How to Build A Thriving Cannabis Digital Marketing Ecosystem

{}Introduction

Host: All right, hello everyone, and welcome to the MediaJel podcast, I am your host today, and I will be discussing the digital marketing ecosystem, so everything you can do for your cannabis spend, for your brand. Just a little background on MediaJel — MediaJel connects brands and retailers with cannabis consumers through our ad network of mainstream publishers, mobile apps, games, and TV, we integrate paid search with SEO and programmatic advertising to support e-commerce sales at every step of the customer journey. Today I have Nick Johnson, who is the director of paid search here at MediaJel, bringing nine years of experience in paid advertising, working in the agency and automotive industries, scaling ad campaigns nationwide. Welcome to the podcast, Nick.

Nick Johnson: Thanks, nice to be back, it's always fun doing this.

Host: Yeah, I appreciate you joining me today. So, like I said, we're going to be covering the ins and outs of what you can and can't do as far as advertising in the cannabis space, and really how to build a thriving cannabis digital marketing ecosystem. Nick, I guess we can start from the top, where do you want to start — let's start with, what is the foundation of the entire marketing ecosystem, and why is it the website?

The Website as Your Foundation

Nick Johnson: Yeah, so the website is your online business card, right — this is where everyone can go to find your address, your name, your story, who you are as a company, this is all done through your website, and a lot of the digital marketing channels I'll be discussing later in this webinar will be sending traffic to your website. So you really need to ensure you have all the core features that are critical for driving business on your website.

Host: Okay, well, I guess with that in mind, the core features of a business card are contact info, your name, email, phone number — what are those core features that are crucial for a website, then, since you're saying that's the foundation, where do we start at MediaJel as the crucial points of that foundation?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, I guess the first thing, you need to make the UX easy to use — make sure your message is front and clear on who you are as a company, and what you're delivering, so if you're a dispensary, you should have your location, your shop, where to order, click-to-order calls to action, all front and center. So, for a website, I'd say make the UX easy to use, the user experience, make sure it's built for mobile devices, everyone's on their cell phones nowadays, so ensure the website is really easy to use on your cell phone or mobile device, but also built for tablets, as people are on their iPads as well, and desktop — making sure the website is available across all those channels. And then make sure the website loads fast, that's definitely one part of SEO, and one part of really just retaining customers on your website, it should be easy to navigate and fast to get to where they'd like to get to.

Host: Right, you don't want to confuse or lose people.

Nick Johnson: For sure, exactly.

Host: And then, with the cannabis industry aspect, is it something where you still want Google and search engines crawling the site, performing their basic services, from a performance metric, or does that need to be altered or blocked because of the industry?

Nick Johnson: No, I mean, you definitely don't want to block crawlers from going through your website — Google is the number one search engine, they're responsible for, I think, 91.6 percent of all search traffic globally, so you want to make sure your cannabis store, your brand, your website, is crawlable by search engines, so you can start to get that organic traffic, and we'll share a little bit why that's a crucial part of your business long term. One thing I didn't mention, as far as clear calls to action — for a dispensary website, you should have an "order online" button front and center, and if you're on your cell phone, it should be maybe top right or the middle of the page.

Host: On your phone, you want to make sure it's above the fold.

Nick Johnson: Yeah, above the fold, meaning you don't have to scroll to actually get to the call to action, it should be right there as soon as you load the website.

Website Best Practices and Cost

Host: Okay, cool, and so from the MediaJel side, for us, what does that all typically entail, what does that cost, what does that run, if we needed to go in and build a whole site for a client?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, working with MediaJel, or with an agency, you can expect to pay anywhere from three thousand dollars up to, I'd say, twenty thousand dollars, on, say, a multi-store location website, or if you have kind of special features — actually, it might be a good exercise right now if I share my screen and show you a few examples of sites.

Host: Yeah, good context, especially a range from three to twenty thousand, probably different options, customizability, all that kind of stuff probably comes into play.

A Tour of Great Cannabis Websites

Nick Johnson: Yeah, so I'll just show you — this is Vireo out of New York, I believe some of our friends at High Hopes developed this, but they have a lot of stores, so they wanted the ability to see information about each of these locations, and be able to shop online fairly quickly. You can see the business information is front and center, the address is there, the shopping cart is there, "shop now" is there, different ways you can shop, by flower, by pre-rolls — this is a really nice website. Another one I've seen is like Sunnyside Cannabis, they've done a great job as well — here's a glimpse at the compliance side, making sure you have your 21-and-up opt-in, they've got a similar direction, it's really easy to find a store, you can sort by state, and if I shrink this a little and look at the mobile experience, you can see how this changes if you're on an iPhone.

