Top 5 Reasons Why Your Marijuana Dispensary Needs Digital Marketing
Do marijuana dispensaries need digital marketing? The short answer is yes, of
Therefore, new cannabis retail stores who may be low on capital and/or resources can benefit from digital marketing tactics like search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and social media marketing.
Dispensaries and cannabis retail stores can also use digital marketing as a cheaper and more effective advertising channel. There are many strict advertising regulations with digital advertising but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Regardless if you operate an online dispensary or an online dispensary with retail locations, there are several cost-effective digital marketing tactics you can implement to drive tons of highly qualified cannabis customers to your locations and increase revenue.
Below we discuss 5 reasons why your dispensary needs a digital marketing strategy and how you can grow your cannabis business with and without advertising.
5 Reasons Why Digital Marketing For Dispensaries Works!
Every cannabis business needs an online marketing strategy.
Local businesses, like marijuana dispensaries, really, really need a digital strategy because all your potential customers are searching to buy weed and you want your dispensary to show up in the local pack map listing on Page 1, right?
Let’s get into the 5 reasons why your dispensary needs a digital marketing strategy.
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1. Your Customers Expect an Optimized Online Presence
Let’s face it, customer expectations have not only changed but have increased over the last few years. Every single local business is expected to have an optimized, user-friendly, online experience.
If a local business, like your local marijuana dispensary, doesn’t have a mobile-friendly website, Google My Business Page, Facebook Page, Instagram Feed, and a Google Maps profile, people will go to your competitor who does.
Pretty much everyone will look for a website or social media profile when they hear of
Your customers aren’t likely to call the retail store for information as they’ll expect to find it online.
If potential customers can’t find any evidence of your dispensary online, they’ll most likely try a local dispensary that has a decent online presence.
2. You Can Reach Way More Qualified People
The beauty of using digital marketing to promote your dispensary is that you’re able to reach many more highly qualified potential customers than with traditional local advertising.
Plus, all digital marketing tactics are much more effective and much more measurable than traditional marketing tactics.
This is a super huge “pro” for using digital marketing assuming your dispensary sells your products online via your website as well as in your retail store.
Not only can you reach more potential customers for your dispensary with an effective digital marketing strategy, but you can also implement retargeting tactics and reach these people many more times.
People need several “touches” from your brand’s messaging before they decide to do business with you.
Retargeting, or remarketing, allows for you to serve customized messaging to different people based on how they’ve interacted with your website, social media content, or your digital advertising.
Retargeting/remarketing is a tactic used in digital advertising to enable us to show targeted ads on other popular websites to users who have already visited your dispensary website.
Therefore, everyone who’s been to your site, but maybe hasn’t purchased online yet, will see these ads while they are surfing other sites, browsing Facebook or Instagram, watching YouTube videos or reading news sites.
This strategy keeps your cannabis brand and dispensary top-of-mind and entices potential customers to come back and purchase.
3. You Can Upsell & Increase Lifetime Customer Value
Did you know that email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing tactics for all businesses?
Think of the amazing job Amazon does with their email marketing bringing you back to the site to shop.
Email marketing allows your dispensary to market directly to potential and existing customers without having to go through any advertising restrictions on social media and Google.
One of the best things you can do as a cannabis retail store is to collect email addresses from all of your customers.
The ideal way to do this is to offer them super awesome value in a regular email newsletter that they would subscribe/opt-in to.
Now you can send them regular content that promotes your dispensary. Things like your newest videos from recent events, your latest informative blog articles, new products, new strains, as well as a discount on their next purchase.
The success of your email marketing strategy depends highly upon the amount of value you offer your subscribers. You want them to engage (i.e. open and click a link) with every email and potentially share the email with like minded friends and family.
As you may have heard before, content is king. If you’re serious about an email newsletter you should really consider implementing an optimized content marketing strategy to help grow the newsletter and your website traffic.
4. Increase and Maintain Online Visibility
Digital marketing allows your dispensary to build, increase, and maintain a high level of online visibility.
Online visibility is a metric used by digital marketers that represents the overall digital presence of a brand or its products in the general online consumer environment.
Your dispensary marketing plan can include a great website but how are cannabis users expected to find your site if it’s not visible online on:
- Google Search
- Google Local Search
- Google Maps
- Bing Search
- YouTube
- Snapchat
- Trip Advisor
- Yelp
- Weedmaps
- Leafly
- Lift & Co.
- Etc., etc…
These are 15 more super great reasons why your dispensary needs a digital marketing strategy that includes c
Your dispensary’s digital marketing plan should also include search engine marketing tactics like implementing search engine optimization on your website along with a local SEO strategy.
By strategically populating your social media with daily content, and optimizing your website with the right keywords, your content will start to receive tons of engagement and will help boost your online visibility.
Other digital marketing tactics for dispensaries to increase online visibility include Google PPC and display advertising.
People go to Google, not social media when they want something specific. Like weed.
So a Google Ads campaign for your dispensary can help increase your visibility and help you increase sales because everyone will search Google way before they look to Instagram or Facebook when they are wanting to buy weed near them.
5. Your Dispensary Website Can Get 33% of All Clicks From Google!
We are huge believers of using SEO with any digital marketing strategy.
SEO helps your dispensary website get found in search results for search phrases that are related to your business.
So when people search for a “dispensary near me”, or “buy weed in [city name]”, your website will show up in the top 10 rankings on Page 1.
Being on Page 1 is great, but being at the top of Page 1 – for free – i.e. the first organic position under the paid advertisements, is much better than being at the bottom of Page 1.
Research has shown that a website that ranks on Page 1 in the top 3 positions in Google can get up to 33% of all clicks for that search query?
How does your dispensary get into the top 3 positions on Google, or Bing Search, for popular and lucrative dispensary-related searches by potential customers?
Easy. Make sure you implement a comprehensive SEO strategy into your dispensary marketing plan.
The increases in website traffic, retail store traffic, and sales will absolutely justify the investment in a digital marketing strategy for your dispensary.
We Can Help Craft & Execute Your Dispensary’s Digital Marketing Strategy
Are you ready for a digital marketing strategy to help grow your dispensary business and get the edge on your competitors?
A great place to start is with an SEO audit of your website to identify any website marketing or profitability issues you may have.
Or maybe you’re ready to start an optimized content marketing strategy and you need help with keyword research to find popular and lucrative keywords and topics.
We can help you with the above as well as any paid advertising opportunities to promote your dispensary on social media, Google, or popular third-party websites.
We offer a free 30-minute consultation over the phone or the chat app of your choice.
Please contact us using the form below.
We’re ready to help you grow!
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