6 Instagram Dispensary Marketing Tactics to Increase Engagement on Your IG Stories

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Does your Instagram dispensary marketing strategy need a boost with engagement from qualified users? We have 6 effective social media marketing tips for dispensaries to increase the engagement on your Instagram Stories.

Instagram Dispensary Marketing Ideas That Boost Engagement With Your Stories

You use Instagram as part of your dispensary marketing strategy, right? With 1 billion monthly active users, an Instagram dispensary marketing plan is absolutely necessary.

Instagram is now the most important social media marketing platform for marijuana dispensaries and online CBD companies.

From ads built through Facebook’s powerful Ad Manager to the introduction of an algorithmic feed, and the release of a few new apps to directly integrate with Instagram; the app is becoming an essential dispensary marketing channel for CBD companies looking to expand their social marketing presence.

This is no secret to the thousands of marijuana dispensaries who use Instagram daily to promote weed, CBD oil, and other CBD products.

The low barrier to entry for Instagram dispensary marketing can create a lot of noise on social media. This causes potential CBD customers to become inundated with Instagram Posts and Stories encouraging them to buy CBD oil online or near them.

For your Instagram dispensary marketing strategy to be effective, your content needs to be more engaging and interactive than your competing marijuana dispensaries.

Instagram has released a handful of new products and tools for users over the past few months. One of the most popular and most effective for dispensary marketing is Instagram Stories.

Did you know that 500 million people now use Instagram Stories every day?

Instagram stories helps to provide a few creative and effective ways to invite your followers into your CBD brand’s personality.

In this article, we focus on 6 social marketing tactics that you can use in your dispensary marketing strategy to boost engagement on your Instagram Stories.

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1. Use Content From Your Dispensary to Create a Story

People love a tale. They love viewing engaging stories from brands whose’s product’s they love and use in their daily lives.

Social media users will be more engaged with an Instagram Story that actually tells a story about your dispensary, CBD products, marijuana strains, accessories, budtenders, and your locations.

A fun story, with a beginning, middle, and end, that educates and entertains your followers can be a successful daily tactic to use in your Instagram dispensary marketing plan.

While it does take a little more time and creativity to produce this type of content in your Instagram Stories, but you will find that it’s very much worth the effort.

Providing your audience with relevant context provides a better user experience which will be rewarded with increased engagement and potential sales.

So how many Instagram Stories should you post each day/week? Since Stories last only 24 hours, we recommend posting at least 1 x 3-card Story each day on Instagram.

Each time you post a Story, your profile picture automatically gets a red circle around it which prompts your followers to take a look.

If you’re a dispensary owner, direct your Instagram dispensary marketing team to post an Story each day.

This allows you to build a library of relevant content that you can use again later. Instagram Stories can be saved to be used as “Highlights” on your profile page which is awesome and another what to boost engagement.

It also allows your dispensary to have fresh content for your audience with a constant reminder of your new content. Talk about an effective dispensary marketing strategy!

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2. Double Your Engagement By Using Stories That Drive Traffic to Your Feed

Do you ever post a photo for your dispensary on Instagram and wonder why you’re not getting as much reach or as many likes as you’d like?

You may have even used hashtags to get your post seen by relevant people but you’re still not getting the engagement you had hoped for.

Did you know that you can use Instagram Stories to drive traffic to your feed? You can actually double your digital marketing activity using this tactic.

So say you post your daily content on your Instagram feed as per usual. Don’t stop your dispensary marketing there! You can use a Story to drive the right traffic to your profile/feed.

It’s easy and won’t take up any time at all.

Once you post the content to your feed, hit the “Share” button on the post. Then click “Add Post to Your Story”.

When you click that, you can add unique copy, a call to action, and any other features found in Instagram Stories like hashtags, video, more images.

This way you’ll receive engagement on your story and potentially drive highly-qualified users back to your Instagram profile.

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3. Stickers in Stories Drive Interaction Engagement

Instagram has been kind in some ways to marijuana marketers. They provide so many “extras” in Instagram Stories to make your dispensary marketing that much more fun and engaging for your followers.

