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Webinar

How to Write a Successful Cannabis Retail Chain Marketing Strategy

Writing a marketing strategy for a cannabis retail chain requires more than adapting a single-location approach — it means building a system that works across locations, markets, and customer segments simultaneously. Eduardo Silva, with 18 years of marketing and sales experience, walks through exactly how to build that strategy from the ground up.The session covers the key components of a successful cannabis retail chain marketing strategy, using Have a Heart as a real-world reference point. Cannabis retail marketing directors, MSO marketing teams, and chain operators looking to create or sharpen their strategic framework will find this a thorough and experience-backed guide.

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Key Insights

Cannabis retail chains need a brand architecture that establishes clear brand standards while giving individual locations the flexibility to connect authentically with their local community.
Centralized budget management with location-level performance reporting is the most efficient approach for multi-location cannabis chains, ensuring brand-wide campaigns are funded appropriately while local needs are visible.
National or regional advertising builds brand awareness that lifts all locations simultaneously, while local campaigns drive store-specific traffic in individual markets.
Loyalty program standardization across all chain locations creates a unified customer experience that increases cross-location shopping and overall chain loyalty.
Data sharing between chain locations reveals market-level insights about customer behavior, product preferences, and campaign performance that improve decision-making across the entire portfolio.

Expert Answers

[{What is a cannabis retail chain marketing strategy?}

A cannabis retail chain marketing strategy is a coordinated marketing plan that operates at two levels simultaneously: the brand level, where campaigns build awareness and consistency for the overall chain, and the location level, where campaigns drive traffic to specific stores in specific markets. An effective chain strategy defines clear brand standards, allocates budget efficiently across channels and locations, and creates systems for sharing performance data across the portfolio.

{How do cannabis chains maintain brand consistency across multiple locations?}

Brand consistency across cannabis chain locations requires clear, documented brand standards for visual identity, messaging, and customer experience, combined with centralized oversight of how those standards are applied. This typically means creating brand guidelines that local teams follow, using centralized creative production for major campaigns, and establishing an approval process for locally produced content. Regular audits of customer-facing materials across locations help maintain consistency over time.

{How should multi-location cannabis chains allocate their marketing budget?}

A typical approach allocates 60 to 70 percent of the marketing budget to brand-level campaigns that benefit all locations, and 30 to 40 percent to location-level campaigns that drive traffic to individual stores. Brand-level spend is best directed toward channels like programmatic display, SEO, and social media that build overall brand recognition. Location-level spend is best directed toward local search ads, geotargeting, and SMS campaigns that drive immediate store traffic in specific trade areas.]

Webinar Highlights

00:00 - Chain vs. Single-Location Dispensary Marketing: Key Differences

The session opens by defining the unique marketing challenges and opportunities that come with operating a cannabis retail chain and why a single-location mindset does not scale.

12:00 - Brand Architecture and Standards for Cannabis Chains

This section covers how to define and enforce brand standards across multiple locations while building in the flexibility that local market relevance requires.

22:00 - Channel Strategy and Budget Allocation for Multi-Location Operators

The webinar covers how cannabis chains should allocate marketing spend across brand-level and location-level channels and the campaign structures that perform best at each level.

32:00 - Data, Loyalty, and Cross-Location Insights

The session closes with guidance on how to use chain-wide data to improve individual location performance and how a standardized loyalty program creates competitive advantage across the portfolio.

Frequently Asked Questions

[ {What makes chain cannabis marketing different from single-store marketing?}

Chain cannabis marketing must operate simultaneously at the brand level and the location level. Brand-level campaigns build awareness and equity for the overall chain, while location-level campaigns drive traffic to individual stores. The complexity increases significantly with each location because more data must be managed, more local markets must be understood, and more coordination is required to maintain consistency. Chains that build centralized marketing infrastructure early scale much more efficiently than those that run each location's marketing independently.

{How do cannabis chains use loyalty programs as a marketing tool?}

Standardized loyalty programs across all chain locations are one of the most powerful marketing tools available to cannabis chains. They create a unified customer experience regardless of which location a customer visits, capture customer data that enables personalization across all channels, drive cross-location shopping as customers discover different stores in the chain, and reduce price sensitivity by rewarding loyalty with points and exclusive benefits rather than discounts.

