4 Music Festival Marketing Strategies for Cannabis Brands

{}Introduction

Host: wonderful, hello everyone and welcome to the MediaJel podcast, I am your host, today we'll be discussing the four — music festival marketing strategies for cannabis brands — with Cortney Brown. MediaJel connects brands and retailers with cannabis consumers through our ad network of mainstream publishers, mobile apps, games, and TV, we help cannabis companies advertise on Google, support SEO, and activate data with display advertising to support e-commerce sales. Cortney Brown is the digital marketing manager at MediaJel, she brings seven years of digital marketing and demand generation experience to today's podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Cortney.

Welcome

Cortney Brown: hey everyone, it is great to be back, and especially on this week of all weeks, we just celebrated 420, which is always a great day to reflect on how far this industry has come in the last 10 years, and of course show some love to our beautiful green plant that our industry is built around. MediaJel just launched the MediaJel Data Shop, an online store that allows businesses to easily find and purchase cannabis audience data with just a few clicks, it's really easy, he's going to be announcing this a little later in the podcast, so stay tuned, that is a huge announcement. plus we just had Coachella, and that is what we are here to discuss today: four music festival marketing strategies for cannabis brands. I know everyone is fatigued from the last two years, people want to travel and people want to party, music festivals are back in a big way, did anyone go to Coachella? drop it in the chat, let us know. stats are showing that around 750,000 people attended Coachella this year, so that's a huge influx of people into one area, and if you were prepared your cannabis brand was poised to capitalize on the audience data, and those efforts will continue to benefit your programmatic campaigns over the next year. okay, let's break this into pre, during, and post, preparation, so everyone can be ready to target their next big music festival. I know everyone wants to jump into the

Aggregating Data

Cortney Brown: flashy creatives first, but step one should be aggregating your data. can you share your tips for how brands can organize their first, second, and third party data into an audience pool, so businesses can get their ads in front of the right people?

Host: yeah, the first would be first party data, and this is one of the most underutilized data points for retail customers and brands, so you have access to all your existing customer information, whether it's from your website, your e-commerce platform, or your point-of-sale system, you can compile this data and put it all into a CRM, so that would be something like an Alpine IQ or Springbig, and then from here you can understand different patterns that you can leverage in your campaigns, so for example if you build your first party data you can leverage this for nurturing existing customers through email and SMS marketing, and then you can understand your personas so that you can leverage them for, let's say, display advertising later. so you have all that first party data accessible to you, you're already capturing it through any pre-orders or e-commerce orders or in-store orders, so definitely want to take advantage of that, as that's the most valuable data to you as a brand. and then second-party data would be, you know, a consumer shares that first-party data with you and then you as a company can share this with another company if you think they would benefit from this, an example of this would be sharing that data with someone in your supply chain, for different brands that are related to each market, so that's another way. and then third party data, that's for a broader use across the entire ad ecosystem, so data sets that are collected and managed by organizations that are not directly communicating with the consumer, so you can purchase this data, let's say, from a New Frontier Data or other third-party data sources, and then you can leverage this third-party data layered onto your first party data so that you can have even more accurate targeting for some of the marketing opportunities that you're executing on. so there's a lot of different ways that you can leverage data, and data is more valuable than oil now, and oil's getting really expensive, so it's up there, so definitely be sure you know how to consolidate all that data into one place and then how you can actually activate that data.

Cortney Brown: this is huge, right, many businesses fall

MediaJel Data Shop

Cortney Brown: short on this, and it's step one, it requires a certain level of marketing acumen and data analysis, but it bears mentioning that data is not just targeting age and gender demographics, you want to use your first party data and incorporate and enrich it with that second and third party information, and then you can model it out and find users with similar behaviors to help achieve a broader scale and make sure you're spending your ad dollars more effectively. another way that you could build out your cannabis audience pool is with the MediaJel Data Shop, which is curated, compliant data, guaranteed — tell us about what we launched yesterday on 420.

Host: yeah, 420 was a huge day for cannabis data and for advertising, we officially launched our joint partnership with Narrative I/O and the launch of MediaJel Data Shop, so this feature is a stash of cannabis related data sets, ranging from, let's say, the cannabis enthusiast to different buyers by state, and even admires, allows companies to gain insights into when product demand is peaking, and also the most popular cannabis products and regional breakdowns of the different cannabis marketplaces. so whether you are a cannabis company looking to increase brand awareness, or a concert venue looking to target cannabis consumers, the MediaJel Data Shop is the easiest way to acquire secure cannabis audience data so that you can activate that in any of your campaigns, and Cortney, if you can post — we have a link, we'll post it in the Zoom chat here, I just dropped it in there, so it's ready to go.