Host: Wow, it's still pretty functional though.

Nick Johnson: Yeah, nothing gets paid off, you don't lose any info — so really ensuring all the best practices are in place, so, go to flower, looks like Wrigleyville or Lakeview is my default store here, if I want a different store, I can swap to Buffalo Grove or Chicago, shop adult use here. And then another one, just looking at a brand — I'm not sure how to spell it, Kanha Distinct? — has done a great job from a brand perspective, providing a great user experience.

Host: Wow, what sets them apart?

Nick Johnson: I believe they use the Jane menu, so you can actually find stores near you if you share your location — let's take a look at that Kanha Distinct brand site, this is a way to go direct-to-consumer for brands, something a lot of brands aren't offering yet, but Kanha definitely set themselves apart by offering this — looks like they make this available in Los Angeles, so you can actually order delivery from their shopping cart, directly from the brand's own store.

Host: Oh wow, that's really interesting.

SEO Pillars: On-Page Optimization

Host: So, this is all website-based and builds there, and now we're talking menus, it seems like a good segue to get into some SEO, since this is kind of a custom or unique industry in that aspect — where are the pillars, where's the foundation for the SEO side, is it mostly menu-based, is it more content or blog-based, like a traditional non-e-commerce site, a hybrid mix, what do you think is the best approach to get organic results at the top of the page?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, I'd say the pillars for SEO are going to be on-page optimization — SEO is search engine optimization, and that's really optimizing your website, making sure it's built so search engines can actually read and process the content on your website, with the goal of ranking at the top of the search engine results page. I can actually show you a bit of that — let's say San Diego, and I want to go to a cannabis store — at the top here you'll see this is actually a paid search ad, this is something we use on a regular basis, this is your background and expertise, really, ensuring our clients are at the top of the search results page for a paid Google ad. Under that would be the organic search results — the goal of SEO for a cannabis store would be to rank in this "local pack" here, there's typically three organic slots for local pack, and then under that would be the regular organic results. There are a few ways to rank here, and one thing to keep in mind, this is on desktop, if I were on a phone, I'd probably be using my Google Maps app — if you go into Google Maps and search for a cannabis store or dispensary near me, that's where these results would show up. Urban Leaf, we supported on SEO there, so I'm happy to see they're at the top ranking, I was noticing that Marching Ash looks like they're spending money there. So, on the SEO front, you want to ensure your website is built for search engines, on-page optimization is one way to do that, I'll show you on Urban Leaf where that would be — on the header here, we have "cannabis dispensaries" as part of the title tag.

Host: Obviously, you drop them into SEO too, that top header?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, the top header is actually called the title tag, and I'll show you where that is — this section right here, you can actually mark this up in your website so it displays on the search engine results page, and then this is called your meta description, right under the title tag. Let's look at a location, let's do San Ysidro — you can see the title tag says "San Ysidro, Urban Leaf, cannabis dispensaries, San Diego dispensary," this is the header tag of the webpage, called the H1 tag, and then they have their address, phone number, all their business details — we typically recommend to put nearby attractions, so you can associate the page with things going on in the neighborhood, hotels, restaurants. SEO content is key to this, content is king on the SEO front, and you want to ensure it's strategically placed within the page as well.

Content and Local SEO

Nick Johnson: And then, in addition to that, you want to create content on a regular basis for the blog — let's see if I can find that here, looks like they have some new arrivals, products, deals going on — one thing to keep in mind is to educate as a resource, so, here's some content they put together, "Women in Cannabis," a large piece of content, blog posts, content I'd call evergreen content — what's the difference between sativas and indicas, how to consume edibles, the dosing details, what's the best practice recommendation on that — all those content pieces would be helpful for your consumer, and would be considered evergreen content. So that's a lot of the on-page SEO that takes place for a website.

When to Start SEO and Link Building

Host: Okay, so if we just were a client, and we just got a new website built and running, do you need to give Google or search engines time to start optimizing, when do you start SEO work after you get a new site implemented, is it immediate or is there a lag?

