Curate an Exceptional Customer Experience for Cannabis Consumers

[ {Intro}

welcome everybody to today's webinar how to curate an exceptional customer experience and score rave reviews improve your reputation management and increase customer retention today we'll be covering why reputation management matters what cannabis consumers want from retailers how you can improve your in-store experience and the top tips for getting more reviews my name is guillermo bravo i'm the ceo and founder of foot traffic we've been in business since 2017 servicing cannabis dispensaries and retailers i come with a breadth of experience and advertising technology so feel free to connect with me anytime at any given time we're working with 400

{Trusted By}

plus dispensaries and delivery services across north america and that includes united states and canada and more we are we work primarily with cannabis dispensaries and delivery services you know our goal is to drive in-store foot traffic and online e-commerce sales so we focus strictly on this niche and you know love what we do before we get started a couple things you want to bring up cell phones if you don't mind putting those face down and on silent or do not disturb we love them but they can be quite distracting when attending a webinar and then familiar familiarize yourself with zoom there's a q a function at the bottom of the screen just make sure that you leave any comments or questions in that field and then we'll be sure to answer them at the end of the webinar and make sure to stick around we have special offers for attendees that i'll be sharing uh you know at the end of the webinar all right let's get started what people say about your dispensary online can help you score can help you score even more customers but you need to be a part of making that conversation happen and ensuring that it's going in the right direction right now 82 of customers check reviews for local businesses that's four out of every five customers how many stars people give you what the reviews say and how you respond can all impact whether those customers order from you or go to your competition if you create an experience your customers can't wait to talk about you get the benefits of having a repeat customer and a brand ambassador who will leave your reviews for life why do so why do reviews matter so much while reviews provide potential customers with social proof they help to legitimize your business by showing that you are who you say you are and they clue potential customers into what they can expect from you when people are first seeking out a new dispensary they want to minimize the risk and find a spot they can trust your reviews help make things easier for them as long as you're actively asking for them monitoring them and responding to your reviews this is all part of reputation management reputation management is the process of staying on top of what people are saying about your business reviews have become such an integral part of consumer behavior that dispensaries need to allocate time and resources to monitor them and respond there are three parts to reputation management first you need to create a positive experience that people want to talk about we're going to dive into this a little bit later next you need to implement systems that encourage and make it easy for people to leave your reviews and lastly you need to respond and manage your reviews these three components are connected and if you want to benefit from your star power you need to keep all three in check but that's not all reviews also have an impact on your google rankings if you want to show up in the top three spots on google then you need to be getting reviews every month and maintain a 4.7 star rating so how do you keep getting positive reviews by focusing on what cannabis consumers

{What Consumers Want}

want when you we know that all consumers are not the same what is crucial is that you focus on your own target audiences their needs and wants are going to defer but by creating by but by being creative you can ensure you make your meeting and even surpassing their expectations consumer needs will vary depending on whether you are serving a medical or or adult use audience general differences social economic behavioral differences are you catering to college students or you catering to baby boomers to make sure you can curate an experience that they'll want to share you need to nail down your buyer persona first to better understand who your customers are you should you should have at least one buyer

{Buyer Persona}

persona this will show you who your marketing speaks to and who in store experience revolves around a buyer persona is a fictional avatar that represents your ideal customer so let so let's say you are a provisioning center in michigan that serves both medical patients and recreational users you'll want to craft in at least two different personas to ensure that you address both of your target audiences a buyer persona will help you pinpoint what matters to most of your customers and how you can best meet their needs you can use it to help frame your marketing in addition to your in-store experience you met you may have created buyer persona personas before making a marketing plan or as part of your business plan if so you want to focus on amending that persona rather than starting from scratch if you are starting from scratch take a look at any of the data that you've been able to collect regarding sales patterns if you have access to your marketing data you can always you can also identify behavioral patterns like what they enjoy looking at on your website talk to your bud tenders about the individuals who they are interacting with the most do they seem like college students older patients or soccer moms also take a look at the reviews and feedback you have from real customers what do they talk about what are their interests are they concerned with your pricing your store environment your product selection how else can you learn what your customers want ask them for additional information