Cortney Brown: yeah, this is such an exciting partnership that can help you build your audience quickly, so you'll definitely want to head over there and take a look, it's really easy to navigate. before we move on, there are two crucial tactics to target music festival

Geofencing

Cortney Brown: attendees, not only while they're at the event but retargeting once the event is over, so what are the two tactics that we use to get ads in front of those audiences that are on site in attendance at the music festival?

Host: yeah, so the first one's going to be geofencing, so you can draw a fence around the location of the event, so you can serve impressions to anyone that walks within that fence, so an example would be drawing a fence around the Polo Fields in Coachella, or any of the events that are planned throughout the festival season. and then geoframing, so you can actually do look-back targeting on anyone that was at an event in the past, so you can do a six month look-back into everyone that was at Polo Field over the last six months, since we know that Polo Field is known for these types of events, they have Coachella, they have Stagecoach, and other events there, so that you could put those consumers, or those people, into an audience that you can target for other events. so there's a lot of different ways that you can capture information and demographics from people that are at events, and those are kind of the two simplest ways to do so, and you can keep targeting those device IDs for months to come, so definitely

Next Steps

Cortney Brown: very very valuable, okay let's shift a little, now that we have our data sorted, what are the next steps a business should take to prepare to market to an upcoming music festival?

Host: yeah, so the music festival scene has its own kind of lifestyle and culture, so we'll want to create content to match that culture, so content curation, whether it's a photo shoot, videos, blog posts, they should all be done beforehand, so do photo shoots with your product, with people in festival attire, so that would be step one, content curation, it can take a lot of effort, whether you want to do photos, videos, or simple content posts, but it's definitely step one. and then once you have all that content then you want to create a content calendar and schedule that through social media, so these assets can be used for your own company, but then they can also be used for influencers if you want to go down that route, to really promote your brand. and then you'll want to add the content to your website, to make it really special for the visitors as it leads up to the event, now you can also include it in your loyalty program, so if you have a campaign that is for Coachella specifically, then you can do like a one week to four week takeover of your website, and you can just change the background imagery and some of the content on the site so it reflects what's going on in your local area, and then you can syndicate all this content that you've created through digital marketing channels, and you can do this to increase your brand awareness and make sure that you have all kinds of content pieces prepared, so that you can provide all these assets to third parties or leverage it for yourself. so there's a lot of different ways that you can prepare for a music festival, and you just want to make sure that you have ample time so that you can hire the actors or anyone that you need on your team to actually create this content.

Cortney Brown: that does sound like a huge amount of prep work, so definitely make sure you leave plenty of time before the festival to get everything ready, it's a lot more than you would think it would be. I love the idea of curating a photo shoot with festival attire, how fun does that sound, including influencers when you can, that adds a great element to your branding and social in your ads, and it really gets people excited about the upcoming event, plus it plants that seed that you got to bring this brand along with you to have this much fun. and so once you have all your creatives ready to go, how many weeks before the festival should you consider launching a festival-focused brand awareness campaign, and what channels would you recommend launching these ads on?

Host: yeah, I would have the campaign ready one month before the event, this gives you ample time to curate the content, get the ads ready to be published, and make sure that you have all the different sizes available for every advertising channel, so definitely give yourself at least a month. I would recommend, at the beginning or the end of the year, you should actually have your event calendar all planned out for the entire following year, so if you can do that you can get way ahead, and you can order a lot of the marketing materials, and any of the content you need to create before the event, so it's well prepared. and as far as driving brand awareness through campaigns for your cannabis brand, the first one I would look at is probably digital out-of-home advertising, so this includes billboards, and they can be found at gas stations, restaurants, bars, and other locations where cannabis consumers regularly spend time, and the great thing about this is if you're using the MediaJel platform we can actually attribute and track sales back to a digital out-of-home advertising campaign, so that's the first channel. the second would be display advertising, so this is a digital replacement for billboards on your phone, and this includes text, images, audio, and video ads that can be placed across mainstream media, so that can be done through the MediaJel display ad network, which will allow you to advertise more explicit content where you can show some of the product, but you can't show the use of the product, and then also the Google Display Network, so you can run discovery campaigns or display campaigns on Gmail, YouTube, and Google apps on your phone, and you can display those types of content pieces there, and you want to make sure that when you advertise on the Google Display Network that you use more conservative lifestyle photos, otherwise you won't get anything approved. and then another would be connected TV streaming, so connected TV is a device connected to your TV, or something that supports video streaming, like an Xbox, a PlayStation, Roku, Amazon Fire Stick, Apple TV, all these allow you to stream TV, and when consumers are streaming videos on publishers within the MediaJel network, we can actually show those videos to people before or after the streaming video.

