This is the first of two articles on how to market your dispensary to lucrative cannabis consumer segments in North America & Europe. In the first piece, we start with cannabis marketing tips for selling marijuana products to baby boomers.
To read how to market your dispensary to Gen Xers, go here.
How To Market Your Cannabis Dispensary To Boomers 55-74
The first thing to understand about cannabis dispensary marketing, post-legalization, is that cannabis is a consumer packaged good and should be viewed as a CPG item when it comes to marketing your bud.
Cannabis dispensary marketing may sound super simple and easy to the uneducated and inexperienced, but anyone who’s in the game will disagree and with good reason.
If you’ve been trying to market legal cannabis – recreational or medical – you know all about the strict regulations with your online payment processor, coupled with the tight (read: ridiculous) advertising restrictions with Google or Facebook, makes marketing your cannabis dispensary a huge challenge.
However, the good news is that we’re going to breakdown how to market a cannabis retail store and online dispensary to this lucrative target demographic known as baby boomers.
This cohort/cannabis buyer personas is already primed to consume and enjoy cannabis on a medical or recreational level.
If you’re not specifically targeting your marketing messages to people in these demos, you could be missing out on thousands of dollars of monthly revenue.
Continue reading to understand why it makes good sense to market your cannabis dispensary to this lucrative consumer group.
Here are 3 ways to market your online cannabis dispensary or retail store to baby boomers.
Why Marketing Cannabis To Boomers is a Good Idea
Remember when baby boomers used to be the largest generation in the United States?
They still represent a large group. Not nearly as large as Millennials or Gen Xers, but baby boomers now represent 25% of the US population and should be looked at as a very lucrative target demographic for your cannabis dispensary or online store.
For the purpose of this article, we’ll say baby boomers are born between 1946 and 1964 and grew up with Woodstock and Watergate. They turn 55 to 74 years old in 2020.
Don’t miss out on this lucrative demographic by assuming they’re old or ancient. You could be missing out on increased monthly sales by not effectively targeting your cannabis marketing to this group.
Understanding this demographic can help dispensaries provide the service and products that boomers have come to expect.
Here are 3 reasons to focus your cannabis dispensary marketing on baby boomers.
1. Don’t Dismiss Marketing To Boomers
Baby boomers aren’t disinterested in your cannabis products. In fact, it’s quite the contrary.
Boomers are the one demo that the cannabis industry is ignoring or underserving.
Yet, this demo should be near the top of your list when it comes to selling cannabis products online.
If you assume that just because someone is older that they may not be interested in cannabis, stop now.
Boomers actually seem to be among the most interested in buying cannabis because they’re facing different ailments that cannabis can treat, organically.
If you need another reason to respect this demographic, consider that 30% of cannabis consumers in fully legal states are 55 or older, according to BDS Analytics.
Look at it this way. Boomers are interested in weed because the understand and believe that cannabis provides the user with health and wellness benefits.
According to BDS research, 90% of boomers who consume cannabis believe it relieves pain, and another 90% strongly believe it has medical benefits.
Boomers also have a highly favorable opinion of cannabis if it can help a sick loved one, with 97% supporting its use in such cases.
2. Boomers Look To Cannabis Dispensaries For Education
We’re firm believers in using education to market and promote cannabis and have been since we started cannabis marketing in 2017.
If you lead with education when marketing your cannabis dispensary to boomers, you will be successful over the long term.
Educating boomers works very well because although they may be familiar with cannabis, or more accurately, another generation of it, many boomers are not familiar with all the new ways of consuming cannabis as well as the new types of cannabis products.
This target group is open to education via digital platforms like email, Facebook, and Google search.
Boomers are well-known to be highly responsive to email marketing and spend a lot of time on Facebook, and even on Instagram.
If you’re able to engage with this demographic face to face, in your cannabis retail store, that can be a real win. Making boomers feel comfortable when they walk into your cannabis dispensary should paramount for your staff.
Friendly greetings give boomers the comfort they need to seek answers and education for the many questions they may have about cannabis.
More data from BDS revealed that for boomers who shop dispensaries:
- 60% name budtenders as their main information source
- 40% rely on cannabis websites
- 25% read cannabis-related publications to obtain information.
One of the reasons educating boomers should be part of your cannabis dispensary marketing plan is because boomers grew up being catered to. Don’t forget that they are referred to as the “me generation”.
They expect sellers to understand.
Just like with any time of retailer online purchase, customer service is everything to the baby boomer. They grew up with brick and mortar type customer service and hand-holding.
Pro Tip: If you’ve ever worked retail and watched consumers, or ever captured heat maps and screen recordings of your website’s visitors you’ll know that when a customer gets confused, they freeze and they don’t buy.
They leave the store our bounce from your site. So this is why you always should lead with education before the product. Whether it’s your cannabis dispensary or your online store.
3. Sales Opportunities Are Ripe When Marketing Cannabis To Boomers
Apparently, according to BDS Analytics data, almost half of baby boomers prefer inhalables, while 31% prefer THC edibles and 20% dig topicals.
What’s interesting is that there is significant cross-consumption in this demographic between the different methods.
For example, among boomers who prefer inhalables, 35% still consume edibles, and 16% still will use topicals. That presents a big opportunity for you to upsell!
One thing to consider is that the recent vaping crisis in the USA may shift many boomers away from vaping cannabis products to using edibles instead.
Especially if cannabis dispensaries optimize customer service to explain how an edible might complement a boomer’s vape use.
Once again we touch on the importance of educating the boomer cannabis consumer on the various product forms and consumption methods that are now available and how they can be used together.
Can you see how targeting this demo using these cannabis dispensary marketing tips can help single store growth for your business?
Pro Tip: Since boomers are open to cannabis education and consumption remember that they may use cannabis for medicinal reasons and not recreation.
Think about the aches and pains experienced by boomers. Edibles and topicals should be your boomer go-tos when it comes to relieving pain, improving sleep or avoiding prescription medications.
We Can Help You Market Your Cannabis Dispensary Marketing
This is part 1 of a two-part series. To read Part 2, please follow this link:
4 Cannabis Dispensary Tips To Sell Marijuana Products To Generation X.
If everything you’ve read above sounds like something your brand needs to market your cannabis dispensary, we can help you.
Contact us for a free 30-minute phone conultation or email us to request a quote.
We’re Ready To Help You Grow!
