Building an effective dispensary marketing strategy comes down to understanding how to attract the right customers, engage them at the right moments, and nurture them toward becoming loyal regulars. This webinar, led by Eduardo Silva, gives cannabis retailers a clear starting point for getting their marketing strategy off the ground.The session covers the foundational pillars of dispensary marketing — how to attract new customers, where to focus your efforts, and how to build a practical plan you can execute. Dispensary owners and marketing managers who want a structured approach to their marketing, whether starting from scratch or sharpening what they have, will find this a clear and useful guide.
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How to Market Your Marijuana Dispensary
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Key Insights
- Cannabis dispensaries need a marketing channel mix that includes both digital advertising (where compliance allows) and organic channels like SEO and reputation management that compound over time without ongoing spend.
- Customer retention is the highest-ROI marketing investment for most dispensaries because the cost of keeping an existing customer loyal is a fraction of the cost of acquiring a new one.
- Local SEO and directory presence are often the highest-leverage free marketing activities available to dispensaries, yet most operators underinvest in them relative to their potential impact.
- SMS marketing to an opted-in customer list consistently delivers the highest conversion rates of any marketing channel available to cannabis dispensaries.
- A clear brand identity - defined by who you are for, what makes you different, and how you communicate - makes every other marketing channel more effective by giving customers a consistent, memorable experience.
Expert Answers
[{How do cannabis dispensaries market themselves?}
Cannabis dispensaries use a combination of compliant digital advertising, local SEO, directory listings, SMS marketing, loyalty programs, and social media to reach new customers and retain existing ones. Because many mainstream advertising channels restrict cannabis, dispensaries rely on programmatic advertising networks that specialize in cannabis-compliant placements, Google Ads strategies that work within policy, and organic channels that build visibility over time without paid placements.
{What is the most effective marketing channel for a cannabis dispensary?}
The most effective channel depends on your goals, but SMS marketing consistently delivers the highest conversion rates for retention because it reaches opted-in customers directly on their phones. For new customer acquisition, local SEO and Google Maps visibility drive the highest-intent traffic - consumers actively searching for a nearby dispensary. Programmatic display advertising is most effective for building awareness in your trade area. A combination of these channels typically outperforms any single one.
{How much should a dispensary spend on marketing?}
Industry benchmarks suggest cannabis dispensaries should allocate 3 to 8 percent of their monthly revenue to marketing, with the range depending on competitive intensity and growth goals. Newer dispensaries or those in competitive markets typically need to spend at the higher end to build visibility, while established dispensaries with strong organic traffic and loyalty programs can maintain performance at the lower end. The more important question is not how much to spend but how to allocate it effectively across channels.]
Webinar Highlights
00:00 - The Cannabis Marketing Landscape: What Makes It Different
The session opens with an honest look at what makes cannabis marketing uniquely challenging and how understanding these constraints is the first step toward building an effective program within them.
12:00 - Building Your Channel Strategy
This section covers the core marketing channels available to dispensaries, how they work together, and how to prioritize them based on your dispensary's stage, budget, and goals.
24:00 - Acquisition vs. Retention: Where to Focus
The webinar addresses one of the most important strategic questions in dispensary marketing: how to balance investment in new customer acquisition versus retaining and growing your existing customer base.
35:00 - Measuring Marketing Performance
The session closes with guidance on the metrics dispensaries should track, how to interpret them, and how to use performance data to continuously improve your marketing strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions
[ {What marketing strategies work for cannabis dispensaries?}
The marketing strategies that work best for cannabis dispensaries combine compliant digital advertising through programmatic networks, strong local SEO to capture search intent, SMS marketing to drive repeat visits from existing customers, and a loyalty program that creates financial incentives for retention. The specific mix depends on your budget, market, and growth stage, but all four elements are important components of a complete dispensary marketing strategy.
{What is cannabis digital marketing?}
Cannabis digital marketing refers to the use of online channels to reach and influence cannabis consumers. It includes programmatic display and video advertising, search engine marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, SMS campaigns, and digital out-of-home advertising. Because mainstream platforms restrict cannabis advertising, cannabis digital marketing often requires specialized platforms and strategies designed to reach adults in compliance with state regulations and platform policies.
{How do dispensaries use social media for marketing?}
Dispensaries use social media primarily for brand building and community engagement rather than direct product promotion. Instagram and Facebook restrict cannabis advertising, so organic social content focuses on lifestyle content, educational posts, team culture, and community involvement rather than promotional product posts. Some dispensaries use social media to drive email and SMS sign-ups, which converts followers into a directly marketable customer list that is not subject to social platform restrictions.