{Ask Them}

talk directly to your customers or create a survey for them to answer add an incentive to boost your to boost answer rates for example 10 off your next order for filling out our short questionnaire customer feedback is crucial if you want to make sure you're meeting your customers needs you want to also use reviews as feedback comb through your reviews to look for opportunities and insights you can also look on social media for feedback ask questions on your social media accounts and keep track of what customers are saying not only is it good for boosting engagement but it can provide you valuable insight into your customers once you have all this information you can start to craft a buyer persona maybe your target audience is disney busy professionals who want to use cannabis to relax instead of alcohol they like learning about different products and tend to purchase vape cartridges or flour for weekday use occasionally they experiment with other products during the weekends or maybe it's college students who are trying to save a buck they look for high thc products from specific brands and stop by weekly during the daily deals to make sure they have what they want for the weekend once you have all this information you can start catering more to those target audiences if you want if you have multiple buyer personas you can segment your marketing list so that you can offer each persona the right type of deal or content to get them to shop with you customer friendly processes regardless

{Customer-Friendly Processes}

of who your ideal customer is there are certain expectations that transcend buyer personas for example example everyone likes easy to understand pricing if possible include taxes in your pricing for transparency no one likes a surprise at the checkout everyone likes feeling like they're getting a great deal whether it's buy one get one special or percentage off offer deals on the products that you think your target customers will enjoy regardless of where you are or who you're serving everyone appreciates a clean safe environment that doesn't mean you have to be obvious about it but you should have root teams in place to keep your shop tidy and organized you should have clear security measures that you don't distract from your dispensary ambiance you shouldn't feel like you're visiting someone in a jail just to buy a joint security personnel should be trained in customer service they should be friendly and welcoming in most shops this is the first person that a customer sees unless your regulating agency requires it there's no reason that this person needs to dress like a rent-a-cop consider what would make your target audience feel more comfortable everyone likes things that look nice now what that means is going to defer from customer to customer if you're serving college students you can go for a more club-like feel and dark leather couches and sleek tv menus if you're observing patients you may want to choose a more spa-like retreat with comfortable individual seating and ipads with educational content friendly knowledgeable staff is another must regardless of your customer persona make sure you're doing regular trading and keep your team up to date on products in canvas in general if you do any scripting make sure that it's in line with your brand and your buyer persona people love to learn about cannabis but some like to do it on their own time while others prefer the help of a bud tender have that option available whether you have informational materials out and about in your waiting room or offer a more concierge service this should be determined by your buyer persona if you're not sure how to distinguish your store visit other dispensaries or stores that cater to similar audiences and see how they handle meeting needs of their target audience with your buyer personas in hand it's time to improve your customer experience so let's take it up a notch meeting expectations

{Take It Up a Notch}

isn't enough you want to surpass them you can take everything i mentioned before and turn it up to 11. add events that cater to your target audience if you're a medical dispensary help people get certified and find the right products if you're a recreational shop think about what your target audience loves are they into yoga concerts and work with members of the community to create an interesting and innovative slate of events a recent dispensary email i looked at had information about march on madness and helpful tips for calming down and included recipes and mindfulness events that dispensary definitely tapped into their buyer personas and create a fun take on march madness you can all also partner with local businesses to get your customer discounts or create events together

{Pick Your Battles}

now let's pick your battles all this is a lot to take aboard if you feel like you have a lot of work it's time to start implementing change if you try to change everything at once then you're more likely to give up or do a substandard job pick what changes you can implement quickly and start working on those that you can reap the rewards for example refreshing your waiting space can help be a quick fix for creating a particular ambiance you can also work with your marketing team to change up your deal so that they are more relevant to your customer personas then create a plan for implementing long-term improvements like bud tender training you can begin by rolling out our specific training program to all your current staff and amend your onboarding process to include the training for new staff there's a lot to learn about cannabis and customer service so this shouldn't be all covered at once definitely dedicate a lot of time during this training process as you're implementing your changes make sure to check in on your customers and