Nick Johnson: Yes, for a site, you should really take SEO into consideration before you even build a site — during that first phase, if you're setting up your store that's opening, you can have all the content created, and, first thing you want to do, is set up your Google My Business listing, not separate from the site, because that can take about two weeks for you to receive a postcard to that address to confirm it's an actual location you own. That brings us to our next point, link building — SEO is heavy on on-page SEO, a lot of the title tags, descriptions, content, all needs to be marked up with search engines in mind, we call this schema, you can mark this up for each page, saying "this page is a San Ysidro cannabis store," and if you have another page for San Diego or Los Angeles, you'd mark up each individually, so that store, that location, that listing shows up, as I showed before, in that local pack for every city you're in. There's a big difference between managing SEO for one location versus a hundred stores, there's a lot more to it, you really want to ensure the infrastructure and sitemap of your website is in place, and that it's all managed, either in-house, if you have someone on the SEO side, or through a partner agency.

Host: Okay, so if you're marking or tagging up in the link building, if you're doing each location page by city and cannabis store, does that only apply to the location page, or do you have to tag all the main pages with all of that too, how do you differentiate there?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, for each page you'd mark them up separately, and, for anything involving a location, there's kind of a different language you need to mark up, it's location schema, and then you'd connect that to your Google Search Console — Google Search Console allows you to submit your sitemap and also check to make sure your schema is valid, so there's a lot of technical components in the back end of search engine optimization, but it is, I'd say, the top digital marketing tactic for driving e-commerce revenue to your site — between all our clients, I'd say it's about 70 percent of all their online sales coming from SEO.

Host: Yeah, I know, in my work in paid search, I see it, I lose to them every month.

SEO Budgets and Timeline for Results

Host: So, with that said, what are the monthly costs then, if you're driving all this revenue, how does that work, are there certain tactics you can start with to minimize costs, do you have to grow into a more expansive plan, does that differ if you're an MSO versus a single operator, as far as implementation goes?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, I would set a budget for each location, I'd say a thousand dollars minimum — that's honestly not enough, but at least dedicate a thousand dollars to it, I'd say three thousand dollars for a location, like San Diego, it may take you five thousand dollars plus, because there's high competition, San Diego is known for digital marketers, so every cannabis store in San Diego is investing a significant amount of money in this tactic — San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, all those cities are going to have high competition, but there's high return on investment, right — we have partners spending upwards of ten thousand dollars on one store, because it's that crucial to their business.

Host: So in that aspect, is it a volume play, is it a lot of content being produced, is it a numerous number of backlinks and tags and meta descriptions, or how does that work?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, it's going to be heavy on content, and then heavy on link building — link building is what takes place outside the website, another website linking to yours, I guess the easiest way to look at it is like social media, you post an image and people "like" that, it's the same thing, people are saying you're a credible website, giving you a vote, that's where a lot of the funds are spent, because that's how you increase trust and authority with Google, really building your backlink profile.

Host: Interesting.

Live Q&A: Programmatic Without a Data Provider

Nick Johnson: Yep, and, we have the audience here, so feel free to jump in and ask your questions, if you familiarize yourself with the Q&A at the bottom, or the chat in Zoom, I'm more than happy to answer your questions live — we'll be talking about marketplaces, social media, paid search, display advertising, digital out-of-home advertising, email and SMS, so anything you have questions on regarding any of those topics, feel free to add them below.

Host: Yeah, good little segue into our marketplace discussion then — I know we've got some pre-thought questions, but we've got one Q&A here — how long does it take to see an increase in sales on a website, and I assume that would be after an SEO implementation — Jim, so, after kind of an initial launch and structure of SEO, when can you see that increase in those returns?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, SEO is going to take, let's say, give it three to six months at least to see some traction, SEO is a triathlon, it's a long process, it involves all the pillars I mentioned before, on-page optimization, content, link building, really building your listings across all platforms, like Yelp, Google, Bing, Foursquare, there's a lot of places you have to build your presence — so be patient with those efforts, because it is worth the investment of time, it's a significant part of your business and revenue, and it does take some dedication to actually see results, especially if you're a brand-new store, it'll take a little longer because Google isn't familiar with your brand or business, but if you've been around for a bit, say one or two years, and have some history with Google, you can start to see results faster. So I'd start slow, keep it focused, maybe on one location, really drive results there, then expand from there.

Host: Mason has a question about programmatic and display, do you want to cover that now, or wait a little till we get to that section?

Nick Johnson: We can cover it now.