{What is a dispensary loyalty program and how does it help marketing?}
A dispensary loyalty program rewards customers for repeat purchases with points, discounts, or exclusive benefits. For marketing, loyalty programs serve several critical functions: they capture customer contact information for SMS and email marketing, they provide purchase history data for personalization, they create financial incentives for repeat visits, and they reduce price sensitivity because customers feel they are getting ongoing value from their relationship with the dispensary.
{How do I build a marketing plan for a cannabis dispensary?}
Start by defining your business goals - whether that is opening awareness for a new location, driving repeat visits from existing customers, or growing online orders. Then identify your target customer segments and the channels where they can be reached. Allocate budget across acquisition channels (programmatic, search, local SEO) and retention channels (SMS, loyalty, email). Set measurable KPIs for each channel. Review performance monthly and reallocate budget based on results. ]
Webinar Full Transcript
[ {How to Market Your Dispensary}
good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for today's webinar on how to market your dispensary we're going to wait another 30 seconds to 60 seconds to allow some of the other attendees to log in and we'll get started momentarily thank you good morning everyone good afternoon if you're joining us from the east coast my name is eduardo silva and we'll be getting started here now on this webinar how to get your marketing strategy going for your dispensary once again thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to attend this webinar we really appreciate it and so we're going to get started now so how to market your dispensary and how to use these tactics that we're going to be discussing today to get more traffic to your store wonderful so on our agenda today attract engage engage and nurture today we're going to be covering marketing strategies that will help you attract engage and nurture new customers as well as existing customers once again my name is eduardo silva i will be your host for today i bring with me around 18 years in sales and marketing experience i'm really happy to be sharing some of those lessons learned
{Attract, engage & nurture}
along the way with you today a little bit about foot traffic so foot traffic is a digital marketing agency been around for five years now solely focused in the cannabis dispensary delivery medicinal as well markets both in the united states as well as canada so all of north america covering more than 20 states in the u.s as well as canada we're really really happy for some of those customers that have supported us along the way i'm really excited to be speaking with you today and sharing some of these lessons learned before we get started let's uh just take a quick moment to cover some of the housekeeping items we're gonna be moving quite fast through a lot of content um very important content so we ask you to take those great telephony devices cell phones social media all of those distractions and just put them on mute for the next 28 minutes also take a quick moment and just familiarize yourself with the zoom interface so as you're probably
{Focus}
noticing there is a icon on the top if you hover over it you're gonna notice that there's a q a button in there that q a will automatically uh send whatever questions you have throughout the webinar directly to our host here okay and our moderators so they're going to be addressing any questions as we move through the content so be sure to get familiar once again with the interface and then also stick around we do have a few special offers we want to share with the attendees that we'll be covering at the end of the webinar so once again thank you so much for taking the time to join us and let's get right into it so cannabis is a product and despite what many people may think just like any other product you need to market in order to sell it right so for dispensaries that means having a marketing strategy in place is key for drawing customers to your store and increase your sales today we're going to be going over and covering some of the different ways you can connect with your target
{Getting started}
audience including both digital marketing strategies as well as traditional strategies for marketing most of these strategies we're going to be covering can be used in the united states as well as canada and although there are some restrictions uh in different states as well as in canada i would recommend that you check with the regulating agency of that state just to make sure that you're not doing something that could potentially lead you to a fine right so let's jump right into seven different ways to attract customers so first where does that start on the digital uh experience of that customer right it's the website so the first place you start when considering marketing your dispensary is a website the website is your digital home think of it as the brick and mortar right but digitally and it needs to be easy to navigate on any device for your customers right including their mobile devices so your website should have clear call to actions and an easy to find link to your online menu so you can monetize all of the traffic to that store online all of your contact information should be accurate and clearly visible as well no one wants to hunt for your address so you got to make it easier for those visitors your website should also feature places to capture visitors information so you can engage with them in the future we recommend getting both emails and phone numbers though you can choose the one that works best for you and your customers your website is also the flagship for your digital media presence and your brand so investing in your website to ensure that it is valuable for your audience while representing your brand effectively is vital to your overall success to make sure this is the case you should be also tracking data install google analytics to better understand how customers are using your website and if you don't know how reach out to us we're happy to help uh create that analytics tracking for you make sure you're tracking number of visitors number of unique visitors a length of stay sources of traffic and pages visited right the use of this data can really be helpful in creating more content or switch things around if you see that there are some trends on your website let's jump into social media and social media is sort of a must nowadays social media strategy defines how your organization can relate to and really engage with the community right in your target audience so you don't have to be in every social media platform it's okay to focus your efforts on one or two and just concentrate on the channels that are most popular with your audience otherwise