{What role does local marketing play in a cannabis chain strategy?}

Local marketing is essential for driving traffic to individual chain locations because consumer behavior varies by neighborhood, competitive landscape, and local culture. While brand campaigns build overall recognition, local campaigns using geotargeting, local SEO, and community involvement drive the specific store visits that generate revenue. The most effective chain marketing strategies fund both levels appropriately rather than treating all locations identically.

{How do cannabis chains measure marketing performance across locations?}

Cannabis chains should track performance at both the brand level and the location level. Brand-level metrics include overall website traffic, brand search volume, and total customer acquisition rate across all locations. Location-level metrics include store traffic, new customer rate by location, average transaction value, and loyalty program participation rate by store. Cross-location metrics like customer transfer rate (customers who visit multiple chain locations) capture the network effect of the chain's brand investment.

{How important is local SEO for individual cannabis chain locations?}

Local SEO is critical for each individual chain location because Google's local algorithm evaluates each location separately based on its own Google Business Profile, local citations, and review signals. A chain's overall domain authority helps, but each store needs its own optimized local presence to rank prominently in its specific market. Multi-location chains should ensure every store has a complete, accurate, and actively managed Google Business Profile and location page on the chain's website. ]

Webinar Full Transcript

[ {How to Write a Successful Marketing Strategy}

hello Seattle in the house 1 they're so wonderful well thanks again everyone for taking the times out of your day to join us today we're going to be sharing with you some of the successful tips we've gathered along the way in working with large dispensaries and cannabis retail chains so we're going to be sharing with you some of the successful marketing strategies that goes along with with developing if you will a strategy that encompasses multiple markets and part of what we're going to be sharing with you as well as a collaborative effort right to drive high revenue and rapid growth growth amongst multi-state operators how is that done ok so bear with us here there's a lot of content we're going to be sharing today a little bit about myself your presenter today my name is Eduardo Silva I bring with me 18 years in marketing and sales experience so

{Eduardo Silva}

I'll be sharing hopefully a lot of that knowledge with you today and certainly appreciate everyone's participation if you are not familiar with this backdrop on this image here let's see if anybody can actually guess this is actually a famous beach in Brazil there it is Brazil somebody did guess it correctly this is Rio de Janeiro this is Copacabana so a little bit more about myself so I've been with foot traffic here since January however certainly been one of the advisers for foot traffic as we've been scaling foot traffic as an organization has been around for over four years now okay so we've been in cannabis specific

{Have a Heart}

business focus across this four and a half years we're all us-based we have a distributed team across the United States from the West all the way to the East Coast and we are a digital marketing agency at any given point we may be working with 200 plus dispensary locations across 20 states and that also includes Canada which is not a US state if you were guess but certainly you know happy to bring a lot of that knowledge and experience that we have gathered along this journey with your help let's get ready for our

{Get ready}

webinar today we're going to be moving fairly quickly there is a good amount of content we're going to be covering so before getting started let's take a moment to just silence our cell phones or put them down on our desks facing down if you will to avoid a little bit of that distraction that we often get right no Angry Birds if you will familiarize yourself with the zoom interface as well there is a Q&A button ok so if you navigate to the top of your screen there on zoom you're going to see that Q&A button that's where you're going to be asking your questions throughout the webinar we do have panelists who are going to be helping us address those questions live so that way we don't have to take many breaks here to address questions so please do feel free to go ahead and and share any questions you have throughout the webinar ok so we're going to be getting started here once again let's talk a little bit about the content we're going

{Proceed with precision}

to be covering so the suspensory recreational market in the US and Canada is worth 36 billion dollars and growing but multi-state operators expansion is not an easy feat or a cheap one at that right so to maximize profits we're going to be sharing with you several tips on how to create these crucial marketing strategies that are going to be very dollars wise right so developing a revenue driven marketing strategy will ensure you stay focused and make decisions that put you closer to those goals the tips that we are sharing with you today has been created based on four plus years of experiencing working directly with MSOs as an extension of their marketing team so we're bringing to you direct experience in those MSOs expansions so corporate and store managers let's talk about that a little bit right we to work as one it must be a

{Work together as one}

collaborative effort to build a brand and have any transparent and actionable marketing strategy can really help avoid a lot of confusion conflict and mismatched efforts and get you more bang for your buck right as you continue to expand your brand you don't want to dilute the value of your brand and so a well-designed strategy can help you protect your brand and keep everyone on the same page so today we're going to be reviewing what you need to do to implement implement a sound marketing strategy and how responsibly should be how responsibility excuse me should be divided okay so to get it started let's start with a quick quick survey here so there's going to be a quick poll that's

