Theory only gets you so far in dispensary marketing. This webinar brings together proven, immediately applicable tips from industry practitioners to help you move the needle on revenue without overhauling your entire strategy.You'll get ten concrete tactics you can implement across your digital and in-store channels, each designed to translate marketing activity into bottom-line impact. Whether you're managing a single location or a growing multi-store operation, this session delivers practical advice that makes a difference this quarter.
The lessons, mistakes, and growth strategies behind the industryβs most recognizable brands.

10 Actionable Marketing Tips to Boost Your Dispensary Bottom Line
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Key Insights
- Actionable dispensary marketing improvement nearly always starts with the data you already have: your POS transaction history, loyalty program records, and website analytics contain enough signal to identify your highest-value customer segments, your best-performing products, and your highest-ROI marketing channels.
- The fastest revenue impact for most cannabis dispensaries comes from retention and reactivation, not new customer acquisition, because the cost and time required to convert a lapsed customer is a fraction of what it takes to build awareness with a completely new prospect.
- Local SEO and Google Business Profile optimization are among the highest-ROI marketing investments available to cannabis dispensaries, and yet most operators treat this as a setup task rather than an ongoing marketing discipline that requires regular attention and content investment.
- Promotional discounting has a measurable negative impact on dispensary margin and customer price sensitivity over time, and dispensaries that replace percentage-off promotions with value-adds, exclusive access, and loyalty rewards consistently improve margin while maintaining purchase frequency.
- Every customer communication channel, including email, SMS, in-store signage, and staff conversation, should have a clear and consistent call to action that moves the customer toward the next measurable behavior: enrollment, purchase, referral, or review.
Expert Answers
[{What are the most impactful marketing tips for cannabis dispensaries?}
The most impactful marketing tips for cannabis dispensaries combine quick-win tactics that produce near-term revenue with foundational investments that compound over time. Quick wins include activating a lapsed customer reactivation campaign through email or SMS, optimizing your Google Business Profile with recent photos and active review responses, and launching a loyalty enrollment campaign at the point of sale to grow your first-party data asset. Foundational investments include building a segmented email list with behavioral triggers, setting up attribution that connects your advertising spend to actual POS revenue, and developing a content calendar that keeps your digital presence active and relevant.
{How can a cannabis dispensary increase average order value?}
Cannabis dispensaries increase average order value through product bundling that creates perceived value at a higher price point, trained budtender upsell and cross-sell conversations at the point of transaction, threshold-based promotions that reward customers for reaching a purchase amount, and online menu design that prominently features higher-margin and higher-ticket products. Loyalty point structures that accelerate reward accumulation at higher spend levels also encourage customers to increase their basket size to reach reward thresholds faster.
{What marketing tips help cannabis dispensaries retain more customers?}
Customer retention in cannabis dispensaries improves with consistent post-purchase communication through email or SMS that reinforces the relationship after each visit, personalized product recommendations based on purchase history, exclusive loyalty member offers that give frequent customers a meaningful reason to return, and community-building activities that create a sense of belonging beyond the transaction. Operational consistency in product availability, wait times, and staff knowledge is equally important because marketing cannot retain customers that the in-store experience is failing.
{How should cannabis dispensaries use social media in their marketing strategy?}
Cannabis dispensaries should use social media primarily for community building, brand personality expression, and educational content rather than for direct promotional advertising, given the platform restrictions on paid cannabis advertising. Organic social content that features staff, showcases store culture, highlights local community involvement, and educates followers about products and cannabis in general builds trust and familiarity that supports offline conversion. Social media also drives review generation and word-of-mouth amplification when customers are encouraged to tag the dispensary and share their experiences.]
Put these Insights into Action
Whether you're optimizing product mix, improving customer retention, or measuring market performance. Mediajel helps cannabis operators turn data into profitable growth.
Marketing Attribution
See exactly which campaigns generate dispensary revenue - not just clicks.
Programmatic Advertising
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Cannabis SEO
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Webinar Highlights
00:00 - Why Dispensary Marketing Often Misses the Mark
The session opens with an honest assessment of why many cannabis dispensary marketing programs underperform, including the gap between generic marketing advice and tactics that actually produce measurable revenue impact at the individual dispensary level.
