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The North American Weed Tour
Secrets learned from years of experience and talking with the top cannabis marketers across the country.
LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, August 16, 2022 /EINPresswire.com / -- Respect My Region (RMR) , a Seattle-based award-winning, media, music, cannabis, and technology company, is pleased to announce the release of their most recent RMR Podcast episode featuring CEO Mitch Pfeifer and COO Joey Brabo discussing cannabis marketing for retailers and brands across North America, specifically in Canada and the United States.
“Every year we do the North American Weed Tour, we talk with hundreds of executives and the leading marketers in the cannabis space. This helped us uncover new tips and tricks as well as discover what is truly driving the bottom line in cannabis marketing,” said Mitch Pfeifer, Founder, and CEO of Respect My Region.“This year, our retail and media partners have really helped us get a better understanding of how they succeed as a cannabis company with so many compliance and advertising hurdles as well as increased competition for all things cannabis marketing.”
“We've been able to gain crucial perspectives and insights as to what does and doesn't work on Google, Weedmaps, Leafly, social media, and even text messaging,” said Joey Brabo, Chief Operations Officer and Co-Owner of Respect My Region.“Working with so many legitimate professionals has definitely helped our team get ahead of the curve. Mitch and I are beyond excited to share our list of essential tips for marketing cannabis retail in North America.”
10 Tips for Marketing Cannabis Retail in Canada and The U.S
SEO
For small-town dispensaries, big city dispensaries, or even regional cannabis delivery services, when people search for“dispensary near me,” or“weed delivery near me” or something similar, you want to be shown first. When someone searches for Gelato weed in Orlando, Florida, or GMO live rosin in Las Vegas, you want your brand to be displayed by Google or YouTube. Especially if your brand sells that product in those places.
Focusing on SEO can help you earn that position and win customers. We recommend doing monthly or weekly searches on Google to see where you come up or to check out your competition's work. Simply download SEMrush and leverage that resource or go to Google and search dispensary or weed delivery and see what it shows you. To check searches from other places, go to your local gas station, grocery store, or a friend's house, and do the search from there. We go so far as driving to other cities and asking friends to do searches for us depending on the situation and scenario.
Google My Business
If you run a dispensary or weed delivery company, it is imperative to optimize your Google My Business page. This not only has importance for SEO through Google Searches but is also how your brand can be discovered on Google Maps as well as where you show up in the search results. Your business name should be properly represented in the title (bonus points if your business name contains a high-priority keyword) and you should make sure to fill out all available information. Do not skip on the description area to use a few keywords and provide information that potential customers may be searching for.
It is also important to ask customers for reviews. If they leave thoughtful positive reviews that mention what products they purchased or liked about your business, this can provide some significant SEO lift to your GMB discoverability.
Weedmaps
In whatever legal state you're operating in, you're probably utilizing either Weedmaps, Leafly, or both. These listing platforms are essential to many legal markets. California, for example, thrives off of Weedmaps. Make sure all of your integrations are taken care of. Weedmaps allows you to connect your POS system, Google Analytics, Springbig, Sprout, and Alpine HQ.
Each of these integrations will help maximize your Weedmaps listing and the data you're getting from it. We also recommend setting up deals in areas that are less competitive but still very close and near to your dispensary. Although there can be a significant value from being one of the top listed retailers in a major city or popular area, and also having deals available in the same region, there is also immense value in positioning yourself in a less competitive and saturated area.
Leafly
Take a meeting with their team and have them walk you through each function step-by-step. We always recommend scheduling weekly meetings with your rep and having them share key regional data that could help you understand strains, brands, products, and types of customers that are local to you and winning in the area. Leafly, Weedmaps, and all of these big tech companies have access to data that other people do not. If you're paying them decent money, ask them for data that can actually help your business succeed today, tomorrow, and every day going forward. They can and should be able to get you info on strains to sell, brands that are growing in popularity, who is doing well in the area, etc.
TikTok
The first thing to remember about TikTok is that it has a volatile stance against the promotion of cannabis. You cannot show any cannabis flower, glass, or actual smoking. We do not recommend showing vapes either.