{Do you create marketing strategies for each location individually?}

going to jump in front of you go ahead and take a brief moment to answer this question do you create for yourself and your marketing brand right and your dispensary brand do you create a marketing strategy for each location individually let's see how this fares out for everyone here good data for us you continue here our presentation today okay and weigh just a couple more seconds here two to get all these questions loaded these answers loaded excuse me all right I think we're done so let's review what we have found here right so it looked like there it is yes 43% of the attendees today have said that they actually do create a strategy for each location individually so that's pretty good but we are seeing here that you know more than 50% are you there on the know or for some stores only so this is good information as we veer into our

{Local level research}

presentation here today okay let's go ahead and share these results great so first let's talk about the reach of your marketing strategy we've worked with multiple Enterprise clients and notice that they have something in common before they start working with us while they may have great ideas on how to market their brand nationally they often overlook marketing at a local level level why because they assume that what works at a national level will work on a local level as well this is a big mistake okay set in a week budget for your retail locations we'll make your marketing strategy less effective on the ground think about where revenue is being generated it's at the local retail level understanding your customers will regionally will give you a critical competitive advantage we have a client who began offering delivery in New York City and they advertise the same way across all of their locations our team noticed that the Queen's location wasn't seen any growth by implementing a new digital marketing strategy that focused on the target audience for each one of these specific locations we were able to better segment their ads that appeared right to their Queens ions and get them more customers plus it's especially important to support your local essential businesses more than ever with the Cova 19 and to work within the communities in which they are located so with that in mind let's dive into the five steps of carving out your successful Camden cannabis retail chain marketing strategy so first find your

{Find your target audience}

target audience this is a crucial step that will help you spend your marketing dollars wisely and it has two parts creating an ideal customer profile and find in your stores target market by brainstorming and coming up with an ideal customer profile for each of your dispensary locations you can target your market efforts more effectively attract this customer chew your website and compel them to buy from your shop if you just assume that everyone is your customer and create genetic generic ads you will run a risk of not attracting anybody so here's what you need to think

{Who are your customers?}

about when creating these personas first consider demographics what are the common ages genders income levels and other relevant characteristics of your customer next psychographics how do your customers think what are their attitudes behaviors and beliefs as they relate to your dispensary brand also think about their pain points what problems do your customers have that you could potentially solve how do you make their lives better lastly consider their consumption habits okay once you have a good idea of the different people who visit each of your dispensary locations figure out which

{Ideal customer profile}

which of these personas buys the most cannabis with the least amount of friction this is your ideal customer profile your ideal customer profile is your local marketing focal point this is how you can market to the right people in order to increase your sales and create customer loyalty with this information you can now focus your local marketing efforts to attract more of the ideal customer profile for a particular shop you can also create relevant marketing campaigns that resonate with this particular ideal customer profile plus you will be able to better understand which events you should be targeting which keywords you should use and which products to focus on for your promotions and educational content so now you may be asking how do I determine each retail

{Start a loyalty program}

store its target market well there are five ways we found that can help dispensary owners do this the first is through your loyalty program look at the customer data you are capturing to identify trends if you don't have a loyalty program we have a great recommendation for you with a trusted brand text the number text the the the word loyalty to four one one six six nine and we'll share some more of that information with you we'll put it over here in the chat window as well so you know exactly that term as well as the number okay you can also you

{Share a survey}

they should get more information about your customers we have an also a partner that makes this very easy and lets you capture those information fast ask your customers to feel ally quick survey about their preferences and request some demographic information at the same time offer them an incentive to complete the survey such as a coupon code perhaps 15% off your next purchase these are easy steps you can take to learn more about the people who shop at your stores alternatively think about places in the surrounding area and know any major employers airports universities

{Research nearby landmarks}

and tourist attraction get them a graphic information based on these nearby places where large groups of people congregate the fourth way to nail down a source target market is to ask

{Ask your team}

your store owners managers blood tenders and staff collaborate guys after all there are on the front line with customers and can share customer pain points purchasing motivations and memo graphics to make it easy to gather and analyze info from them create an online survey so they can send in their feedback you can also use an offer even a gift at Amazon giftcard incentives write your complete this survey that usually motivates them pretty well