08:00 - Tips 1 Through 3: Data, Retention, and Local Search
The first set of tactics covers how to use existing POS and loyalty data to identify high-value customers and underperforming segments, how to build a lapsed customer reactivation campaign, and how to optimize your Google Business Profile for the local search queries your potential customers are actually using.
18:00 - Tips 4 Through 6: Average Order Value and Customer Communication
This section covers tactical improvements to increase average order value through bundling and threshold promotions, how to structure post-purchase communication sequences that drive repeat visits, and how to move from generic mass promotional emails to behavior-triggered communication that feels relevant to each customer.
26:00 - Tips 7 Through 9: Reviews, Referrals, and Paid Advertising
The webinar covers review generation strategies that produce consistent Google rating improvement, how to build a structured referral program that activates your best customers as brand advocates, and how to set up a basic programmatic advertising campaign focused on retargeting website visitors and lapsed loyalty members.
34:00 - Tip 10: Building a Marketing Measurement Culture
The final section covers how to create a marketing measurement habit at the dispensary level, including what weekly and monthly metrics to track, how to connect marketing activity to revenue outcomes, and how to build a simple reporting process that keeps the whole team focused on what is actually moving the business forward.
Frequently Asked Questions
[ {What is the first marketing improvement a cannabis dispensary should make?}
The first marketing improvement most cannabis dispensaries should make is activating their existing customer data. If you have a loyalty program with thousands of enrolled customers but are not sending regular, segmented, behavior-triggered communications, you are leaving your most efficient revenue channel underutilized. A weekly email cadence with relevant product recommendations, timely offers, and personalized messaging to your existing customer base will typically produce more immediate revenue impact than any new customer acquisition campaign.
{How do cannabis dispensaries get more Google reviews?}
Cannabis dispensaries get more Google reviews by making the review request a standard part of the customer experience, not an afterthought. Train budtenders to verbally invite satisfied customers to leave a Google review at the end of every transaction. Send a post-visit email or SMS with a direct link to your Google review page within 24 hours of the visit. Display a QR code at checkout and on packaging that links directly to the review form. Respond to every existing review publicly and promptly to signal that the dispensary is engaged and that reviews are read and valued.
{Should cannabis dispensaries use discounts in their marketing?}
Cannabis dispensaries should use discounts selectively and strategically rather than as a default promotional tool. Percentage-off discounts depress margin, train customers to wait for deals, and make it harder to justify normal pricing over time. More effective alternatives include bundle deals that increase basket size at a maintained margin, exclusive loyalty member access to new products or events that reward frequency without discounting price, and threshold promotions that incentivize larger transactions. When discounts are used, they should be tied to specific customer acquisition or reactivation goals rather than used as a general traffic driver.
{What is the quickest way to increase cannabis dispensary revenue with marketing?}
The quickest way to increase cannabis dispensary revenue with marketing is to send a targeted reactivation campaign to customers who have not visited in 60 to 90 days. This audience already knows your brand, has made at least one purchase, and can be reached immediately through email or SMS if they are enrolled in your loyalty program. A compelling reactivation offer, such as a bonus points event, a new product highlight, or a modest incentive on their next visit, consistently produces measurable revenue lift within days of the campaign send because the audience is already warm and the friction to return is minimal.
{How can cannabis dispensaries improve their website to increase online orders?}
Cannabis dispensaries can improve their website for online orders by ensuring the online menu is prominently accessible from the homepage without multiple clicks, product pages include high-quality photos and complete product descriptions that reduce buyer hesitation, checkout is streamlined with minimal form fields, and a first-order offer or loyalty enrollment prompt is visible throughout the shopping experience. Mobile optimization is critical because most cannabis online menu traffic comes from mobile devices, and menu platforms that load slowly or display poorly on mobile lose orders at a measurable rate. ]
Cannabis Podcast Full Transcript
{}Introductions and Agenda
Host: I can start, so I am the CEO of the largest dispensary marketing agency, servicing cannabis dispensaries and retail stores. Here is a look at some of the clients that we work with. we're servicing 200 stores across 20 states and we've been you know really focusing on driving foot traffic and website traffic to dispensaries and delivery services to increase revenue and acquire new customers.
Gary Cohen: over at Cova we launched our service about twenty eight months ago and have since become the fastest growing cannabis POS in history which is a great thing we've contracted with over a thousand dispensaries in the US and Canada since then.