{Monitor Your Success}

see if they like what they say see definitely monitor your success you can always take a look at your sales metrics to see if they're being impacted in a positive way by the changes you're making are your prices and deals leading to larger baskets average order sizes or more cross-selling have you seen more traffic or revenue are people utilizing the tools in your waiting room or going to your events now that you're taking time to step up your game you'll want to get more reviews let's dive into the top tips for getting those stars training we mentioned training earlier

{Training}

your art your butt genders aren't just sales associates they're valuable resources for your customers and they're the face of your business these people these are the people that your customers will interact with most you should be asking for reviews as part of your budtender's job create a simple script like thanks for shopping with us today if you appreciate our service make sure to leave us a review you want to ask for reviews frequently it's crucial that you have a fr that you have fresh reviews every month customers find those to be more relevant plus they are the first ones that pop up when someone is looking at your google my business listing for example not only should your butt tenders mention it but you you should also have a sign at your checkout or a postcard within your customers checkout bags put a qr code on them and make it super easy for your customers to leave your dispensary review i promise this is not a waste of time 76 percent of customers that are asked to leave a review go on to write one so just ask ask ask away

{Review Gating}

now let's talk about review gating using the review game can also help increase your your reviews while maintaining that 4.7 star average a review gig lives on your website and helps you monitor who will be leaving reviews for your business individuals who imply that they weren't satisfied with their experience will be asked to leave you feedback on a contact form while those who are happy with their experience will be sent to google for you to leave for them to leave a review by sorting out those who have a positive experience with your dispensary and those who did not you can get feedback from unhappy individuals and help troubleshoot their issues while sending happy customers to review sites to share how great your store was this is a great tool to combine with text messaging because it can make it simpler for people to leave reviews or have their complaints heard and addressed this can help make you more responsive too you'll know when people are taking the time to leave reviews or feedback so you can quickly respond definitely leverage sms and email

{Use SMS & Email}

marketing another method for getting more reviews is sms and email automation this is for individuals who opted in to receive text messages or emails from you they're individuals who are in your loyalty program and they likely enjoy shopping with you by creating automation you can make it easy to touch base with them after they visit your shop write up an eye-catching text or email thanking them for stopping by and ask them to share their experience you can have this message trigger in a variety of ways one thing we like to do is have a message sent to a customer after the third visit that way you know that the customer is a fan of your shop since they keep coming to you coming to you over and over again you can also have it sent after large purchase or even after a visit it's up to you the goal is with all of these methods is to make it easy remove the barriers and make it simple for people to leave a review

{Incentives}

who doesn't love an incentive need to get more reviews quickly consider offering an incentive like double loyalty points a special deal or a gear giveaway for those who leave your review one thing to keep in mind is before you go down this path make sure you're allowed to offer incentives or giveaways by your regulated agencies most states won't allow you to give away product but by doing loyalty points or gear you can get around that regulation