{Standard audience profile}

finally you can also use standard audience profiling to determine your store's target market this turnkey solution is foot traffic's answer to determine who you should be marketing to this powerful geolocation data provides a dispensary with actionable insights for Hyper targeted marketing campaigns and offers an a significant competitive advantage for your dispensaries for traffic takes the guesswork out of finding out who your customers are and hands you a report with data about the customer habits including where they eat shop work and socialize we can also provide more advanced reporting that includes location and movement trends so text profile two four one one six six nine to learn more about the standard and advanced audience profiling I do have a quick preview here of what that can look like so we have two packages available to get you started the first one is a standard package and the MSRP on that package is $1,000 you get all of the profiling of your customer and then we have an advanced package which is competitive analysis along with a lot of more marketing insights and that is a $5,000 package right when you think about launching a dispensary right this could be extremely compelling information to either choose a location and/or once you select the location how to go to market and attract those in customer foot traffic as a marketing agency will analyze this audience profile data and provide actionable recommendations on how it should be successful in each one of these markets for you so here's another quick survey for you and we're

{How is your competition advertising to potential customers?}

going to go ahead and launch this poll here go ahead and take a moment to fill in this this survey how is your competition advertising to potential customers in those markets go ahead and take a moment here and just fill in some of these fill in this question for us with your answers let's go ahead and see how this uh this is shaping out with our customers today take another couple minutes here or a couple seconds before we close the poll still drawing in a lot of answers and there you have it so still waiting on a couple more here but okay so there it is so it looks like a lot of the competitors are using SMS marketing some of them are using some of the traditional marketing strategies which is billboards Google ads and display ads wow that seems to be the biggest display ads geo ads is the top of the results there so I'll go ahead and share these results with you so you can see them as well for yourself so

{Research the competition}

moving right along here stepped you scope out your local competition knowing what your competitors are doing is invaluable for identifying more marketing opportunities when thinking about the competition answer these quick key questions right where aren't they stronger and weaker when compared to your retail location who do they attract compared to each of your retail store locations how are they marketing their business gather this information right and in doing so it can really help your company find advertising opportunities and better determine how you want to market your brand step 3

{Build your local authority}

build your local authority now local authority can take many different shapes right especially when it comes to the digital world where you where you show up in the search results depends partly on your domain Authority basically your website needs to showcase that it's relevant and trustworthy so building a local authority go ahead and close this here so building a local authority will allow you to rank better in search when people in your target markets try to find you so how do you do that search is local and your website needs to have the right local ratings ranking excuse me factors in order to show up when customers are looking for a dispensary this is basically search engine optimization that it's focused on the local level it involves on-page SEO for your website including local paid location pages for each of your retail stores right so making it individual

{Create your marketing strategy}

another survey here right so how are you measuring the success of your marketing campaigns so do we have the ability here there it is here's another poll let's go ahead and gather some more information here from our trusted audience members today so take a moment here to answer these questions for us how are you measuring the success of your marketing campaigns okay we'll take a couple more seconds here to just a everybody to answer we have a lot of more results still streaming in here alright then I go ahead and close the poll now let's go ahead and take a look at this so the question once again how are you measuring the success of your marketing campaigns so the highest the highest response here unsure right so this is quite common the second highest response here is we track everything we can right so ultimately you just bring in as much data from every single source and then you know last but not least here and the results was Google Analytics so this is a great one right we certainly really encourage that I'm go ahead and share this result here with you guys so moving right along here go ahead

{How are you measuring the success of your marketing campaigns?}

and just step out of this pole so execution is key right the last step in

{Execution is key}

creating a marketing strategy is to measure your success you need to know what's working and what's not working so that you can make changes as necessary so you need to be dynamic your marketing strategy isn't static it should be refined based on new information you're gathering so you should track write the following marketing campaign conversions organic and paid website traffic and clicks social follower counts and impressions conversions response rates an average response time on social media or online chat number of positive reviews also track the negative reviews they're just as important email and SMS marketing campaign performance transactions and revenue for those transactions you should also be testing components of your campaigns to learn which are most effective for you including email and SMS templates send days and times subject lines in CTA s social media channels and messages pay-per-click landing pages write website call to actions local advertising channels like Google Ads geo advertising promotions coupons contests and even offer these are all very very important these are all vital components of a good marketing strategy as I just

{Local accountability}

alluded to but these factors don't matter if the strategy isn't implemented well once you've created your strategy you need to determine who is going to do what so that responsibilities are key remember we started this conversation by saying that it's very important to have definitive strategy and collaborative effort between the on ground right team right that is on your locally on the dispensary itself versus the actual corporate so we can find it we find it's best that corporate handles the following right company branding generalized website management national and regional broadcast outdoor and print print advertising signage social media accounts national awards submission conference submissions national loyalty programs and then each retail location