Host: we lost you, Gary.
Gary Cohen: hmm it it keeps them automatically muting me so I'll keep my eye on that. If we could go to the next slide, we've added about 60 percent of the biggest retailers in Canada and about 20 percent of the largest retailers in the U.S. to make up that thousand dispensaries. You want to share what the agenda is for today?
Host: yeah so today the agenda will include a special consideration given the Covid-19 virus so we'll be discussing what to do if you are forced to close, what to do if you're open as a brick and mortar, and what to do if you're a delivery service. We'll also cover our 10 marketing tips to increase your bottom line. We'll also discuss the online ordering tools that are available to streamline pre-orders and delivery orders, and then we'll have a special section on delivery specifically, so what to consider and how to execute on your campaigns.
Host: so special consideration would be the coronavirus that we are all aware of, Covid-19, and this has brought new challenges and opportunities to the cannabis space. So depending on which state you're in, you know cannabis is an essential medicine for many. San Francisco residents' dispensaries can continue to operate as essential businesses during this time while practicing social distancing and other public health recommendations, so this was released by the San Francisco Department of Public Health. This is not consistent with every city, so check with your local city and state regulators to confirm if you can stay open, or if you're forced to close, or if you can only be open as a medical dispensary. Another item related to Covid-19 that applies to dispensaries as well: Starbucks, as a social distancing measure, Starbucks temporarily shifts to go model in the US and Canada, and this is from TechCrunch, so this is another something that can be applied to the cannabis business as well.
Gary Cohen: you know I'd like to just add that, you know, from its inception as a legal business the cannabis industry was predicated on medicinal cannabis, and because of that, you know, the very first places like California, Michigan, Colorado, Washington, they allowed for caregivers to come and pick up the cannabis for someone who couldn't get there, and then shortly thereafter delivery services became licensed and started going into effect to deliver that medical cannabis. So what's really good about our industry is we were really built to deal with things like this, and I think as we go through this presentation these special considerations related to how do we provide this recreational or medicinal product in a way that will meet these guidelines, the technology is all there to do that, so we'll talk more and more about that over the course of this hour.
Deciding to Stay Open or Close
Gary Cohen: I think that one of the things that's happening is based on your jurisdiction there's different rules for how you can be open or whether you can be open. I think sometimes if they're mandating all businesses closed, or not essential businesses closed, you don't really have a choice. But if you're an operator and you're trying to decide, should I stay open or should I stay closed, there's a couple of things to think about. One is my addressable market and how this social distancing is affecting it, so are people getting in their car or driving over, are they driving around the city at all? You just might not have the business flow to sustain your business, which might mean you might decide to temporarily close. There's the consideration of the safety of employees, so you might make a decision that I don't want them exposed, so they're gonna stay home and I might close. We've already heard from some of our customers that some of their bud tenders, our frontline employees, are afraid or don't want to go to work, so that could be a decision made by your employees that you can't stay open. And I think with any of these there's some steps you should take if you were either forced to close or you decide to close, and what would be those things to do?
If You Decide to Close
Host: yes, so if you are forced to close or if you decided to close, you should notify all your customers, and you should notify them on all of your digital platforms, and that includes your website, your Google listing, so set all of your office hours to close. You can add special hours on your Google profile and you can add each day, you know, we're locked, let's say lockdown for three weeks, you can add that to your profile too, so nobody is requesting directions to visit your store when they're aware that you're closed. In addition to that, I would notify your customers on social media, Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn, also send an email update to your customers as well as a text message notifying them that you are closed, and if possible also focus on some of the other profiles like Yelp, Weedmaps, Leafly, and so on.
Gary Cohen: I appreciate that.
If You Stay Open
Gary Cohen: well let's go to the next one, and this is what we would prefer, everyone does, probably what you would prefer to happen is to stay open. And I think there's, when I mentioned earlier, the things you could do or start thinking about to maintain your business or in some cases even accelerate your business: it's online ordering with pickup in the store, delivery, sidewalk ordering, and also just from a customer flow standpoint, how can you limit access to your dispensary, and what are the different techniques or technologies to help you manage people out there on the sidewalk or in a parking lot. So those are things we'll talk more about later. I think that the same things that were talked about if you're closed, you want to double down on if you're open, in terms of communication with your customer base. So if you do have a loyalty program in place and you do have their email or a mobile phone number, let them know that you're open, what your new policies are, and how you can still support them either through the delivery of cannabis products, and what it'll look like when they show up to the store. And the next slide talks about opening a delivery service, and like we said earlier we'll go into more detail of the considerations you'll need to think about as marketing tip number 10, so we'll come back to that later. You want to go ahead and get into the meat of why people dialed in to today's webinar?
