How cannabis businesses can best utilize social media in their everyday marketing strategies.
Why is social media marketing important for cannabis brands? A great question, especially when one takes into consideration that Facebook once famously “shadow banned” cannabis companies. Perhaps we can thank Canada’s country-wide legalization that the ban was lifted, but cannabis companies still face tight restrictions when advertising on social media platforms. Cannabis-related ads promoting medical or recreational use and products are completely prohibited across all social platforms.
Social media in today’s world has become a must-have for any business. So what is a good cannabis marketer to do? For cannabis companies, social media should be about brand awareness, community building and brand loyalty. Although Facebook may not let cannabis companies pay to promote themselves, it’s still a platform that all cannabis companies should utilize. Read on to learn why a cannabis company should still market themselves on social media… and be sure to give CMW Media a call once you’re ready to utilize some new marketing tactics into your everyday business strategies.
Social Media is Cost-Effective
For any company that wants to sell or market online, social media is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach a very targeted but also very broad audience. Use your social platforms as a way to direct traffic to your website. Snapchat has 100 million active monthly users, Twitter about 336 million, Instagram went from 500 million to 1 billion active monthly users in the last year and Facebook just reached an incredible 2 billion active users a month, and they all keep growing. There is no other medium that will allow you to reach that amount of people in such a simple and cost-effective way.
However, organic reach these days is limited. Facebook and other social platforms use algorithms that hinder the organic reach of commercial pages and media organizations’ posts. Most organic content is only shown to about 15 percent of a business’s audience, but this point leads us into another…
Use Influencer Marketing
An influencer is someone who posts on their own social pages on another company’s behalf. They typically have a large, organic following and are seen as credible by their audience. Be strategic when choosing an influencer, as you’ll want their audience to closely mimic your target market. Before working with an influencer, though, establish a clear goal – what is it you want to get from an influencer? Do you want to increase awareness of your brand? Do you want to reach a new audience? With cannabis, the market can be niche, and it’s not always as obvious as going with a mainstream cannabis influencer.
Control Over Brand Image and Voice
Everyone loves a great personality! Social media gives you the unique opportunity to give your brand a personality and a voice to which people can relate. With social media YOU have control over the content and can create posts to match the voice that you want your company to have. This is not only true for the content that you post on the social media platform, but also for how you interact with your customer following on the platform.
You can tailor the “personality” you want your company to have. The cannabis industry is filled with companies doing similar things and producing similar products. Being able to take control over the voice of the brand is an amazing way to differentiate yourself from the rest of your competitors. Get creative with it!
Search-Engine Optimization and Search Ranking
A strong social media presence boosts SEO significantly. Focus on getting high engagement (shares, comments and likes) on your posts. This will help your social media pages rank higher on search engines. Tweets now show up as search engine results, so having a tweet with high engagement can be the deciding factor for a person that is browsing the Web trying to find the right cannabis product or service.
Use keywords in your posts. Keywords are words that help search engines determine what your website or blog posts are about, guiding people that search for that word to your website. Make sure to pick keywords that are relevant to your content and repeat them as much as you can (without getting repetitive).
Create Brand Loyalty
People want to be heard. This is especially true for customers. Social media makes it possible for you to speak directly with your customer following and answer any questions or concerns by having a two way conversation with them, making sure they feel heard. This type of customer service is not only a great way to keep existing customers by turning a frown upside down, but it helps maintain long lasting customers down the line.
Your brand will become part of your customers’ day-to-day. Most people wake up and the first thing they do in the morning is go through their social media feeds.
Instead of them having to actively find you, your company will show up on their Instagram, Facebook or Twitter feed disguised as a fun post about a product or an event. Social media is the best daily advertising you don’t have to pay for.
Let CMW Media Help
CMW Media has mastered the different ways to reach an audience as a cannabis company. We don’t want to give away all of our secrets in one post, but we would be glad to speak with you about how you can utilize social media to get more traffic to your website or business.
