CBD Marketing Experts Swear By These 5 CBD Marketing Tips
If you own and operate a CBD business I’m sure you search online for the best CBD marketing tips to increase online sales. You may have consulted with seasoned CBD marketing experts and tried their tactics to sell CBD but I’m willing to bet that that didn’t work out as well as planned. The bad news is, you’re not alone.
The good news is, there are effective ways to sell CBD online in the USA, EU, and Canada but it all starts with understanding your customer’s needs, their stage in the CBD sales cycle, and the fact that people will need to trust your brand and your product line before they’ll ever purchase a CBD product from you.
If you’re a new CBD business with little to no website traffic, which basically equals little to no brand awareness & trust, you really can’t expect website visitors to purchase from your store on their first visit.
This doesn’t happen often with any e-commerce business and if it does, it’s only with commodity-type products – and not with brand new wellness products with CBD that most Americans know nothing about – yet.
So what is the best way to market and sell CBD products?
Top 5 CBD Marketing Tips For Your Business
In this article, we’ll discuss our top 5 CBD marketing tips to grow your business, get it profitable, and succeed in the burgeoning CBD industry.
You’ll learn which digital marketing tactics work in which stage of the CBD sales funnel. You’ll realize the vital importance of SEO & blog content marketing.
You’ll discover why display advertising and retargeting are an essential part of any CBD marketing strategy and not using them is likely why you’re not selling any CBD on your site.
If you need a roadmap with recommended (ie: proven) CBD marketing strategies that are easily implemented for any CBD business, there’s an article for that. Please read on.
1. Create Brand Awareness & Product Trust
This is one of our CBD marketing tips that may be a tough pill to swallow for every new CBD business. The simple fact is you can’t sell CBD products (or cannabis products) without a decent level of brand awareness and significant brand trust.
Your potential target customers think of CBD as a brand new wellness product that may or may not get them high and may or may not even work for them.
They’ll 100% absolutely need to trust your brand (or any brand) before they purchase CBD from your website, regardless of what stage of the CBD sales funnel they’re in.
If CBD was a commodity-type product it would be a completely different story. In this case, you could actually invest $3k-$5k+ per month and reach profitability in 3 months or less.
This is where cannabis marketing & CBD marketing differ – and CBD marketing experts need to understand this to offer value to their clients.
Cannabis marketing leads to sales much quicker than CBD marketing because people already are aware of cannabis and basically just want to find their strain at the best price and the fastest delivery or pick-up location.
However, with CBD, people need to know about your brand and trust what you’re doing, who you are, and the products you sell, before they’ll consider buying from you.
Therefore, one of the most important tips we can offer with CBD marketing is to not focus on sales & revenue and instead focus completely on:
- Creating brand awareness
- Driving high-quality traffic to your website – both new & returning visitors
- Developing brand & product trust
- Growing the size of your retargeting/remarketing list
- Growing the size of your email database
Which CBD Marketing Tactics Help You Achieve All This?
So which type of digital marketing tactics do CBD marketing experts use to craft an effective CBD marketing strategy to create brand awareness & trust?
We highly recommend the following strategies for phase 1 of your CBD marketing plan.
(i) CBD Specific SEO & Blog Content Marketing
This CBD marketing tip should be a no-brainer for every CBD marketing expert. SEO, or search engine optimization, is an incredibly effective digital marketing strategy to sell CBD products that will bring you free traffic from organic search for years to come. Literally years.
There are millions & millions of people who are searching for information about the health benefits of CBD and if CBD products will help them manage their pain, inflammation, anxiety, insomnia, arthritis, etc, etc.
Effective CBD marketers will target these people with high-quality, educational, CBD blog content published regularly on their client’s website (i.e. your website!) in order to achieve at least 4 out of 5 of the goals listed above.
Think about it this way. The same way in which you had a question about CBD marketing and typed a related query into Google and found a link to this article, your potential customers are likely doing the same right now, but in their case, they are asking questions about CBD and you want them to click on your link to find the answer.