Tip 1: Set Goals and Track Everything
Host: yeah, of course, thank you Gary. So the first tip that we're gonna focus on is setting goals and tracking everything. The beauty of digital marketing is that there's analytics and we have access to all sorts of data depending on which profiles you're using. We can track the foot traffic through your point-of-sale system, we can track ecommerce sales if you're using an online menu for in-store pickups and pre-orders, you can actually track all the orders and the source of the traffic for those orders, so if I send out a campaign through all my customers through my CRM and loyalty program I can track all that traffic to the website, to the online menu, and to a purchase, so that is highly valuable and actually one of the foundational elements that we recommend before starting any campaign or marketing or website. The next thing is phone calls, you can track your phone calls on your Google my business listing, on your Google ads advertising campaigns, and on your website, so definitely be sure to track any action related to phone calls. The next is direction requests, so if you are on your Google my business listing or on your Google Ad platform, anytime that a customer requests directions to visit your dispensary that is tracked, so you have the availability to see where customers are coming from and how many people are actually using that functionality, preferably on Google Maps or Waze or whatever platform they're using. The next is email and SMS subscribers, you know, if we're looking to drive foot traffic and website traffic we should also have a goal to capture first names, last names, email addresses, and phone numbers. You want to build your customer database so that you can nurture the relationships with these customers long-term. Another goal would be website traffic, so we can track website traffic through Google Analytics or some of the online menu analytics programs, we can track the source of all this so you can see which campaigns are performing the best, is search engine optimization just sending you a lot of organic traffic, is your traffic coming from your loyalty programs, is it coming from a Google Ads campaign or a geo ad campaign, you want to track the source of all your marketing channels in one location.
Tip 2: Focus on High-ROI Channels
Host: the next tip would be focused on high ROI channels, so as we invest in marketing and advertising online we really want to stretch every penny and dollar that we spend. If you spend the money on, let's say, acquiring new customers, some of the highest ROI channels to get new customers in your door are geo ads, Google Ads, Google optimization, and search engine optimization. Word-of-mouth marketing is the best free advertising they can do offline, and once you capture those customers into your database you'll want to keep them updated with text messages and emails on a regular basis, and all of these items are easily trackable, as I suggested in step one, that's the beauty of digital marketing, we have the ability to track the success of all these campaigns and compare them side-by-side, for example in regards to the return on investment for some of these campaigns: for every penny that you spend on a text message we're looking at a two to eight dollar return on that investment, for Google Ads we're looking at anywhere from a ten dollar cost per acquisition to get a new customer in your door or to make a purchase, in word-of-mouth marketing, if you can create the different marketing materials in store and encourage customers through the bud tenders to recommend your store to their friends, or send a text message, iMessage, WhatsApp, Instagram direct message, anything to share this with their friends, then that's going to go a long way.
Tip 3: Meet Customers Where They Are
Host: so then, meeting customers where they are, some more customers are on mobile than any other platform, you need to be creating marketing that looks good on mobile and that works within mobile platforms, and targeting and segmenting these customers can help you create more effective campaigns to drive even a higher ROI. So these are the market leaders in the space right now: Google owns 92% of all search traffic in the United States, Apple iPhones and Android phones account for a substantial amount of the mobile device market in the United States, and from our numbers, 90% plus of all our website traffic to our clients are actually on mobile devices or tablets, so the rule is to build for mobile first, desktop second. Your mobile phone is an extension of yourself, so you want to communicate with customers and maintain that relationship with them through their mobile devices, and that's going to be through Google ads, through text messaging, and through email.