Host: Okay — is there a way to buy display directly without using a data provider like Surfside, etc., specifically for cannabis accessories, bongs, ashtrays, what are other good media placement options for this space? Solid question, Mason.

Nick Johnson: Yeah, so, without using a data provider, you could use your own PMP, a private marketplace — if you want to go direct and buy through something like Centro, or the Trade Desk, and just buy directly through those platforms, you can. As far as data sources, you can buy from a Surfside, you can buy data from a partner like us, we have our own data sets of cannabis consumers, you can also buy data from a third party like New Frontier Data or BDSA. So there are a lot of different channels to purchase data, and specifically for bongs and ashtrays, I'd have to look into what data partners have that information available — one strategy I'd recommend is you could geofence all the head shops in the United States for bongs, anyone that sells these types of accessories and drug paraphernalia, and do a look-back over the last six months on anyone who walked in and had location services on their phone, and create an audience from that. That would be one strategy I'd recommend, Mason, happy to walk you through that process, it's something we do all the time, especially for head shops and cannabis stores, and any other ancillary businesses people would go visit regularly that would be relevant to that audience, we can geofence those too and create an audience from that.

Cannabis Marketplaces: Weedmaps and Leafly

Host: All right, that's it for the Q&A at the moment, so going back to the original outline, we've got marketplaces up next — what is a marketplace in this industry, how would you define that, how necessary are they, or the usability, how would you classify marketplaces for the cannabis industry?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, so a cannabis marketplace would be something along the lines of Weedmaps or Leafly — think Yelp, Yelp is somewhat of a marketplace, a place you can go to find businesses related to what you're searching, so, for our industry, cannabis retailers and brands, if you're looking to find a business in your area, you can go on a marketplace and see a full list of all the dispensaries in your area, same thing with products — Leafly and Weedmaps are a little different in their offering, but essentially they have their own set of cannabis consumers who already buy cannabis products, and you're buying into access to those consumers.

Host: Because it's only within their network, I would assume.

Nick Johnson: Yeah, and I think, trying to remember, I think Weedmaps has close to 15 million active users according to their last quarterly report, and both these companies are public, by the way, so a lot of this information is accessible through their quarterly reports — let me actually check, I did do a post on this earlier this week — marketplaces, yeah, I got 13.9 million marketplace cannabis consumers on Weedmaps, and 10 million active users on Leafly.

Host: So a good chunk of business there that you can leverage and get access to those consumers for your brand — how would you go about leveraging that, obviously there's probably a cost for advertising, what do the placements look like, is it more display-focused or search-based, how does that work?

Nick Johnson: Weedmaps and Leafly offer a preferred listing, so it's kind of like a paid bidding model.

Host: If you want to be the first dispensary in San Diego for that category, then you can pay for that preferred spot?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, you can.

Host: It's almost like the Google search page, but it's just really boiled down to be within the Leafly or Weedmaps marketplace, so your search is only going to be cannabis area dispensaries, or whatever, but you can pay for that top listing?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, you can, so it's a little different — Google is more organic, Google wants to provide the best experience for the customer, so it's based on reviews, proximity to where you're searching from, whereas on these other platforms, like Weedmaps or Leafly, you can just pay to get to the top, but that can entail a lot of competition, get you into bidding wars, that's the only downside — the good thing is you can get sales fairly quickly, so, if I'm a delivery service, I'd probably go the route of using Weedmaps in California, they have different market shares too, that's another thing to consider, Weedmaps is big in California, Leafly's bigger in Washington state, I know Michigan has a pretty big Weedmaps saturation, Washington DC too, it definitely varies depending on the platform. There's a great tool I'd recommend, you can actually see where Weedmaps is being searched for, Google Trends — if I do a simple search for Weedmaps in Google Trends, let's do United States — you can see, California, Nevada's pretty solid interest, Oklahoma, Maine, Michigan, they have the highest saturation, Arkansas, Colorado, Nevada, and if I search Leafly, looks like Arizona's huge on Leafly, Oregon, Washington, same thing, Oklahoma — I guess it's fair, Oklahoma has, I think, the most cannabis stores for any state, they pretty much gave a dispensary to everyone there.

Host: Everybody's got their methods.

Live Q&A: Local SEO Alternatives for Niche Products

Host: Moving on, we do have a question in the Q&A, from Jim, I'm interested to see your take here — "I sell a natural cleaner online, in a small town where local SEO is less effective" — which would make sense, in a small town with less volume — "what would be a better strategy than local SEO?"