{Engage}

engage once you have people talking about your business it's time to encourage them and maintain your start rating or improve upon it you should have always respond to reviews among consumers that read reviews 97 read businesses responses to reviews people expect a response engaging can also lead you to get more reviews this helps show that you care about what people say about you and that you value their feedback they took the time out of their day to say something about your dispensary and you should take the time to thank them you want to respond to both positive and negative reviews for positive reviews thank the person in your brand voice something like glad you had a great experience come back soon or so happy you loved gorilla glue it's one of our favorites too make sure to switch up switch it up for different reviews and personalize your responses now let's talk about negative reviews i'm not going to lie they can really suck but they also present your store with an opportunity to take someone's negative experience and turn it around and if you can't do that you can still learn from the feedback when you respond to negative reviews you can often make the situation better if the problem is handled well many reviewers will change their reviews to a positive one or delete their original negative review it's not all about the negative poster though other people read that review and see how you handle it because it shows you're as who you are as a company customers nowadays want transparency they want a personal relationship with the companies they trust responding to negative reviews shows that your business cares that it's responsive and willing to engage with customers a negative review can help get you riled up but don't respond immediately look at the problem from your customer's perspective apologize to the customer for their experience and share your contact info to take the conversation offline keep it short and simple but kind for example hi mary i'm sorry you weren't happy with the service you received during your last visit please contact me at email at dispensary.com to discuss your experience thank you for leaving a review and let us know what we can do to be better now you're wondering whether or not you can just delete reviews unfortunately it's not that easy google will generally delete reviews if they contain profanity also if one person has made multiple negative reviews this is considered spam or google will take action reviews posted by competing businesses fake or irrelevant reviews or reviews by disgruntled former employees are a violation of google's terms of service so you can get you can you can request to have these deleted but just so you know this isn't an instant process it takes google time to check over everything and to be honest they don't always delete every review that they should you should still take the time to respond to the negative review even if you request that it be deleted so that people who see it in the meantime won't be put off

{Reputation Management Made Easy}

at foot traffic we've helped dispensaries manage their reputations for years we help our clients create seo friendly google my business profiles and can help with both reviews and responding reviews ultimately reputation management is an important part of an seo strategy according to moz reviews account for about 15 percent of google's local pack ranking factors reviews help legitimize your business with both potential customers and google the better your reputation the more likely your store will show up higher in local search results but this isn't just about placement we know that the higher up you are in organic search results the more clicks your website will receive this is vital traffic these individuals are interested in cannabis they're interested in visiting a dispensary this is highly relevant web traffic which means they're more likely to purchase for it from you most of the online revenue that our customers get is from organic traffic so you cannot take this lightly to help you get started with reputation management we have a special seo deal for you today first time customers can save 200 off your first month of a three month seo plan which includes reputation management will get you set up to get more reviews and to maximize their impact so your customers can find you schedule a call with us today by visiting foot traffic dot me slash chat all right that was a lot of information uh in a short period of time so we're gonna pause here to take some questions all right the first question is how many reviews should we get great question uh first bench the first milestone we'd recommend is 300 reviews that's pretty common around a medical market if you're in for instance california or washington state i would shoot for at least a thousand reviews you know add this as part of your long-term strategy perhaps set a goal of 30 reviews per month or one per day for a year to achieve you know uh 300 reviews you can also create a like a contest within your between your bud tenders whoever can get the most reviews you know gets a 100 amazon gift card so different things that you can do to really push reviews there what platforms are the best for reviews great question google is king and we always push for google reviews because that's going to have the most impact on your business on your seo and on your local rankings so definitely prioritize google other websites to consider would be yelp yelp is another important one because that pulls into apple phones and it pulls into a couple other apis for review so you definitely want to consider getting yelp reviews as well all right how quickly should we respond to reviews i would say the max time to respond to review would be 72 hours you know if it's a negative review uh definitely prioritize that over the positive reviews you want to uh you know respond to that in a quick manner and address the concerns that the customer has how frequently should we check reviews another great question um i would check them every day there's different ways that you can automate this process we have a dashboard that you can use to log in and check the reviews on daily basis or you can receive notifications from google directly or from the other platform so just respond to them in a timely manner 72 hours is always the best practice leave some time for a few more questions anyone raise your hand oh one question is uh how do we set up an automation for requesting reviews so depending on what crm you use you can set up a post visit automation and then you can choose different parameters around that so have they visited one time or three times are they you know what's their average spend you can segment customers by different lists within your crm and send them targeted text messages uh with you know tailored messages so definitely look into your crm and see if you have the capabilities to do that wonderful well thank you so much for joining us today and if you've stuck around this far we you definitely qualify for a free yeti reach out to us schedule schedule a call and we'll get that shipping information for you and get one though get one of those out to you quickly thank you for your time today and have a wonderful week ]