Tip 4: Maintain Communication with Customers
Host: tip number four, maintain communication with your customers. I can't stress this enough, this is crucial to the success of your dispensary. Maintaining communication will allow you to build that relationship with your customers and that trust and that authority with them so they'll become loyal and continue to shop with you long term. If we invest all this money in marketing to get a new customer to your store, let's say they spent $50 on that first transaction, the real value is nurturing that relationship and getting them to purchase 10, 20 times based on that first interaction with them, so it's really important to maintain communication with your customers, showcase your brand voice, your brand message, showcase your spirit and the values that you carry behind your brand, what products do you associate with, what pricing model and customer service do you provide, you should really share this with your customers and invite them to events and really build a relationship with them. And this can all be done, once again, through mobile devices, through Facebook and Instagram, through your website, through your email and text message lists, these are all opportunities for you to really build a relationship with your customer.
Understanding the Customer Journey
Host: so use the customer journey, there's different levels in the customer journey and ways that you can interact with your customers. So the first is really building that awareness with your customer, you can do this through different advertising campaigns, Facebook, Instagram, Google, these are all fantastic platforms for you to build awareness and get people to recognize your brand. Once they recognize your brand, they'll do some research, so they'll look at your reviews, they'll see if you are a legitimate dispensary, they'll look at your Google profile, they'll look at your photography in the store, they'll look at your virtual tour, I would highly advise everyone to invest in a virtual tour, this is a great way to provide transparency to customers before they come in. People will look at your social media accounts, they'll search for you, they'll search for your name and see what people have to say, and if they feel confident in what they've seen then they'll proceed to make a purchase, and a purchase can be through an online menu or they can simply call or visit the store to make a purchase, and when they do make a purchase and pick up their product in store, be sure to greet them and provide superb customer service. Your bud tenders are the face of your company, they're on the front lines and they're talking with your customers on a daily basis, so they should be trained and represent the company as much as possible, and if you really build that trust and loyalty with the customer they will not hesitate to leave a positive review, they'll gladly check in on Instagram or Facebook and post a picture at your dispensary. This is the best way to market your business, just build that relationship with your customers and allow them to share their experience with others.
Marketing Tips for Brick-and-Mortar Stores
Gary Cohen: let's talk about open brick-and-mortar stores, and what we'll discuss is what are the tips you could do to increase your marketing, and it's in the context of the situation we're in right now. So one of the things we saw at Cova was last Friday was the single biggest day of sales for all of our stores since 4/20, so people were definitely stocking up and the basket sizes were bigger, and you didn't really need to offer a promotion because the volume was coming your way. But what we'll talk about on this tip is what are the promotions that would make sense during the next few weeks or months. Our industry is super heavy in offering specials, promotions, loyalty types of incentives, discounts, tiered pricing, group pricing, but I think for right now, as people are trying to stock up, it might be a good idea to do some bundling, and the things you want to bundle are either your slow moving products or things where the expiration date is coming up. And when I talk about bundling, those things you want to get them out of your store, if in three weeks or a month you have to close down or the supply chain gets somehow constrained, and you want to get your old products out and off the shelves now, so I would do things like spend X and get Y for $5, so it could be spend $50, and if your normal basket size is 40, you raise it up to 50 and then you can get this 20 or $25 product that's about to go bad for $5, or if you buy X you can get Y for $5, so start pairing things up that naturally might go together, someone who buys flower, bundle other types of flower with it, if they buy concentrates, bundle other concentrates. And I think that, the last thing is you could combine discounts for online ordering, so if you have a problem like in Chicago or Ontario or some of the super concentrated markets where the distribution is limited, you might want to provide an incentive for ordering online so that when they come to the store their order is ready for them and they don't clog up the outside of your store or trying to get into your store.
Online Ordering and Click-and-Collect
Gary Cohen: one of the biggest things you can do right now is offer online ordering, or like in Canada they call it click and collect, which is really just placing that order online, but what it requires is that your dispensary's point-of-sale is integrated with all of those places where your inventory would be displayed, so that could be your website, could be Leafly or Weedmaps, and what you want is in real time pushing up those products that you have available and the pricing. A big tip is always be transparent, you know, the worst thing is I show up at your store and the pricing doesn't match what it said you'd charge online, if you do tax-inclusive pricing make sure you say that, if it's a price plus tax make sure you say that. But either way, having that inventory in real time synced from your POS to all of these different places that display your inventory is essential. I think the last biggest tip around that is you better have that in stock when they show up, so do you have a point of sale that allows you to set a limit on what's displayed at a certain inventory level, so if we get down to ten units or five units of whatever it is, pull it down from my menu boards of the store and from all of that online, because it's horrible if I drive all the way to your store, wait in line, and find out that you don't have it, I came all this way. The next slide just talks about the click and collect process, and the secret of this is the policy you set for your dispensary of how long are you gonna hold on to this order, so I've gone online, I found what I wanted, I placed my order, you send information back that yes we have it, it's here waiting for you to pick up, but determine what those timeframes are that you're willing to wait for them, because you are taking that inventory out of stock and setting it aside for them as a pending order or as a pickup order, so do you do it by the end of the day or do you do 24 hours or 48 hours, that's up to you, but at this time, like I said, you want to get people through the process quickly and easily, this is the greatest way to move them through a purchase and through your store.