SEO & blog content marketing helps you show up higher in organic search results for profitable search queries related to CBD by developing your website’s relevance, authority, and trust in the CBD niche.
If potential customers are seeing your links in search results and clicking on them to get to your website, you’re building awareness and trust with each person that sees your content and lands on your site, as well as increasing the size of your retargeting/remarketing list.
And, since your site is building authority for CBD products & information, you’ll continue to rank high for relevant terms for years to come.
(ii) Sponsored Content Advertising
Since the CBD industry is highly competitive it takes time (3-6-8 months+) to build your search engine rankings and start driving high volumes of traffic from organic search alone.
The good news is that there are tactics in these CBD marketing tips that we can implement to amplify the blog content on your website to a larger audience on some of the world’s most popular websites.
We highly recommend using sponsored content advertising campaigns to promote your blog content, increase brand awareness & trust, and drive qualified traffic to your website from popular websites.
This is a paid advertising tactic for CBD marketing where CBD ads are approved for priority placements on high-traffic websites and for $50/day in media spend can bring you 2,500-4,000 unique visits every month.
Sponsored content advertising is an effective tactic to use for CBD marketing. We’ve had success with using these ads to create awareness and increase website traffic for many of our clients since 2017, so we’d highly recommend it for your strategy.
(iii) Programmatic Display Advertising
Did you know that you can advertise CBD using banner ads on pretty much any website your potential customers visit daily, weekly, or monthly? It’s true!
Every CBD marketing expert knows that display advertising is a super great way to create awareness for your brand. Display ads are visual messages where potential customers see your branding, logo, products, labels, and messaging.
This CBD marketing tip shows is that with this tactic, we’re able to “touch” people with your brand messaging on websites they visit daily. Even if they do not click on the display ad, they still see your brand and your message.
Display advertising for CBD marketing allows you to create hundreds of thousands of brand impressions on new potential customers at a $9-$11 CPM (cost per thousand impressions), which is a great price in terms of digital advertising media spend.
We recommend using display ads in a prospecting campaign for 2-3 months with the goal of driving highly relevant traffic to your website in an effort to create brand awareness, trust, and build/grow your retargeting list.
Your retargeting list is a custom “list” of everyone who has visited your website but did not purchase. The goal is to retarget everyone in this list with customized display ads to get them back to your site to complete the purchase.
Step 1 in this tactic is prospecting to build your retargeting list. Then after your list is at a size of 3,000-5,000 unique users, step 2 is to begin retargeting.
2. Retarget All Website Visitors Who Haven’t Purchased
This next CBD marketing tip takes off from the last point above. In our experience, this is where and when you start to sell CBD products.
Retargeting is a key element for every type of e-commerce business and we have all been subject to it whether we’ve realized it or not.
If you’ve ever visited an e-commerce website and didn’t make a purchase, I’m betting that you have seen ads on other websites you visit for the product or service you looked recently at – even if you didn’t add it to your cart.
Maybe you’ve visited a travel website for deals on airfare or hotels. Once you leave that site and visit other websites, competitors, or otherwise, you will see ads for the destinations and hotels you recently researched.
This is how people sell (and people buy) products online and you need to be doing this as part of your CBD marketing in order to be able to sell CBD products.
Keep in mind that sales still take time – so patience is still required. Remember, brand awareness and product trust must be gained first before people will buy CBD from your website.
However, by using programmatic display advertising for CBD, you’re able to speed up this process and start selling sooner than later.
Our CBD marketing experts recommend running 2-3 display ad campaigns that may look like something this:
1. A prospecting campaign on a continuous basis to “keep your hopper full”, that is, to keep the top of the funnel full and driving new traffic to your site to pull through your sales funnel.
2. A retargeting campaign, on top of the prospecting campaign targeting people who have not yet purchased, in order to pull top of the funnel people to the middle of the CBD sales funnel or to an online sale.