Nick Johnson: I mean, you can do a paid search campaign.

Host: That's always my answer, that was the right answer — natural cleaner online, I guess you're kind of talking about household and personal care products, I guess paid search would be one, and if it's an actual product, I'd probably invest in the shopping feeds too.

Nick Johnson: If it's not cannabis-related, you can get approved in the shopping feeds.

Host: And, correct me if I'm wrong, but we can get CBD approved in shopping feeds as well, right?

Nick Johnson: We can get quite a bit, yeah, as long as there's no THC in there, we've had decent success with shopping feed, shopping ad stuff.

Host: Awesome — it's a bong cleaner you can eat, so it is cannabis-related, and very interesting.

Nick Johnson: Yeah, I'd say local SEO would be a workaround, but I'd be interested in trying out some shopping ads for that, because I do think we could probably find some solutions there.

Host: But that's an interesting one, Jim, thanks — some more of the bong cleaner, okay, got it. All right, continue on, Nick.

Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, and Platform Rules

Host: Let's do social media, so social media is a big beast, lots of opinions there — what social media platform would be your first focus if you were going to do social media advertising, and also, is it all advertising versus social, or organic posting, how do you marry the two, and where would you look first?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, for cannabis brands and retailers, I'd say Instagram would be my number one, there's a lot of users on that platform, and Facebook — those are the two with large audiences of cannabis consumers. The one thing I'd keep in mind is that it's only meant to build brand awareness, you're not supposed to promote the sale or use of cannabis, you can't put deals on there, you can't even put your phone number, your address, anything, on your Instagram profile — that's actually in their policy, let me pull that up right now, I was just looking at it earlier.

Host: I'm curious too, can you put paid promotion behind the ads of the post, or is it just strictly no promotion at all, this is organic?

Nick Johnson: As far as social media, you'll have to post images, stories on Instagram or Facebook, but you can see here it prohibits any marijuana seller, including dispensaries, from promoting their business by providing contact information, like phone numbers, email addresses, street address, or using the "contact us" tab — we do allow people to include a website in their bio information. So, you have to follow their policy, I've worked with partners in the past who've gotten banned or shadow-banned, and it's sad to see, especially when you invest all this money in a photo shoot, and growing your followers, there's a lot that goes into social media, it's not just posting content, you have to get someone to actually produce that content and manage that whole process for you.

Host: Okay, and I assume, with Instagram being made by Facebook, or Meta, or whatever it is now, Facebook has the same type of policies as well?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, yeah.

Host: Are there any other channels more open to it, or more inclusive, anything out there?

Nick Johnson: There used to be — there's no cannabis-only, cannabis-focused social media platform right now, MassRoots was one of those in the past, but I believe Berner and Weedmaps are putting one together, that's going to be coming out soon, so keep an eye out for that. LinkedIn is great for B2B, I prefer LinkedIn by far over any of the other social media platforms, because they're not a public company, that's another reason they can have their own private policies, and they've opted to be a little more open and lenient when it comes to talking about cannabis on those platforms — but, once again, you have to know the purpose of social media, it's really top of funnel, to create brand awareness, it's not to generate sales, it's to build your network, it's for networking with other people. So, I just want to emphasize, you really have to use these channels in the right way, or you can get shut down or banned.

Live Q&A: Rebuilding After a Banned Social Account

Host: Yeah, it makes sense — it looks like Jim had an issue with Facebook ads, and they've been maybe suspended, or no longer allowed to advertise in that scenario — if you've got 2,000 followers, would you keep the page and just avoid the advertising part and go organic? It sounds like maybe you would, because it's the play to do there, but he's asking, would it be worth it to start over with a new page, and I'm guessing the answer is no, but what do you think?

Nick Johnson: I'd continue to grow that 2,000-follower page, and just know, Jim, that you're not supposed to advertise cannabis products through their ad platform — I'd recommend doing a display campaign through us, because then you can advertise on mainstream media.

Host: Yeah, it was a hard lesson — I've had some partners who've had 10,000 followers on their cannabis brand, and they lost it, and it really set back their business, engaging with their existing followers, they had to start from scratch.

Nick Johnson: Yeah, in that case, I'd probably build a backup as well.

Host: You mentioned LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram — somebody had a chat question, Sabrina, what about Twitter, is it worth it?