With that being said, it's important to create content that either educates, informs, or entertains. Follow trends, and make them applicable to cannabis without directly showing it. Use local hashtags to hone in on people in your small town's area. Make sure to use popular music or sounds that are clearly trending and being used in other people's videos. TikTok is the only social media platform where if you create the right content, your audience will come purely from the algorithm.
YouTube
After Google, YouTube is the most popular search engine on the planet. People are nearly as likely to look up information on YouTube as they would with Google. Our team crafts a strategy around news and media outlet stories, comedy, education, and other forms of content to secure regular engagement. Show YouTube and the people on that platform that you know what you're talking about.
You want to position your brand in front of people who are searching for answers, information, or entertainment. A great strategy for YouTube is focusing on search terms that help your brand be discovered locally in your small town, a nearby city, or specific neighborhoods. A solid place to start is to review or talk about all of the best-selling products in your dispensary. Simply log in to your channel, set your phone down on a table in selfie mode, make sure some light is on your face, and then go live and do a stream talking about the items. Title the video like this,“OG Kush Weed Review from That One Dispensary in Denver, CO” or wherever you got the weed from.
Facebook aka Meta
Never show weed flower, vapes, glass rigs, and pre-rolled joints—it's an easy way to get deleted. Use funny props and mimic certain actions, instead. Publish original content such as curated videos in the form of news stories, Instagram Reels, or TikToks around one to four times per day, and make sure to select trends or cover stories and content that don't already have tens of thousands of posts or video examples. You want to participate in trends and publish content when it's one of the first 1,000 videos or posts.
Instagram
Identify current viral hashtags and trends, and get creative to see how you can relate those to your brand or product and vice versa. Research the posts and videos being created for specific trends and keep track of the actions, sounds, and songs that are being used In videos that relate to your brand, your product, and your audience.
Research what other successful cannabis brands are doing on TikTok and look at what they post on their Instagram. Leverage from the best content, and leave the rest. Leverage three to five hashtags in each post, and make sure they're relevant to your brand locally. An example for a local dispensary might be“#fyp #foryou #viral #venturacounty #porthueneme,” or similar.
Text Messaging/SMS
Text blasts are one of the most direct ways that you can update your customers about what's happening at your dispensary daily. In a small town or big city, text blasts and SMS marketing can be an extremely powerful way to connect with your local clientele. Before even sending your first text blast, you need to ask yourself a few questions.
Who are your most consistent customers? Who are your biggest spenders? What do they buy? What are the top-selling brands and products that make up the majority of your sales?
Once you know the answer to all of these questions, you're ready to start sending text blasts.
Study your sales data, and look at your customers' spending habits on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Create segmented lists to cater to specific customer groups to whom you want to send promotions. Sort your customers by how recent they visit, how often they visit, spending totals, brands that are purchased, and product categories.
Email
Starting from scratch, you want to focus on providing value to the community. Become the hub for local events and happenings while still promoting the content you're creating on your website and recommending products. Platforms like Klaviyo make it easy to design a visually appealing newsletter and eventually create segments once you accrue a bigger list.
The full Digital Trapper Institute (DTI) episode and conversation can be found on YouTube here .
The North American Weed Tour began on July 10th and ends on December 15th, 2022.
For more information, or to get involved, visit RespectMyRegion.com/NorthAmericanWeedTour .
Media, PR, and Strategic Partners for the 2022 North American Weed Tour:
10Buds, 40 Tons, 420 Jurist, Adam ILL, AZ Cannabis News, Beard Bros Pharms, Betty Krocker Bakes, BudsFeed, Cannabiscapes, CannabisTalk 101, Cannabis and Movies Club, Elana Cohen Public Relations, Emerald Market, Ganjapreneur, G4 Live, Heady NJ, Honeysuckle Magazine, Illinois News Joint, Inner.Chii, Mistah Cannabis, Natura, Neon Joint, Petalfast, Pre-Packs, Pot Brothers at Law, PufCreativ, Skunk Magazine, The Bluntness, The Cannabis Library, The Cannigma, and The Weed Blog.
About Respect My Region: Since 2011, Respect My Region has provided a community-centric platform that connects real people to local culture. RMR is currently servicing music and cannabis markets in the United States and Canada. The brand offers custom content creation, marketing and management services, targeted advertising, influencer campaigns, event promotion, content distribution, and PR services.
Elana Cohen
Respect My Region
+1 847-997-4404
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