3. A second retargeting campaign targeting people who have purchased in an effort to get them to re-order or to try a complimentary product.
3. Educate Users To Capture Email Addresses
Imagine if you had a retail CBD boutique store. Like any other retail boutique, your staff would greet customers as they walk in, ask them if they need any help finding anything, and let them know about any offers/deals you may have going on that day.
In my experience with CBD marketing, my team and I have found that we can provide value to our clients, and to their potential CBD customers, by creating a virtual tool to play the role of an in-store customer service rep.
This digital/virtual would do the same as your imaginary staff member working in your retail store. They’d greet customers as they enter the site and offer assistance in helping them find the right CBD product and the right dosage for their particular needs.
As a strategic bonus, this tool would also act as a “lead magnet” for lead generation/email capture and other valuable consumer data.
We’ve seen many CBD companies in the USA and EU who are utilizing this tactic but to be successful this tool needs to be optimized accordingly for each business. It’s not a situation where you build, set up, and forget.
For this tactic to be effective, it needs to be managed and strategically introduced to the user – not just added to the website.
We recommend the following as we’ve used this tactic with some of our client’s CBD marketing campaigns this year.
(i) Determine the data you want to collect.
(ii) Determine how you want to help the prospective customer.
(iii) Build the lead magnet. (CBD Questionnaire, Product Finder, Dosage Calculator)
(iv) Analyze Google Analytics to see the average time people spend on your home page or promotional landing page. Add a timed popup at this time to create awareness and encourage engagement.
(v) Add a section to your website home page in a prominent area to promote this tool and the value you provide as well as the benefit for the user in order to create awareness of the tool and encourage engagement.
(vi) Consider adding an exit pop-up to create awareness and encourage engagement.
4. Target The Middle of the Funnel With Acquisition Campaigns
Now that you’ve successfully set up prospecting campaigns to reach the top of the funnel/people in the awareness stage, with SEO, sponsored content, and display advertising & retargeting, your focus can shift to CBD advertising to the middle & bottom of the funnel (evaluation & purchase stages).
Here’s where you shift your strategy from a focus on prospecting and creating brand awareness, to implementing acquisition campaigns with the goals of acquiring an email address or acquiring a customer with an online sale.
So what is the most effective tactic to target potential customers in the middle of the funnel? It’s all about CBD advertising and display ad retargeting.
By no means do we suggest that you stop/pause your prospecting campaigns or your retargeting campaigns in order to start advertising your CBD products on Google search, as this should still continue.
The best CBD marketing tactic to target people who are actively searching to buy CBD products is to use Google search advertising.
However, using Google search without a layer of display/banner advertising/retargeting can lead to you losing a ton of valuable investment because of two simple facts/data points:
1. As we’ve established above, people will not buy CBD from a company they do not know and do not trust.
2. The average conversion rate for online CBD sales in the USA is 0.5%-2%, and between 1%-2.5% in the EU.
This is why it’s absolutely essential to run retargeting campaigns when you’re running Google search ads.
Ninety-seven percent of people who click on your Google Ad and land on your website will likely not make a purchase, so if you must retarget them with display ads on websites they visit after visiting your site in order to stay top of mind and get them back to your site to complete their purchase.
This process is no different than online shopping for other products.
For example, you may be looking to get a new set of golf clubs or a new pair of skis, whatever it is you’re interested in. You have a vacation coming up where you’ll need this new gear.
So you shop online and visit many websites comparing products and pricing. Eventually, you’ll be ready to buy and you’ll likely purchase from the company that is not only top of mind, but that you now trust because you’ve done your research and have seen their messaging everywhere.
If you’re not retargeting all website visitors you can bet your competitors are, which means they are getting the sale – and potentially stealing the sale from you.
5. Focus on Increasing Website Traffic & Website Engagement
It’s important to focus your CBD marketing on not only increasing the traffic to your website but also on website engagement. That is, what people do on your website while they’re there.
