharing a monthly newsletter featuring your blog, upcoming events, pictures of your team in the community, or with guests, recipes, and tips, featuring you on video. Remaining top of mind will help with referrals and being the brand your audience wants to connect with. Our team is HIPAA-certified and highly aware of the need for compliant emails in medical states.
- Social Media: We’ll record videos that allow your prospective customers, patients and partners to get to know you before they get to know you. We can help demonstrate your credibility, answer FAQs, and engage with your target audience to make the connections that will help grow your brand. We’ll help you optimize your presence on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter and roll out a Reddit strategy.
Next Level Cannabis Marketing
- Do you connect with customers and patients after they visit in person or online? Do you capture their emails and phone numbers so you can continue the conversation? A CRM system is a perfect tool to automate nurturing those leads. Send customized emails that look like you fired them off from your account personally. Ask for referrals and testimonials, invite them to join your online community or follow your podcast. Did an initial lead not close? Send an automated check-in.
- Social Media Engagement: Visibility is the first step, but you’ll want to network online like you do at events. Join cannabis community groups or start your own! Comment on posts, share, and make connections. Host lives where you educate your followers, and interview experts and community leaders. Out in the community? Share pictures & videos! Overwhelmed? We’re great at capturing content and engaging on your behalf!
- On-page SEO: This involves optimizing the load speed of your website (like an untuned car, it will slow down over time), making changes to the code to be more search engine friendly, and optimizing your content for target keywords.
- Online Reviews: People care what others think, especially when it comes to cannabis and related services. The more 5-star reviews you have on META, Google, Reddit, and Yelp, the more confident a customer will be in buying from you. Even if they find out about you elsewhere, you can be sure they are checking you out online. Do you have a Google Business profile? Does it have hundreds of positive reviews? Are you active daily on social media reinforcing your brand reputation?
- Grassroots: This should be a key element of your cannabis marketing strategy. Attend events, bring merch, and speak. Also get to know your business neighbors. Visiting with donuts or pizza to say hello is always welcome!
ZenChange Marketing has really helped us elevate across the entire company, not only on the retail side but wholesale as well. They have helped us get involved in avenues we never thought about, including a podcast to reach our end consumer. They have identified areas where we need to improve internally, helping us to build message and core values to elevate and deliver what’s behind our brand. They worked with us to identify how to tailor our products to our target consumers. They know how to put all of the puzzle pieces together. They have dedicated a tremendous amount of time and effort to working with us, holding us accountable to delivering on time, and we needed that. Southern Crop and ZenChange? To me it’s all one and the same!
Joe Calvin, Head of Sales
Southern Crop