Drive-Up Windows and Express Checkout
Gary Cohen: now this is kind of funky, I would say that most places in the US and Canada won't allow this, but a lot of retail locations have a drive-up window, or the facility that you bought or you lease used to be a restaurant or a coffee shop and it has a drive-up window, and guess what, now they won't let you go in the store, so if you could utilize that capability it would be ideal. This is one of our customers in Oklahoma, they bought an old bank, so remember those drive up windows where they push the drawer out to you, and what a great way to do business right now at this time, so it's something to think about. I've read the regulations for probably a dozen states, I'd say half of them call out that you can't do this, and then I would say most of them just had never thought of it and it's not in the regs, and I'm sure there's some that absolutely prohibit it, but this is something to think about. Express checkout is the capability to let customers self-service purchase, so they can really go through the entire transaction by themselves. Where we've offered this to our customers is in high-density, high-volume stores where they want to set up an express lane for people who don't really need education, help, coaching, they know what they want, it's Friday at 4 o'clock and they just want to go through the fast lane, use the express checkout, put in what they want to buy, it sends the ticket to the back, someone fills that bag or fills the order and they go over and pay for it and leave, and it does exactly that, it's an express checkout. I believe that we'll see a lot of utility and uptake with our customers in the next few months, since Cova is tablet-based you could just go out on the sidewalk, you could either put that express checkout in the lobby or your reception area or even outside, you can do the ID check and give them the express checkout, let them fill their order themselves, and then stand over to the side and someone's going to come out and ask for Joe Smith, and you can transact on the sidewalk. I think the express checkout also helps if you're limiting 10 people or less into your dispensary, so this gives the ability for people to just go to five different checkouts, minimal interaction with staff, place their order, do their transaction, and leave.
Considering a Delivery Service
Gary Cohen: as we go to the next topic, it's delivery, and like I said originally, delivery is a cornerstone of this industry, especially in terms of medicinal. There's a bunch of things to think about, it's not like you can just flip a switch and say I'm gonna do delivery tomorrow, based on your country, your province, your state or your city you may or may not be able to do delivery. I can tell you we're working with Ontario right now to loosen up the capability to do this, and we're helping them with what those guidelines might look like and how it can be managed and regulated, because they don't have enough dispensaries, the demand is huge and everyone wants it and needs it. So here's things you need to consider: can you do it, are you allowed to do it, you'll research that in your individual markets, and then you need a license or some sort of certification. You know, everyone's scratching their head right now going, don't you understand what's been going on in California or New York for the last ten years, there's gray market delivery everywhere, they don't have certifications or licenses. Well, I'm gonna come at this from you need to do it the right way if you want a sustainable business, so getting that licensure and certification could be a short or a really arduous process, and in some cases it doesn't cost very much. Think about the geography, how feasible is it from your location to really run a business where you need drivers, gas, insurance, what distances are you covering, and can you do it economically and efficiently. In downtown San Francisco or Los Angeles you're probably going to want to geofence the area that you're willing to service, just because of traffic congestion and time, charging a customer $25 for a delivery is probably going to kill your delivery business, but as you pencil it all out, that might be what's necessary to go farther than three miles. Look at your addressable market, what is the population, the demographics, and the local market, if there's nothing but commercial where your store is, are you really going to do that much delivery nights and weekends, or how far do you have to go to get to neighborhoods where people are ordering at night and on the weekend. Look at your competition, which in Canada is the mail service, you can have cannabis mailed to you from the province or the manufacturer, how much retail is around, if it's super easy to get to retail take that into consideration, and lastly, how much gray market is there, so in places like Michigan and California there's still a super heavy gray market, and that's who you're competing with.