{Social Media}
you won't be able to invest the time in creating the content that draws that engagement so to increase your visibility make sure that your social media posts provide value so that your followers are motivated to engage with you you should post frequently and about topics that your audience cares about so take the time to respond to people who comment on your post or who share posts and tags your brand by engaging with your audience they will engage with you more and they will be more likely to share your content in the future so you can't improve what you don't measure use analytics to assess what's working and what's not working and why so a tip here is make sure to include your social media buttons on your website place social urls on your receipts and display them prominently in your store you can even put a sticker on your window as well seo stands for search engine optimization which is the practice of increasing the quality and the quantity of traffic to your website through organic search engine results now organic search engine traffic is unpaid traffic that comes from google and when customers once you find a dispensary near them they turn to search and google in particular and if you want to show up in those search results then it's crucial that you have a robust seo strategy and a team to implement it otherwise searchers will go right to your competitors search engine optimization shows that your page is relevant for particular keywords so in our industry that may be san diego dispensary detroit provisioning center or santa rosa marijuana delivery so optimizing your site around these keywords makes them more likely that people who are looking for your services will find you when you do have a good seo strategy two things should and will happen okay one you will show up higher in search results and two you will get more organic traffic when you rank better in google it helps create brand trust and authority it shows searchers that your site is relevant and that it may be useful for them they automatically equate high rankings with high quality so seo is beyond important on my book let's talk a little bit about google ads google ads is pay-per-click advertisement so hosted on the world's most popular search engine and i have here just a high-level overview of all of north america's google ad campaigns that we have run right so this is an aggregate for the last year okay so over 2.2 million dollars in revenue driven
{REVENUE $2.2M}
through these campaigns by foot traffic the investment total 225 k across the board so obviously this is an aggregate so the number looks as such however look at the roi i looked at this roi of 10 to 1 return and i thought to myself wow the s p 500 if it only could return that much right especially in this time of day we would be in great shape we'll talk a little bit more about a case study here momentarily but this is definitely just a way to just get you introduced so when using google ads and using a google google ads right you can get your dispensary ads above all other search results so remember what i said about seo being really important well google ads is just as important because while you're building your authority you can in many ways take a small shortcut right to the top of the search result think about how valuable that is 93 of all internet searches in north america are done on google it's the most used search engine tool in the world and the one that's most popular amongst your customers so you have your ad set up right you can start appealing to potential customers who are looking for a dispensary near them and send them right to your menu while it's still important to use seo to build your organic traffic and search results using google ads is like hitting a hyper speed on the advertising campaign plus it has a predictable customer acquisition cost unlike traditional advertising so once your google ad campaign is dialed in you can determine how much you will need to spend in order to acquire a new customer and this is critical so now you may be thinking that dispensaries can't use google ads i'm here to tell you that not only can you use google ads but that you can create campaigns that will help drive more conversions and sales over the last year as i mentioned right a total investment of 225 000 in google ad campaigns and we've returned over 2.1 2.2 million in revenue part of the reason that google ads is such a high roi tool is that you're advertising to people who are looking for your services already you're not putting up a billboard and hoping that someone who is interested in your product just happens to drive by it google ads is targeting advertisement which means that when somebody is searching for you you are going to reach that person in other words they're searching for your product you are there to sell it to them when executed correctly the ads can quickly increase your overall web traffic and help you drive sales and at foot traffic our customers can make anywhere between six dollars to any case sometimes forty eight dollars for every dollar spent on google ads that's up to two thousand percent return on investment where else can you find numbers like that is my question so geo advertising is also very important which sometimes called geo targeted advertising or geo ads and it's the use of display ads on mobile devices within a set geographical region you've definitely seen them while browsing on your phone plenty of companies outside of the cannabis industry use them to increase their search including amazon wayfair right you've probably been on amazon prime looking through a product
{Geo Ads}
