10 Actionable Marketing Tips to Boost Your Dispensary Bottom Line

[ {Full Transcript}

so first of all I like to introduce Gary Cohen the CEO of Koba software Gary if you'd like to introduce yourself that'd be wonderful you mmm-hmm I can start so my name is Guillermo Bravo I am the CEO of foot traffic we are 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 in over a Cova we 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 I like how you're mostly we lost the ball Gary hmm it it keeps them automatically muting me so I'll keep my eye on that if we could go to the next slide and we've added about 60 of the biggest retailers in camp 60 percent of the largest retailers in Canada and about 20 percent of the largest retailers in the u.s. to make up that thousand dispensaries she could go to the next one deer mode you want to share what the agenda is for today yeah so today I'll be a jet the agenda will include a special consideration given the Cova 19 virus so we'll be discussing what to do if you are first 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 on the campaigns so special consideration would be the coronavirus that we are all aware of koba 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 we 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 Cove a 19 that applies to dispensaries as well Starbucks as social distancing measure Starbucks temporarily shifts to go model in the US and Canada and this is from tenth crunch so this is another something that can be applied to the cannabis business as well you know I'd like to just add that you know from its inception is a legal business the cannabis industry you know was predicated on medicinal cannabis and because of that you know the very first places like California and 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 to deal with things like this and I think as we go through this presentation this these special considerations related to how do we provide this recreational or medicinal product in a way that will meet these guidelines are really the technology is all there to do that so we'll talk more and more about that over the course of this this hour well I think that one of the things that's happening is like your mo said 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 Europe you're an operator and you're trying to decide you know 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 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 need you you know 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 but Tinder's our frontline employees are afraid or don't want to go to work so I 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 if you were either forced to close or you decide to close and you're what would be those things to do 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 say you can add special hours on your Google profile and you can add each day you know work we're locked let's say lockdown for three weeks you can add add that to your profile too so nobody is you know requesting for directions to to visit your store and 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 know you are closed and if possible also focus on some of the other profiles like Yelp read Maps Leafly and so on I appreciate that yeah well let's go to the next one where and this is what we would prefer you 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 and to maintain your business or in some cases even accelerate your business its online ordering with pick up in the store delivery sidewalk ordering and also just from a customer flow standpoint you know 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 Guillermo 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 what your new the a that your open be 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 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 gear mode you want to go ahead and get into the meat of why people dialed in to today's webinar 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 you know through your point-of-sale system we can track ecommerce sales if you're using an online menu for for in-store pickups and pre-orders you can actually track all the orders and the 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 for directions to visit your dispensary that is tracked so you have the availability to you have the availability to see you know where customers are coming from and how many people are actually using that functionality preferably on Google Maps or ways 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 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 you know 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 the next tip would be focused on high ROI channels so as we as we invest in marketing and advertising online we really want to stretch every penny in dollar that we spend if you spend if you spend the money on let's say acquire 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 off musician word-of-mouth marketing is the the best in 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 is we have the ability to attract a success have all of these campaigns and compare them side-by-side for example in regards to these 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 GL ads and 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 you know if you if you can create the different marketing materials in store and encourage customers you know through the bud tenders to 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 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% of 90% plus of all our website traffic to our 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 a as 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 GL ads through Google ads through text messaging and through email tip number four maintain communication with your customers I can't stress this anymore this is this is crucial in 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 your spirit and you know the values that you carry behind your brand what products do you associate with what 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 so use the customer journey so there's different levels in the customer journey in ways that you can interact interact with your customers so the first is really building that awareness with your customer so you can do this through different advertising campaigns Facebook Instagram Google this are all fantastic platforms for you to build awareness and get people to recognize your brand once they recognize your brand and 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 and 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 and 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 you know superb customer service that's 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 this is the grit the best way to market your business is just build that relationship with your customers and allowed them to to share their experience with others um let's talk about open brick mortar store 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 if you go to the next slide you know one of the things we saw a 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 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 you know spend $50 and if your normal basket size is 40 you know 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 paring things up that naturally might go together someone who who buys flower bundle other types of flower with it if they buy concentrates bundle other concentrates and I think that you can also the last thing is you could combine discounts for online ordering so if you if you have a problem like in Chicago or Ontario or some of the super concentrated markets where the the distribution is limited and you might want to provide an incentive for ordering online so that when they come to the store their orders ready for them and they don't clog up the outside of your store or trying to get into your store if you go to the next one one of the biggest things you can do right now is offer online ordering or like a up in Canada they call it click and Collect which is really just placing that order online but what it requires is that your your dispensaries point-of-sale is integrated with all of those places that your mo was talking about where your inventory would be displayed so that could be your your website could be Leafly or could be weed maps and what you want is in real time pushing up that pushing up those products that you have available and the pricing you know 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 charged online you know 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 you know would probably be wise is 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 so let's go to the next one the next slide just talks about the kind of click and Collect process and all your I guess 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 cynic on 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 we're like I said you want to get people through the process quickly and easily this is the the greatest way to move them through a purchase and through your store you can go to the next slide now this is kind of funky I would say that most places in the US and Canada won't allow this but um you know a lot of retail locations have a drive-up window or the facility that you bought or you lease it 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 if you go to the next slide this is one of our customers in Oklahoma they bought an old bank so remember those drive up windows where they they push the drawer out to you and what a great way to to do business right now at this time so it's something to think about and you know 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 prohibited it but this is something to think about we'll go to the next one Express Checkout is the capability to let customers a 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 that 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're will see a lot of utility and uptake with our customers in the next few months is that you can since kavas 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 standard 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 well if we go to as we go to the next topic its 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 in what 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 and go to the next slide here's things you need to consider a 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 Gary 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 the you need to do it the right way if you want a sustainable business so getting that licensure certification could be a short or a really arduous process and in some cases it doesn't cost very much some markets it's like getting all the licensing first or 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 you know in downtown San Francisco or New York well not New York but downtown San Francisco or Los Angeles you're probably going to want a geofence the area that you're willing to service just because of traffic congestion time you know 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 you know the the local market you know 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 it's the mail service you can have cannabis mailed to you from the province or the manufacturer how much retails around if it's super easy to get to retail take that into consideration and lastly how much gray market is there so in you know places like Michigan and California there's still a super heavy gray market and that's who you're competing right she could go to the next one so once you wanted once you decide to do it there's a ton of compliance in the markets that legally provide capability to do delivery there's the state traceability system that just like retail this cannabis needs to be tracked you know 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 you know I'm Gary Cohen I'm 57 years old and then you show up and 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 that you need a driver's license a driving check and you know it's already hard enough to get insurance in the cannabis industry and 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 and it's so it's not just like dominos where you let the guy use their own car if you go to the next one and there's two models of delivery when is the pizza delivery model the other is the ice cream trap in the pizza delivery model you're taking a set of orders from the store and driving in a in a route you know 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 them and you need to you need to retain that GPS driver routing in case the state comes to inspect you know we we think your driver went by the elementary school and was selling pot you need to be able to show know here's where our drivers were when when and where they were so that's another aspect of the partners we have that do delivery with us can do that so the pizza delivery they're leaving and taking their deliveries onto a route the ice cream truck and 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 his 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 that's you know you're gonna have to equip your business to do either of these models so I'll turn it over to ]