Google Ads For Mail Order Marijuana: A Case Study
Imagine you own and operate a mail-order marijuana business or a licensed retail cannabis dispensary in Canada or the USA. I bet you need to find an effective way to increase online sales and/or in-store traffic, asap.
Does this sound familiar or sound like someone you know?
If so, please continue reading and we’ll outline exactly how our client, a national mail order marijuana (MOM) company was able to increase e-commerce sales with a 6.5% conversion rate and over $6.8K in revenue in just 30-days.
The following case study is focused on marijuana advertising in Canada, specifically for a mail order marijuana business based in British Columbia that sells all types of cannabis products online accosts the country.
However, this case study can also apply to licensed cannabis retail dispensaries in Canada, as well as legacy and grey market weed stores in the USA and Canada.
If you’re looking for the best way to market, advertise, and sell cannabis online, here’s how we do it for our clients using hyper-targeted and strategically optimized Google search advertising campaigns for marijuana.
Overview: A Marijuana Store’s Marketing Challenges
Our client, TheHerbCentre.net is a mail order marijuana company based on the west coast of Canada in beautiful British Columbia.
They sell cheap ounces, flower/weed, concentrates, vapes, edibles, CBD, and other cannabis products from their online store.
They do their own SEO which wasn’t driving enough qualified traffic to their site. So, they tried to set up a Google search ads campaign for cannabis products using their internal resources.
Unfortunately, they weren’t successful and had ended up getting their Google ads account flagged and then later suspended after numerous attempts to get cannabis advertising approved.
At that point, they reached out to us to help them craft, execute, and manage a highly strategic Google Ads campaign for marijuana products to drive highly targeted people to their website and increase sales.
Our Approach For Marijuana Advertising on Google Search
Here are the steps we took to set up this Google Ads campaign for marijuana.
Step 1:
- Set up a brand new Google Ads account in our client’s name with our client’s credit card for the billing on media spend.
Step 2:
- Research all competing mail order marijuana companies in Canada who are currently running Google Ads campaigns for cannabis products.
- Identify the keywords that all competing MOMs are bidding on in their campaigns and uncover the cost per click and competition levels for each.
- Analyze the copywriting for all search ads that each competitor is using now and has used in the past.
- Conduct comprehensive keyword research to discover the most profitable (not most popular) keywords that will work best for our client’s goals and media budget.
- Set up the campaign targeting, ad groups, keywords and write 2-4 responsive search ads as well as a minimum of 4 x text ads per ad group.
- Add a minimum of 10 x callout extensions (extra text with keywords) to each ad group in order to increase click-through rate on the ads.
- Set up conversion tracking and a dashboard to report key performance indicators (KPIs) to the client in real-time.
Step 3:
- Monitor the campaign for 7-10 days and allow the Google search algorithm to “do its thing” and find the right audience to show our ads.
- Begin to tweak the campaign after 7-10 through data analysis of audiences, demographics, geo-locations (cities, DMAs, provinces, states), advertising schedule (day of week, time of day), household income, and other factors, based on the data.
Step 4:
- Report 2x each month with a 15-day scorecard followed by a complete 30-day campaign report on all KPIs with recommendations.
Results of This Google Ads Campaign For Marijuana
Campaign Key Performace Indicators (KPIs):
Data from Google Ads April 1-30, 2021.
-
Ad Clicks: 992
-
CTR: 3.8%
-
Total Impressions: 26,331
-
CPC: $3.02
-
CPM: $113.90
-
Total Spent: $3,000
-
Total Transactions: 34
-
Conversion Rate: 6.5%
-
CPA: $70.42
Important Notes to Consider:
1. It’s only been 30 days.
2. This is just the start.
3. It takes time to optimize a campaign in order to bring down the cost per conversion/cost per sale/cost per acquisition (CPA).
4. We will update this case study after 60-days and after 90-days to show how we’re able to optimize the campaign over time to bring down our client’s CPA and increase their profits.
We Can Help You With Managed Google Advertising Campaigns!
Do you operate a mail-order marijuana company or retail dispensary in the USA or Canada?
Are you looking for experienced cannabis marketing consulting?
Would you like us to manage a customized Google search advertising campaign to help grow your cannabis business?
Contact us today for a free 30-minute phone consultation or email us to request a quote.
We’re Ready To Help You Grow!