Cortney Brown: gotcha, and then, you know, kind of seeing some of this at hand here in Miami, different events, you can leverage billboards, you can do

Host: mobile billboard trucks, I've seen airplane banner advertisements here in Miami, different large events, marketing tactics, that you see, like at Art Basel, Coachella, like I remember being at Coachella and seeing the cannabis delivery apps with their airplane banners going through and around the event, so that's a really popular campaign type, that's a good tactic. definitely map out your budget, make sure that you have a really great target with what you're gonna do, you can't do it all, but these are some really great tactics, should we see if there's any questions?

Cortney Brown: yeah, if anyone would like to ask questions, please familiarize yourself with the Q&A on the bottom, or the chat, and we'll be happy to answer any questions you have for us live here, and just a reminder that this webinar is available on demand on Friday morning, so there's a ton of fantastic information that was just covered, you're going to want to revisit it when planning your music festival strategy, so take a look at that, you can go to the mediagel.com site, forward slash webinars, and it will be right there for your viewing pleasure. okay, so we've covered a lot but we can't forget about social media, after all, music festivals are just an influencer's dream, I mean that's where all of that beautiful content is created, how would you recommend brands prepare their social media strategies for an upcoming festival?

Host: and we kind of covered the first phase, is curating your content, so make sure all your content is put together and organized, maybe in Google Drive, so you can make it accessible for ambassadors if you want to go down that route, so you can send brand ambassadors, influencers, to the festival with your actual product packaging, so if you have like a vape pen or a specific flower brand, maybe take a picture of the packaging while they're out at the event, so that they can kind of show the product out in the wild.

Cortney Brown: another one?

Host: yeah, and then you can leverage social media influencer networks to syndicate your content, so there are different networks out there like Dink City or Top Free Agency, where you can do swipe-up campaigns through Instagram and Snapchat stories, so if someone is, you know, in Los Angeles or in Las Vegas, and they want to go to Coachella, maybe they'll start to see some of that content pop up in their feed from different friends they're at the event with, and then really just prepare yourselves on the hashtags beforehand, put together a list of the top 10 hashtags, and then I would encourage the ambassadors to actually check in and pin drop the location, so that anyone that searches that actual location will start to see your images in the feed there. so you really want to give your ambassadors and influencers as much content as possible, product if possible, and then really give them all the tools so that they can actually tag you on those platforms, so social media is definitely going to be a huge one, Instagram and Facebook is where a large number of our cannabis consumers are, so you definitely want to be present on those two platforms.

Cortney Brown: yeah, that's great, you covered a lot of ground there, I mean social media strategies are important, and being on site,

Content

Cortney Brown: it's been a long time since I've been to an event like that, a few years now, but I always love seeing brands having a presence on site, but there is still more to consider with content, what should brands be doing on their website for a music festival preparation, in terms of content and incentives?

Host: yeah, I mean the first thing, can instinct with the content that you created for your social media platforms, you should definitely create content for your blog, so at least creating one to two articles about the upcoming event, you know, what you should wear, maybe some popular trends, whatever you can do to associate your brand with a festival. and then if you want to put together some custom incentives and bundles for festival goers, you can do that, almost like a music festival kit that you can offer to people, let's say they're in Los Angeles and they're going to drive to Coachella — Coachella took place last week, it's taking place this week, so people probably are en route to Coachella now, so if you're a cannabis retailer or a brand and you're on the way, that's a perfect place for you to position your brand and really just speak to the customers where they are. so that content that you created, the photos, the photo gallery that you put together, whatever you can do to give your website a fresh look for festival week, depending on which week it is, then definitely take advantage of that as much as possible, you can also include some of those images in your SMS campaigns, email campaigns, making sure that your entire marketing strategy is integrated, so everything is in sync across all channels.

Ad Strategy

Cortney Brown: that's an excellent strategy, so we have prepared and prepared and prepared, now we're ready to party, so let's talk ad strategy during the music festival, how should we be targeting these party animals, and where should we be targeting them?