{Share responsibility}

right they should be handling the following their local their location page on the company website local advertising PR and outreach local sponsorship and local events so these

{Work with an agency}

are all some of the areas where both local and corporate teams will need to share responsibilities so for example while corporate can maintain a brand on YouTube account local stores can create their own video playlists similarly each retail store should have their own local Facebook page page associated with the corporate brand Facebook page for email and SMS corporate should set a branded template and national plaques to all emails and SMS lists and establish oversight over local lists and campaigns retail dispensary should maintain their own list of local customers and connect with them regularly via their own email and SMS campaigns blogs should be primarily managed by the corporate side while dispensaries should create location specific blogs that can be added as a section of their location and landing page with a CTA button that leads to their online menu finally while online reviews should be tracked at both the corporate and dispensary level the individual dispensary location should be frontline and resolving customers issue relating to the store work with an

{There you have it!}

agency to streamline your marketing efforts so by choosing foot traffic your national and local strategy and execution can be completed much faster and less expensively right which translates to a higher ROI at the end of the day a good agency will be a complimentary extension of your team it's not the replacement of the team you can reduce the local learning curve get insights into advertising limitations and digital marketing compliance implement campaigns quickly track the data and make adjustments on the fly but text agents each of four one one six six nine to set up a strategy call with us and discuss the integrated marketing solution including geo ads Google Ads SEO and SMS

{We deliver customers}

moving right along here right so there there you have it hopefully we've dropped some value bombs on how an effective retail retail chain marketing strategy excuse me how a retail chain marketing strategy marries both the corporate and retail managers who maximize that company revenue the reality is MSOs are spending a lot to get established in a rapidly emerging cannabis industry retail market it's a competitive landscape for sure and you can blindly sit back and continue to focus your marketing budget on building your corporate brand and hope your store owners and managers can deliver on the revenue or you can guide and empower them so retail dispensary customers are

{Any questions?}

your revenue levers at foot-traffic we work to make your job and a lot easier and it helped you pull these levers wisely and to the fullest potential possible right we focus on how many customers we can drive to buy from the local dispensaries then prescribe the right services that will accomplish that goal no cookie cutter formulas here but carefully crafted marketing strategies that merge science and art the current crisis has heightened the importance of both continuity across the brand stores as well as the value of local local marketing efforts so with foot-traffic you can create and implement a strategy that will focus not only on helping your you manage today's challenge but also one that will set you up for a long-term success once you're the economy opens back up I know that what we shared here

{Let's connect}

was a lot of information so does anybody have any questions here please do feel free to chime in on the Q&A portion of the webinar let's definitely get connected we're certainly here to help and let's continue the conversation because every brand is different it's crucial that you create a distinct strategy that addresses your unique challenges so schedule strategy call session now and let let's talk about how we can optimize your strategy and help you capture more market share go to foot traffic dot me dot call or forum slash call and let's put some time together and get your free Yeti as well right you do qualify for a free Yeti for attending if you don't know what a Yeti is it's only the best thermal mug there is in the market right so certainly happy to provide you one for taking the time to listen to our webinar today but I definitely want to make sure that we address any questions that we have here and I'll wait a couple of seconds here to allow these questions to stem in here all right first question here what are geo ads great question so geo advertising is the ability to advertise content across a Display Network right so this is how you actually get your brand out outside of just Google ads right so not to be confused with Google ads what's really great about geo ads they said you can actually target specific regions right so geographical positioning so think about your dispensary being located at X address drawing a perimeter of five miles around your dispensary and saying any individual that is within that particular perimeter will be able to see a digital display advertisement of your brand right on there either their mobile device or on their desktop right so that's a very powerful way to brick build awareness on specific local levels and with Cova Dean geo advertising is very very compelling why individuals are seldom going outside of their home usually when they're outside of their home they're either going to a grocery store or perhaps taking a quick stroll at apart right so imagine yourself being able to target those regions so once they pull out their phone and they're bored standing in line at the grocery store right they see your brand great way to get them to pick up a some cannabis on their way back home right perhaps place an order with you on the way back home once again team thank you so much for joining us they certainly appreciate everybody's time please do visit us at foot-traffic dot me for slash call let's schedule a strategy session and get that free Eddie to you thank you once again for your time look forward to speaking with you offline have a great rest of your day and stay safe ]