Nick Johnson: I don't see too much business occurring as far as the cannabis industry on Twitter, I'd say it's more for influencers, media, trying to get their word out — if you have a CEO or founder who really wants to share their personal experience, personal opinions, Twitter would be the best place, similar to how Elon Musk uses it, it's really a personal connection, a short overview of some thoughts. I don't see too many people using Twitter effectively for the cannabis industry, I see it more as syndication, and I do see a lot of spam on there as well, that's the only thing to consider.

Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, and Influencer Marketing

Host: And then, for somebody who's a little more seasoned in social media, who's already got a solid Instagram and Facebook following, what can they do next, what would be the next step in that progression, or the next platform or tool to expand what they're doing, or break into another area?

Nick Johnson: I'd probably stick with those two, and there's a few differences between them, Facebook has an older demographic, and it's more widely used globally, more active users globally, Instagram has a younger user base. Beyond that, I'd say Snapchat, I know some social media influencer agencies that give you the ability to reach a large consumer base through Snapchat as well, swipe-up campaigns for clicks, that's one thing you can pay for to get exposure — so, I guess that's the workaround, you can't pay Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat directly for ads, but you can pay influencers who have a million, up to, I know some managing 30 million followers, and pay to have them do swipe-up campaigns, so, someone posts a story, you can click the link in Instagram to go to a page, and you can add a UTM to track any sales from those efforts.

Host: Would TikTok be kind of similar to Snapchat in that area, influencer-based, follower volume would be what you're looking for?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, I'd say so, the only thing is TikTok is the most strict out of all the platforms — showing cannabis flower, or anything like that, is highly restricted, so I'd err on the side of caution for that one.

Paid Search Budgets and Speed to Market

Host: Interesting — how much more, what's our run length for this thing, how much time have we got?

Nick Johnson: We got 20 minutes.

Host: Okay, cool, let's keep carrying on. Do we want to do paid search, or skip over to display advertising, how are you feeling?

Nick Johnson: Let's do high-level paid search.

Host: Oh yeah, I guess we already covered it, I showed you the Google ad at the top, the local pack — essentially you're just paying to skip to the front of the line. Nick, as far as, how much does that cost, what do you think?

Nick Johnson: It depends, it's a cost-per-click model, obviously, so, depending on the market, you can get anywhere from a dollar fifty to four or five dollars a click, monthly budget, a good minimum level is typically two or three thousand per location, but some locations will take seventy-five hundred, eight, nine, ten thousand per location, especially if you're a location-based dispensary — if you're a delivery area, the whole delivery region can be covered, and costs can be whatever you need for adequate coverage, from ten, fifteen, twenty thousand and up. We've got some bigger clients with 50-plus locations, so you can get your costs up there, but they see the return on the back end with the ROAS we're tracking.

Host: So it's always a money-making endeavor, and, like you mentioned, SEO being the triathlon, or marathon, a longer, more drawn-out endurance product, Google Ads has that aspect, but we get the advantage of building a campaign and launching it today, and tomorrow it'll be serving in that top ad spot, if it's the right ad in the right place, I don't have to wait for the clout built up behind me of validity, we can pay to cut the line, if you will.

Nick Johnson: Yeah, and, to answer your question, Mason, you can go through an influencer directly, or to an agency that manages them — Dank City is one I know that manages influencers, and Top Tree Agency as well, those are two that actually manage influencers.

Host: Those sound like cannabis-specific influencer agencies too, that's pretty interesting.

Nick Johnson: Crazy, all right.

Display Advertising and the Rule of Seven

Host: Moving into display — kind of touched on display a little, but how does it fit into the overall marketing mix, we've got SEO, our website, some paid stuff going on, where do you throw display in there, and what's its function and focus?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, so display is going to be top of funnel, think of a digital billboard — you're driving down the freeway in Los Angeles, seeing billboards, it's interruptive, you're reading the news, you're going to see multiple banners, and the goal of that is really to support the rule of seven — you want a potential customer to see your business seven times before they'll actually make a purchase, it's kind of an old-school theory but it still applies today, it's really just gaining brand awareness. So, when we talk about display advertising, the types you can use are banners, banner ads on publications, mobile apps, games, dating, chat, music streaming, podcast streaming, you can do audio ads, connected TV, streaming video on your at-home device or Roku, and gaming consoles — there are a lot of places to position display advertising. And, in addition to that, I'd throw in digital out-of-home advertising, digital kiosks you see at bus stations, metropolitan areas, airports, there are a lot of places to reach customers through digital out-of-home. As far as the marketing mix, it's really brand awareness, gaining traction as an initial campaign, but there are other campaigns for display advertising that are more bottom of funnel — if someone comes to your website, goes to your shopping cart, but doesn't check out, you can retarget them with ads, follow them around, continue to show your brand and maybe an incentive or deal, if that's allowed in your state, until they come back and purchase — that's something we do quite often, it's really successful, and the great thing is —