Your CBD marketing expert and/or SEO person should be in Google Analytics regularly to analyze data and key performance indicators to track website engagement.
Focus on the following KPIs to track site engagement from all traffic sources (organic search, advertising campaigns, social media, referrals, email newsletters):
- Visits
- New visits
- Sessions
- Average time spent on your website
- Average number of pages viewed per session
- Bounce rate
- Emails captured
- E-commerce conversion rate
The more people who come to your site on multiple occasions, the more trust you build with each visitor – i.e. prospective customer.
As we’ve discussed in this article, 97% of people will not purchase from you on their first visit to your site, you must develop significant brand awareness and trust before you can sell CBD, and part of your CBD marketing plan must tactics like those listed above in order to increase the number of return visitors to your site.
So What CBD Marketing Tactics Can You Implement to Increase Return Website Visits & Site Engagement?
(i) CBD Product Finder
We have used this tactic many times for successful lead generation/email capture, customer education, and as a way for us to collect valuable customer data to optimize our CBD marketing.
Through a short series of questions, this tactic creates value for the potential customer by offering them an automated tool to help them find the right product for their needs. In turn, this tactic provides value for the CBD business by providing name, age, gender, consumption preference, need state, etc for each user.
For additional value, this tool can also provide a recommended dosage, with a note to consult a physician, and offer a compelling discount to purchase now.
This CBD marketing tactic will help you gain trust with potential customers, increase website engagement/time spent on the website, and act as a lead generation tool to capture email addresses for your email marketing strategy.
(ii) Email Marketing Newsletters
Email newsletters are an excellent tactic for CBD marketing that can provide e-commerce conversion rates of up to 10%. If implemented strategically, email newsletters will help you pull top and middle-of-the-funnel people through your sales funnel with bi-weekly educational emails with links to your blog content as well as offers & discounts to purchase your products.
If you’re publishing regular blog content on your website you can repurpose that content effectively in email newsletters to new and existing customers which will drive traffic back to your website from people already familiar with your brand. Try this and watch your website engagement KPIs increase significantly each month.
(iii) Drip Campaigns/Automated Email Flows
If you haven’t added email drip campaigns and automated email flows to your CBD marketing mix you’ll want to get started asap after you read these benefits.
What is a drip campaign?
A drip campaign is a series of automated emails sent to people who take a specific action on your website. For any given action, you can choose how many emails to send and the frequency to send them.
The power of drip email campaigns is that they are personalized with data like the prospective customer’s name and specific references to the CBD products they looked at, or the blog article they read.
Drip campaigns in CBD marketing can help you boost sales by turning site visitors into CBD buyers, increasing repeat purchases, and reengaging a dormant audience.
By communicating your company’s value, you build a relationship with your audience and demonstrate that you’re a great resource for their needs. This increases brand trust which increases the chances of selling CBD.
Drip campaigns can also be effective because they’re targeted, meaning they’re based on a specific action and can be personalized. More than 90% of consumers say they’re more likely to buy from companies that recognize and remember them.
What is an automated email flow?
An example of an essential automated email flow that should be a staple for all commerce businesses, is the valuable abandon cart flow. Did you that almost 70% of shopping carts are abandoned on average?
Setting up abandon cart flows can increase your e-commerce business revenue and personalize communication to your potential customers.
Abandoned carts flows are a message or sequence of messages sent to someone who added a CBD product form your store to their shopping cart, but failed to complete the purchase.
Not contacting these customers after they left your site without purchasing, even after adding a product to their cart (shows high intensity to purchase) is leaving money on the table.
Whatever their reason is for leaving mid-checkout, most often it’s not because they’re no longer interested in the product.
We Can Help You Implement These CBD Marketing Tips!
If these CBD marketing tips sound like something you’d like added to your marketing strategy, we’d be happy to help.
Please call us for a free 30-minute phone conversation or email us to request a quote.
We’re Ready To Help You Grow!