navigated outside of that and you keep seeing that same product voila geo ads right why because geo ads allows you to connect with new customers right where they are so with the increase of internet use online display ads help you keep your dispensary front and center with your customers once they enter one of your perimeters that you've created for your ads they will see your ads and if they use one of the mobile sites within the network they will be able to engage directly with that ad and go directly to your menu again one of the biggest problems facing dispensary is lack of compliant ways of advertising our geo ad service not only addresses this concern but makes the whole process seamless we offer three different ways in which geo ads can help your business and they can work well by themselves or in combination the first is proximity so where you are able to target a customer within a area of your dispensary or a delivery area this is exactly excuse me this is an excellent way to reach everyone that's home browsing the web or playing apps on their phones or waiting in a grocery store line next is competitor targeting which is the ability to target competing retailers to gain market share this strategy is essentially trying to lure people away from your competitor and then finally we have geo-fencing this is the ability to draw on a map around the area where you want to target with less mobility and more people at home this is the opportunity to target specific neighborhoods and areas so billboards are an interesting concept but in states that allow it a billboard can really help increase the awareness of your business in that region right why uh this isn't a targeted ad while this isn't a targeted ad or one that can um you know be targeted in terms of roi and measured it can still help you cement a brand recognition
{Billboards}
and make you top of mind within the customers in a specific uh geographical region right so as long as they're driving by they're going to visually see that there's no way to really target it or measure the actual returns on it but it certainly does build brand awareness mailers is another one sending out direct mailers with a qr code or a coupon code can help increase your order volume if you offer delivery you can send your mailer to an um of of age adults within your delivery zone this is very very uh good strategy as well and if you don't offer delivery choose a
{Mailer}
radius from your store to target in an urban area this may be as small as two miles whereas if you are in a more of a rural area right a 20 mile radius may be a great way to target as well or even in a suburban area right a 20 mile radius could be a great one to drive awareness locally let's jump into engaging with customers a loyalty program is a reward program offered by a dispensary to customers who frequently make purchases a loyalty program may give you and your customers advance access to new products special sales coupons or even free merchandise now why is this important because a successful dispensary relies on building
{Loyalty program}
a base of loyal repeat customers the cost of acquiring new customers much higher than retaining or nurturing an existing one so thankfully technology makes setting up one of these programs easier and uh really effective more so than any other time in history so must cost most customers today right use some sort of loyalty software or use ipads which you can place strategically in your dispensary to capture customers at the point of sale however many applications integrate menu online ordering options rewards and more if you want to learn more about some of the different strategies we've seen work extremely well and integrate with some of the other systems you have in place that's what we're here for right guide you through this process but simply event marketing refers to the process of using exhibits presentations or displays to promote your brand or products events can occur online or even offline you can choose to participate host or even a sponsor events you can even promote these events through various inbound and outbound marketing activities so events provide the opportunity for dispensaries to connect directly with the customers and clearly communicate the message that
{Events}
you want your customers to take away they also allow you to develop a more personal one-to-one relationship with your customers and prospects let's face it customers are savvy and they desire more than being uh inundated with one-way marketing communications and so events provide a unique opportunity for you and your customers to get to know one another but also get them familiar with your brand according to events management institute one of the leaders in events for companies they conducted a study and 74 of event attendees say that they have a more positive opinion about the company brand product or service being promoted after attending an event so event marketing should be an integral component of your strategic marketing mix so leveraging a combination of online and offline events are a great way to boost your overall bottom line so to be impactful events must be memorable your events must be more than just simply a staged advertisement right to do well and when executed well events can yield a handsome return and create powerful and lasting impressions with your audience so providing your customers the ability to engage in a unique environment allows you to connect with them in a relaxed low pressure environment so bottom line you can create long lasting relationships with boost which will boost the life time and the value of your customers overall our last few strategies will help you nurture and and also build those relationships okay so sms marketing is the use of text messages to connect with your customers and it's a crucial strategy to engage with your customers and build that loyalty with them so they will buy from you time and time again and sms can help you build a rapport with your customer base as well because it shares
{SMS}
important info deals and generally engage with your customer base right where they are something really important to remember is that 99 of text messages get open and most of these are open within the first three minutes of them being received so sms is the best way to get right into your customer's hand no other platform gives you that kind of access and in contrast only a third of emails are ever open and less than a percent of twitter and facebook posts reach their intended audiences with sms not only do you provide value to your customers by showcasing new products perhaps promotions right sales but you're also staying top of mind with them which is very very important so no other strategy helps you engage with your customers in such a personable way plus sending sms messages is inexpensive okay so it doesn't cost you much combine that with a strong call to action to place an online order and voila you can instantly boost your sales emails right we talked about email not having the highest possible return but it's still a very important strategy because it's a great way to keep your subscribers informed and according to marketing sherpa uh one of the leaders in marketing research 72 percent of people prefer to receive promotional content through email compared to 17 percent who prefer social media
