Content marketing
Content marketing is a strategy focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to entice and engage a defined audience — and drive profitable customer actions. As opposed to selling your product or service, content marketing allows you to educate your prospects with relevant and useful content to provide value. Here are the strategies that our cannabis content marketing agency uses to increase awareness and instill trust with your customers.
Why Content Marketing?
According to a report by Nielsen’s Global Trust In Advertising, medium people trust editorial content over ads on television, radio, billboards, newspapers and magazines. The term content marketing may have gained popularity with the rise of the Internet, but B2B marketers have been employing it for years through white papers and reports to pull in a target audience. Content marketing is an inbound tactic that focuses on raising customer awareness, nurturing their engagement, and funneling them through an honest and meaningful conversation. It also helps with your SEO. To determine why content marketing is important to your business, let’s explore the four steps of the buying cycle.
01. Awareness
Customer identifies a problem, but is unaware there is a solution.
02. Research
Customer will perform research to educate them.
03. Consideration
Customer begins comparing products or services from different vendors to ensure they’re getting a high-quality product at a fair price.
04. Buy
Customer decides on a solution, and moves forward with the transaction.
Content marketing focuses on the first two steps of the buying cycle by raising awareness and educating consumers about a product or service. Traditional marketing focuses on the second two steps.
Types of Content Marketing
Articles or Blog Posts
Every dispensary should be creating fresh content for their corporate site. Company updates and tips can be short and sweet at 400-600 words, while in-depth, informative pieces can be lengthy at 1000-2000 words. Creativity and diversity are key when writing articles for your blog, let’s take a look at different post styles you can use to keep your audience engaged.
01. How-to
Write an instructional article that provides a simple fix to a problem your customers have with actionable deliverables to engage your customer.
02. Lists
Write an article that breaks down a topic into a more digestible form, a list. Whether it’s a list of brands, products, or strains or something else entirely, this is a fun article style.
03. Interviews
Strike up a conversation that your audience would like to listen in on and transcribe an interview. You could interview a colleague on the current legal landscape for consumers or interview a brand whose products you carry in your shop.
04. Reviews
Guide your customers in choosing products that would benefit them by writing product or strain reviews. These are invaluable educational pieces to build trust with your customers.
05. Tips
In a community that’s so new, there are a variety of tips and tricks we can share with new and long-time consumers to inspire and engage them in your products and community.
Case Studies or Brand Profiles
We spoke above about possibly interviewing the brands you carry to further educate and gain trust from your customers, but this could also live on your website as a brand profile. Write in-depth content on the products, brands, and their manufacturing, sourcing, etc. This content will provide more context to the products on your shelves and shows the consumers you care and have done your homework.
Ebooks
Why not take all that content you’re producing on a regular basis, and merge that into a white paper or ebook? Ebooks make perfect lead magnets for harvesting new leads and reinforce the authority of the author and brand. For example, we use our “Beginner’s Guide to SEO for your Cannabis Dispensary” as a way to spark interest with dispensary owners.
Email Newsletters
When building out your content marketing plan, it’s important to distribute this content into different channels. Email marketing is one of these channels. Have you written a few new blog posts? Send snippets of this content out to your email list to entice them click through to read more. Use email newsletters to write a letter from the founder, talk about the local community, educate your followers, or inspire them with valuable, engaging content.
Social Media Posts
We said it before; creativity is key to content marketing. Why not use visually interpret data to appeal to visual learners? Turn that boring data into a beautiful piece of artwork, and integrate these infographics into your in-store marketing materials, flyers, and billboards. Consumers may find it easier to digest your content in picture format, as opposed to reading.
Testimonials
People love hearing about what others have to say about your dispensary, your customer service and really about the experience you offer. Testimonials are shared across multiple user-generated networks. Repurpose this content and distribute it through your channels to build credibility among your customer base.
Videos
Keep your content fresh by using video. With the rise of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Youtube, rich media dominates the news feeds. Create a video and spread your message through your blog, email, and social media accounts. Live video has also taken the world by storm. Leveraging live video on Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook is a great way to engage with our audience on the fly.
Memes
Memes are a popular and fun way to create captioned images that humorous in nature. This content is highly shareable and does well on social media.
Podcasts
Your audience is diverse and how they choose to digest content varies. Offering audible content, like podcasts is yet another great form of communicating with your customers.
Web Pages
Whether it’s a product page or a product category – Make sure you also recognize this as a content marketing opportunity. You can add a great deal of relevant content for customers perusing through your website.
FREE DOWNLOAD
Beginner's Guide to Cannabis Dispensary Marketing.
Download our free eBook to to gain a fundamental understanding of what a fully integrated digital marketing looks strategy looks like in the cannabis industry.
Content Distribution Channels
So, now that you’ve created your content… how and where do you distribute it? To better understand how to implement this strategy, let’s divide your channels into 3 main categories.
01. Earned
Capture the attention of your local media or industry-related publications to earn coverage about what you are doing or offering. This is where being active in the community and giving back can benefit your greatly.
02. Owned
These channels are any platforms that you own such as your website, email list, or any brand pages you have on social media websites. Share your content here and work to get is shared (see below) in other networks.
03. Shared
Networking, collaborations, and aligning yourself with other cannabis-related influencers, publications, and organizations will help you do well in building your shared channels. Sharing your content on your own platforms is great, but being able to distribute that out to other relevant networks will extend its reach.
What Makes a Piece of Content Effective?
Every day, your consumer is more than likely being bombarded with numerous pieces of content across their social platforms and mobile devices. So, how do you differentiate yourself from the ‘noise’? How do you ensure that your content is effective and engaging? With our dedicated cannabis content marketing agency, we make sure that your content fulfills at least one of the following.
It’s Social Currency
As humans, we are always looking for something new, shocking, or cool to share with those around us. It could be educational or inspiring, but where the value really lies is in its currency. If you are creating content that your reader can share with their friends, it’s a success.
It’s an Emotional Connection
This is content that initiates that knee-jerk reaction for your reader to act and act now! Create content that strikes a chord with your audience in a powerful, profound way and give them a way to get involved.
It Adds Practical Value
Create value and add context where it’s needed to your brand and the products you offer. It may not be inspiring, but adding practical value builds a solid relationship with your followers.
It’s Telling a Story No One Else Can
This is content that is unique to your dispensary – It’s a story that no one else can tell. It’s not a news article, it’s content comprised of your unique perspective and insight.
Let’s take an in-depth look at each digital marketing channel.
Given the unique position of the cannabis industry, we’re only covering the digital marketing channels that are permitted to use by ancillary businesses, brands, dispensary owners, mobile applications, producers, processors, and websites. There is a legal gray area when marketing cannabis companies, and you should regularly reference the laws within your state before starting any campaign.
EXPAND & ENGAGE RETAIN & GROW
From a dispensary launching in a local market to an established brand seeking to expand worldwide, programmatic can fuel your growth.
MediaJel is the industry’s digital marketing platform of choice for grow-focused brands and retailers like you.
Don’t compromise on safety or scale. Ready to accelerate?