Email and SMS Marketing

Host: All right, well, we've got it down to one last topic here, and I don't believe we have any outstanding questions — email and text messaging marketing, let's figure that out, what can we leverage there, what is possible, what's the best content to put through those, maybe as opposed to your website content, and the variations or differences there?

Nick Johnson: Yeah, I guess step one would be, ensure you're capturing people's email addresses and phone numbers, whether on the website or in-store, with their permission — you have to actually get them to select a checkbox to opt in to marketing messages, be sure you do that, or you'll get large fines. From text messaging, I think it's $15,000 per message if you text them without permission, so make sure you follow best practices and are complying. Second thing, this is really meant for nurturing clients, bottom of funnel, people who've already come into your store or visited your website, so they're familiar with you — you can leverage email and SMS to send weekly deals, encourage them to, some platforms like Alpine IQ have loyalty programs, you can opt people in, then send text messages with different tiers, as they spend different amounts of money they get credits, also product announcements, product drops — there's a lot of ways to use SMS and email marketing for this. I'd say the difference is, SMS is more about driving sales for that day, more instant, email I'd use more to promote brands, to promote your overall kind of what's going on for the week, you can send an email on Mondays, here are the deals of the week, here are the product drops of the week, whereas with texting, you send out a text message to each person.

Host: Those are both first-party data plays too, so that's probably a low-cost way to increase your average or lifetime value of each customer, get them back for repeat business, and get them brand loyal to another degree.

Nick Johnson: Exactly, exactly, so, with SMS, there's a lot more segmentation available, you can segment by brand, anyone who's purchased anything by, say, CannaCraft over the last six months, I can select that and only text message deals related to that brand to that audience, or segment by product categories, if they bought flower in the past, or edibles — the different customer segments, you should speak to them about the products they're actually interested in, look at their history of what they purchased in the past, and make sure your messaging is relevant.

Host: What are you using for that type of outreach, that wouldn't be anything I'm familiar with in the Google world, what would that be, platform-wise?

Nick Johnson: It's like Alpine IQ, Springbig, those are two popular platforms people use, where they have connections with the point-of-sale system, so they're able to pull all this information and segment customers based on their purchasing habits.

Host: Okay, and then there's one I know some MSOs use, Klaviyo, so they use Klaviyo to do abandoned cart campaigns — if someone goes through the checkout process but doesn't buy, they can get an automatic email saying, "come back to the store to finish your purchase," something I've seen with some retailers.

Nick Johnson: Oh yeah, even non-cannabis will do that.

Host: Well, they'll hit you up with a discount to come back and complete your purchase, or whatever, to get your abandoned cart completed.

Nick Johnson: That makes sense, yep, exactly, exactly, I believe you can do SMS with Klaviyo as well.

Host: Oh cool, can do both.

Nick Johnson: Yeah, awesome.

Closing Remarks

Host: Cool, any other questions before we hop off, we're almost at the top of the hour here — Mason, thank you for your questions, appreciate that, hopefully that was helpful, anyone else, I'm happy to hop on a call and work through a marketing strategy, I'll post my calendar link here in the Zoom chat, feel free to schedule a time with me, happy to go through any of these strategies and see if I can support you in any way.

Host: Very great, and thank you too, Jim, it was interesting learning about the — I'm curious what the "natural edible bong cleaner" is, but that's always fun, this industry is great. Well, thanks again, Nick, for joining me today, and thank you to the audience for joining, and, once again, signing off here at MediaJel — as I mentioned before, we are your entry point for connecting cannabis retailers and brands with consumers, and we do that through our ad network of mainstream publishers, mobile apps, games, and TV, and we integrate paid search with SEO and display advertising, so we're the only ones in the industry doing this — happy to share our technology and elevate companies further, so, thank you everybody, see you later.

Nick Johnson: Okay.

‍