{Email}
plus ninety percent of emails gets delivered to the intended recipients inbox whereas only two percent of your facebook fans see your posts in their newsfeed your email and sms lists are info that you own as well right so you don't own the social media profiles and they can shut you down at any point in time which is obviously one of the challenges within the cannabis industry and let's not even mention the negative impact that algorithm changes can have on some of these social media platforms however your lists are yours and they provide you with different avenues to reach those customers right and also it boosts the overall equity and the value of your dispensary business so build your email list through your website or even at your pos and then use it to share deals events and your news newest blog post the latest strategy we're going to cover today is reputation management online reviews are one of the most important elements of any local businesses marketing program online reviews have changed the face of online marketing reviews bridge the gap between word of mouth and the viral form of feedback that can make your make or break you and your business a well thought out strategy will help you develop active positive participation amongst your customers while increasing brand awareness and long-term profitability when customers are shopping at your store encourage them to review your business a little bit of effort pays serious dividends customers feel heard and they and prospect customers get to see all of your great reviews thereby encouraging them to shop with you reviews can also boost your seo aim to get one new review a day and one ranking of a minimum 4.7 stars meaning your average ranking at 4.7 stars that should be your goal to get reviews you will want to make sure your butt tenders are asking your customers for them after a positive experience you can also create flyers with a qr code to place it in their bags or re-engage customers with sms to ask for a google review in terms of reputation management you should check your reviews regularly and respond to both positive and negative reviews and for negative reviews try to take the encounter offline by offering your phone number and if you are able to address uh the reviewers concerns they may even be willing to update the reviews so remember that they may actually change a negative review to a positive feedback instead this happens really really often so we're so confident in the google ads management portion for dispensaries that we're actually going to offer a no strings attached 30 free chat trial to showcase the impact of google ads and how you can actually uh increase your overall bottom line so for the attendees here today once again a 30-day free trial in google ads what this ultimately means
{Google Ads 30 day free trial}
is that we will launch it for you we'll give you 30 days so you can experiment and see the results for yourself so get in touch with us we're going to put the link here in the chat window so you can get in touch with us set up a meeting let's get you started no you know no strings attached here right so if you just want to launch a campaign with us get familiar with how this works you increase your overall boost of um of clients and new customers just send us a quick note let's get you set up and then here's an example case study that shows the results of one of our google ad campaigns over a 30-day period so we uh engaged over 238 conversions so these are individuals that actually purchased with this particular campaign over 30 days generating over 34 000 really just about 35 dollars in
{REVENUE $34,725}
revenue here and the investment from the customer one thousand one hundred and sixty eight dollars it is an absolute no-brainer so a thirty dollar return for every dollar spent if this is not enough uh i certainly don't know what will be right one of the most tried and tested platforms here and we're offering a free trial and then let's stop here for quick questions um and please do feel free to chime on in here on the q a section with any questions you may have happy to address any of them first question here so how long does it usually take to see you know your your best possible roi on google ads great question so google does not outlaw
{Questions?}
um does not block necessarily cannabis ads they just have a policy around not advertising drugs so if you do have specific wording around cannabis right those are some of the ways that you have to be really delicate about it one of the other challenges with advertising on google ads and something we excel in is actually getting you the best results and that's why we're providing your free trial in the first two weeks of that campaign we do a very conservative approach to really measure the best success possible on specific keywords that are relatable to your specific market audience and so once we have that data in your first two to three weeks of campaign then we accelerate and that's how we drive results so normally we see first 30 days a little bit more conservative you do see great returns but once we have that data we can really accelerate and see exactly kind of what your projections will be so i will say the second month is your biggest return your third month it just goes up from there and one of the things that we mentioned throughout this presentation is just how measurable this practice is any other questions here wonderful wonderful well great question uh thank you so much for participating and uh once again for sticking around you do qualify for a yeti tumbler uh if you do work with a dispensary do reach out to us once again we do have the link here for the attendees foot traffic dot com dot me forward slash call just go ahead and schedule a call let's get the proper shipping information for you and quickly just validate that and send you your free yeti tumblr once again eduardo silva here with foot
{Thank You}
traffic thank you so much for taking the time to attend this webinar with us we look forward to speaking with you shortly have a great rest of your day ]
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