Delivery Compliance and Operations
Gary Cohen: so once you decide to do it, there's a ton of compliance in the markets that legally provide the capability to do delivery. There's the state traceability system, that just like retail, this cannabis needs to be tracked from seed all the way to when a customer buys it, there's usually going to be requirements for ID confirmation, so you can't let little kids call in and say, I'm Gary Cohen, I'm 57 years old, and then you show up and a bunch of little kids have their dad's ID and go, that's me, so you need ID verification capabilities and you need documentation of who accepted receipt of this cannabis. Your employees need to be badged, so they need to go through the state qualifications to even be a cannabis handler or be in the business, and I think drivers are one of those giant gotchas that people don't think about, which is, not only do you need a criminal background check, you need a driver's license, a driving check, and it's already hard enough to get insurance in the cannabis industry, auto insurance is another whole step. And then from a vehicle standpoint, you're required to have, in California you've got to have a 360-degree camera in the car, you need to track the car, the windows need to be reinforced, because how tough is it to smash a window and grab a thousand to five thousand dollars in product or cash, so what kind of vehicles are you going to use, it's not just like Domino's where you let the guy use their own car.
Delivery Models: Pizza vs. Ice Cream Truck
Gary Cohen: there's two models of delivery, one is the pizza delivery model, the other is the ice cream truck. In the pizza delivery model you're taking a set of orders from the store and driving a route, if you have good technology then you've established a route that the driver is going to take, you're not going to just let the guy try to decide on his own what the best route is to make these five stops, you're gonna route him, you're gonna track him, and you need to retain that GPS driver routing in case the state comes to inspect, you know, we think your driver went by the elementary school and was selling pot, you need to be able to show here's where our drivers were, when and where they were, so that's another aspect of the partners we have that do delivery with us can do. So the pizza delivery, they're leaving and taking their deliveries onto a route, the ice cream truck, these are perfect descriptions of these models, you're filling up the truck or the vehicle with cannabis product and then they're driving around, so as orders come in you're trying to figure out which truck is closest to where that order came from and dispatching them to go deliver to that location, and they're gonna stay out as long as they can until their inventory gets diminished and they have to come back and drop off the money, pick up new product, and go back out there. Some jurisdictions allow one or the other or both, but you're gonna have to equip your business to do either of these models, so I'll turn it over to talk about what you guys have going on to help with this kind of direction that customers could take.
Growing Your Customer Base Right Now
Host: yes, so since, if you're fortunate enough to be open during this time, it's really a great opportunity for you to get new customers. Since cannabis, let's say for example San Francisco was listed as an essential business and it is under the healthcare sector, this is an opportunity for us to get our patients medicine and product to recreational users, as they need to de-stress from what's going on at the time. So right now we're actually offering a deal on acquiring 500 new customers to your brick-and-mortar dispensary or delivery service, so we'll leverage different marketing channels that we know drive high ROI and bring you 500 new customers at five thousand dollars, so we are heavily discounting this so that you can really build your customer database and be successful long term during these times. So our goal is to get you as many customers as possible with this campaign, and we are currently launching these throughout the country and have seen great success at this rate, ten dollars for each new customer.
Gary Cohen: wow, well thanks, I think we're going to do something as well. One of our partners that does delivery, it's called Dutchie, and Dutchie is integrated with Cova to do delivery, and they do delivery but they also do what's called click and collect, that ability to order online and go pick up in store, so they're offering one month free for that service for both new and existing Cova customers.
Host: wonderful, yeah, and then I want to emphasize that really the time is now for anyone that is open, this is going to be the highest number of Internet users ever online in history, Italy has reported the highest number of Internet users on broadband and we expect to see the same in the United States, as people are forced to stay home or work from home. So a lot of opportunity to build your customer lists, to reach customers online, they're gonna be on their desktops, they're gonna be on their phones, and they're gonna be looking for product, and what better way to netflix and chill than with a nice pre-roll joint.
