The cannabis market is relatively young, but the level of competition is high. In such conditions, the clever use of standard, time-tested marketing tools is often not enough to achieve business goals. In search of growth points, marketers are forced to leave the notorious comfort zone.
When choosing an effective marketing strategy, it is essential to remember that no one size fits all tactics. Each company has its successful strategy. But universally, it is difficult for a small business to succeed in promoting and growing a business without applying proven marketing techniques.
Cannabis business consulting
To create a working marketing strategy, seek the help of cannabis consulting firms, and they will give you basic marketing tips about market research: how to expand your network of contacts, look for insiders from large companies, and investment funds. Go to meetups and conferences, read articles and annual reports. Study competitors and the behavior of your target audience. Also, consultants will help you create a positioning map to determine your place among competitors and a promotion map.
What should a marketing strategy look like?
A marketing strategy is an instruction on what needs to be done to move from the “we have a product and first customers” stage to scaling. The plan answers the questions:
- Why are we doing this?
- To whom are we selling it?
- What do we sell?
- How do we sell?
- Where do we sell?
If you don’t have a marketing strategy, chances are your marketing is happening in the dark. You test many hypotheses, and most of the marketing budget is wasted on an infinite number of hypotheses.
Where to get market data?
Market analysis is necessary to understand whether this product is needed at all, whether there is a need for it, what places are occupied by competitors, and in which direction the cannabis market as a whole is moving.
The second tool that helps to probe the market is networking. It’s cool if you find people you know who work on platforms like Google. You can pull information out of them. Over a glass of beer, a person will tell you as much valuable information as you will never find, either in focus groups or in sources, simply because he has access to this information.
Audience analysis
The primary sources for audience analysis are social networks, forums, blogs, comments on YouTube, comments on articles.
There is a wonderful tool, YouScan – this is a parser that looks at the name of the brand, what they write about it on social networks. In it, you can set up notifications for the support service so that it quickly responds to negative reviews. YouScan can also be used as a parser for keywords related to your business. For example, “cannabis business”, “how to sell a business”, “cannabis license”, etc. You can watch what people write on this topic. There are many cool insights to be found there.
Competitor analysis
Competitors can be direct or indirect. The straight ones are those who do the same. To compare direct competitors, you need to examine their business metrics and marketing strategies. To understand how your competitors’ marketing works, you need to look at which sites they are taking traffic from and its volume. To do this, you can use various insights that you found in the process of market research.
Create personalized content
Today, the internet is inundated with advertisements and other marketing content. To grab the attention of your target audience, you need to deliver personalized content. For this, you can partner with a digital marketing agency that will create personalized content for your company. 88% of cannabis companies that have invested in customized marketing have achieved measurable results in their operations. Personalized content plays a vital role for companies. Implementing this approach requires investment, but it will pay off.
Final thoughts
A marketing strategy is needed when the product is already there, there are first buyers, and it’s time for the business to grow. The success of a business largely depends on how thoughtful and creative a company’s marketing strategies are. Marketing today requires sincerity, relevance, and valuable content. Do whatever is necessary to find a way to combine all of these aspects in your business, and the results will not be long in coming.