Host: yeah, so for example at Coachella, we know that the event is taking place at the Empire Polo Club, we have the address in Indio, California, so the first thing would be to know the date range of the event, and then you can draw a geofence around the entire Empire Polo Club, blanket the entire Coachella Valley with targeting, so that you can actually show them display banner advertising, so if your brand — this is a great way to gain brand awareness, and if you have a partner retailer in the Coachella Valley then these ads can focus on driving in-store foot traffic or delivery sales to one of your partners, and if you really plan ahead then you can even split the cost with your partners, it's a win-win, you're going to be driving brand awareness for yourselves but also in-store sales for your brand and retail partners. a lot of people are going to be trying to travel in and out of the event area, so you want to make sure that you can leverage people when they're in an Uber or Lyft, there is ride-sharing advertising that you can do, with like five to ten second advertisement slots in between videos or advertisements of local businesses, so just a reminder, in your videos you can't show consumption of the product, so you really want to make sure that you're conservative with those ads. and then, within the Google apps, you can launch lifestyle display ads, that's within Gmail, YouTube, Google apps, and those ads will be shown native within the apps, and they'll say something like "sponsored" or "paid," or they'll be shown in the form of like a bumper ad on the bottom of the app, so if they're scrolling through something, or watching a video on YouTube, they might see a little bumper banner advertisement there, which you can do for your brand, so there's a few ways that you can reach the audience that's there.

Cortney Brown: perfect, I mean you covered a lot there, I love the ride sharing option, that's always my favorite, people

Post-Event Strategy

Cortney Brown: want to go here, they want to go there, they're coming to the event, maybe they're staying off-site, so you really have a huge opportunity there, I think that's probably my favorite takeaway here. so, okay, we've reached post event, everyone's hangovers are gone hopefully, and we want to make use of all the data that we've collected during the event, so our post music festival advertising strategy will be all about analyzing our data, looking at our pre-event ad conversions, and building out retargeting campaigns, what are your tips for retargeting ads, are they more expensive, what should you include in the creatives, and where should you consider serving them?

Host: yeah, so I guess the first step would be to install a retargeting pixel before you launch, so during that setup phase make sure that it's on there, so anyone who clicks on your ad will be placed into your retargeting pool, so you can serve impressions to anyone who's within that pool to increase the likeliness that they'll make a purchase with you, and we typically follow the marketing rule of seven, so a customer may need to see your brand or your ad seven times before they'll make a purchase with you. and then, looking at the creative type, I would definitely recommend offering an incentive with the creative, so that they know they've seen your brand before, so maybe like a first time customer purchase, 10% off their first order, we've seen incentives all the way up to 30% off your first order do really well, so that's another idea, or maybe some type of discount if they join your loyalty program, they may get 20% off their first order, so there's a few different ways you can work the creative within there. and then as far as where you should serve those, you can do retargeting ads within the MediaJel display network, and you can do it through the Google Display Network as well, and those would be different ads that would follow people around, kind of reminding them of your brand and ensuring that they're top of mind, so that they consider your brand when they're looking to re-up on their cannabis purchases.

Audience Data

Cortney Brown: and if you do all of that you will definitely be targeting everyone at the music festival for a year to come as well.

Host: yeah, and then that audience data, you can run remarketing campaigns for them, you can do different segmentation, so let's say they're at Coachella, and 50% of those audience members end up in California, maybe some travel to other states, so you can target them with different ads depending on where your brand is focused, so some delivery services only focus on SoCal or NorCal, so just really, when you're activating those ads, you want to make sure that it's within the perimeters, or the zip codes, that you actually want to track conversions.

Cortney Brown: it's definitely important advice, so take note of that. and then any other questions from anyone in the audience that you'd like answered? just a reminder, there's going to be a major uptick in traveling this year,

Host: something like a 150% increase year over year, so it's going to be a great opportunity for cannabis brands to really get in front of a new audience, there's a lot of new adult-use markets coming into play, New Jersey, and just, when adult use — I know New York is coming as well, New Mexico, and there are other states coming aboard, so really make sure that you do your research, find which events are taking place in your local area, and really plan to take advantage of those.

Cortney Brown: absolutely,

Closing Remarks

Cortney Brown: well, thank you so much for joining us, we covered four music festival marketing strategies for cannabis brands, and a whole lot more, so thank you so much for having me.

Host: yeah, and then, just a reminder, MediaJel connects brands and retailers with cannabis consumers, through our ad network of mainstream publishers, mobile apps, games, and TV, and we help cannabis companies advertise on Google, support SEO, and activate data with display advertising, just for e-commerce sales. so if you'd like to schedule time with us to learn more about activating some of these data points, I'll place my calendar here in the Zoom chat, and would love to speak with you more and learn more about how you can reach music festival goers. all right, take care everyone, bye.

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