Why Cannabis Is a Resilient Industry
Gary Cohen: well, and one of the things that I think is critical right now, and if you took nothing else away from this entire webinar, it's look at your online capabilities, how have you built your business to reach out, to communicate, and to reinforce that not only are you open but what you have and how you can continually do business with your customer base. I think when you take all those 10 tips in combination, if you're wondering how can I turn the dials at this time, where some of my dials are constricted, some I'm not even using, or I don't have, what could you be doing to keep your business not only running but thriving during this period. I was going to make a comment that everyone on this call is pretty fortunate to be in the cannabis business, because it really is recession-proof, and I think that's what we're seeing, you know, the surge we had last Friday, we looked at the volume, Saturday was much higher than previous Saturdays, and then even Monday, with all the, I'm looking out the big window here in Denver, traffic's probably 10% of what it normally is, but cannabis sales through our stores are normal as of this week, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. So between alcohol, guns, and weed, these are kind of recession-proof items, for good or bad. And lastly, I'm seeing information from almost every state association we belong to, as well as NCIA, which is the National Cannabis Industry Association, there is tons of lobbying going on right now talking about how cannabis is an essential industry, and if they're gonna say we're gonna let alcohol be sold or liquor stores stay open, how in a place where this is legal can you not let dispensaries stay open or delivery services run. So there's a lot of work being done and a lot of pressure being applied to try to keep us open during this period, and I think that some markets, they're just gonna stay open, like what was shared about San Francisco, and in Illinois they made the recreational stores close but the medicinal stores could stay open as essential businesses. So as the next few weeks pan out, my hope is that all of your locations stay open and we can continue to do business.
Live Q&A
Gary Cohen: and I see a question coming in, so I'll just answer it, are the sales trends similar between the US and Canada in recent weeks, and the answer is absolutely yes, so we looked at week over week, month over month sales by day in both countries, it's the same, people are stocking up right now. Do you want to look at the questions that are out there and talk to them?
Host: let's see, I am not seeing these questions, if you want to read a few off that you think we should answer I'm more than happy to.
Gary Cohen: someone is asking, I'm interested in perhaps setting a budget for this and working with you to help us create Google Ads or geo ads, and just trying to understand in rough terms what these things might cost.
Host: yeah, of course, so the easiest way to budget for this is deciding on the number of customers that you would like to acquire, so our numbers show close to a 10 percent cost per acquisition to get a new customer from the channels, so if we use that as a benchmark, we can say if we would like to reach 5000 or 500 customers, that's gonna cost us $5,000 to get those customers, depending on which city and market you're in this can be achieved in 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days, so it just depends on the addressable market and the population in that region. And after the webinar feel free to give us a call, I've placed the URL in the chat, and feel free to call us and we'll walk you through the process, we're more than happy to guide you as far as launching these campaigns and really getting ready, even for the weekend and next week, as the demand is high for in-store pickups and deliveries.
Gary Cohen: I've got one other question that was asked, where do you set up a geo ad, you might want to describe what that means.
Host: yeah, so we have a geo ad network that we leverage, that gives us the ability to show display ads across six hundred plus publications and mobile apps, so this includes TMZ, Zillow, Zynga, ESPN, some of the largest publications and mobile apps, so we have the ability to show your dispensary advertisement on these platforms and choose the zip code or city or region or landmark that you'd like to target. So we can essentially just draw a fence around the whole city of San Francisco and say please show our ads to any customer that is on their mobile device within this region, so customers are voluntarily sharing the location and we can reach customers where they are on their cell phones, and this can be, like I said, in the ESPN app, it could be on the Zillow app, it can be on any of these six hundred plus publications, and we'll guide you through that process. Just give us a call after the webinar and we'll gladly walk you through the process. We do have another webinar on three ways to drive customers to your dispensary, that's on our website, we will also be hosting another webinar next Thursday specifically on the introduction to marijuana delivery service marketing, so since this is timely for the delivery service industry, we're going to provide more in-depth information on what to do if you are just delivery service and you're open at this time.
Closing Remarks
Gary Cohen: well, I think we should probably sign off, I really appreciate everyone dialing in for this, it looked like we had quite a few people scattered all over North America, so thanks, and we're happy to answer any other questions if you want to reach out to us through the sites.
Host: yeah, thank you for joining us everybody, please stay safe and practice social distancing.
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Theory only gets you so far in dispensary marketing. This webinar brings together proven, immediately applicable tips from industry practitioners to help you move the needle on revenue without overhauling your entire strategy. You'll get ten concrete tactics you can implement across your digital and in-store channels, each designed to translate marketing activity into bottom-line impact.







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