Every day, dispensary marketers are creating Stories that are more polished and interactive.

From emoji sliders to polls and GIFs, these added extras can help your Instagram dispensary marketing strategy by allowing you to interact with your followers and boost engagement.

As mentioned, there are a few different types of stickers that you can use in Instagram Stories. We’ll go through 3 of the most popular and effective stickers to use in your dispensary marketing plan.

Question Stickers:

Using a question sticker in your Instagram Story is a bit better than just asking your followers to ask you a question, here’s why.

When you repost the question submitted, the person who asked gets a notification that their question has been answered (giving you an automatic view on your story).

A good example of questions to ask your audience that will help your Instagram dispensary marketing strategy are questions where you ask them about their CBD use, or how they consume CBD, or why they buy your CBD oil, or when they use your CBD products.


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Location Stickers:

This sticker enables your dispensary to tag where the photo was taken or your retail store location. When clicked, the user is taken to a feed showing all the posts from the same location displayed on a map.

This is super useful for your local dispensary marketing if you have a retail cannabis store.

Just think about the highly likely possibility that a potential customer is following your dispensary because they are interested in weed or CBD and are thinking about shopping at your store.

If they follow a link from a location sticker that shows off your awesome content you’ve posted on your feed, that may be the last push they need to buy CBD products from your dispensary.

The added bonus of using location stickers for your dispensary marketing is that it helps to increase the chance that your content will be discovered on Instagram.

For example, users can search a specific location and see a compilation Story from all the other Story posts by users which include that location sticker.

If you can get your dispensary in there, you could gain extra in store or online visits and sales.

Poll Stickers:

If you need a fresh Instagram dispensary marketing idea, this one is a good one to help boost engagement because people love polls!

Examples of how you can use poll stickers to market your dispensary on Instagram include asking your followers about their CBD and marijuana consumption preferences, new CBD oil flavours they’d like to see, or even to provide general feedback on your dispensary, bud tenders, or CBD products.

Using poll stickers can expand your dispensary marketing reach. You have easy access to every person who answered your poll questions. You’re able to send them a DM for 24 hours after the poll has ended, in order to take the convo further.

How that for a fresh new dispensary marketing tactic?

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4. Provide Educational Content Downloads

Is CBD education part of your dispensary marketing strategy? If not it should be because so many people are looking for high-quality, useful information on the health benefits of CBD oil.

The more people know about the features and benefits of the marijuana CBD products you sell in your dispensary, the more chance you have of converting that follower into a returning customer.

This tactic is easy to implement in your dispensary marketing plan. Simply include a call to action asking users to DM you their email address (“Send me a DM with your email and I’ll send you the eBook”).

If you’re managing an Instagram-based campaign, you could go with something like, “If you want the eBook, DM me and I’ll send you the link.”

You may be asking why go this route instead of referring potential customers to a link in your bio or asking them to swipe up and sending them to a landing page?

This approach provides you with a valuable opportunity to build a relationship. Trading DMs with your followers feels more authentic and personal than shooting people an eBook through a landing page or email.

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5. Shoutout and Mention Partners, Customers, and Locations

An easy way to boost engagement on Instagram Stories is to reach out to other brands, followers, influencers, other members of the marijuana and CBD community.

You may think that shouting out someone with a mention in a comment or a DM is good enough, but if you want your dispensary’s social media marketing to be real, and to work, shout out people in your Stories.

To do this, you need to use another cool sticker that Instagram offers when producing Stories. Use the “mention” sticker to shout out relevant and approbate Instagram users.

This will not only boost engagement and help you connect with your audience or industry members, but it’s also a great way to expand your reach.

Using mentions is also a super good way to share user-generated content. If you ask your customers to tag you in their stories while using your CBD products, you could get some great authentic content to share on your Story feed.

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6. Asking Users To Tap Can Boost Engagement

You probably don’t like it when you know that users are tapping through your story. You likely think this means they aren’t actively watching your dispensary marketing story.

Guess what? A recent study found that more than 70% of the people who view your stories are tapping through them.

You can use this guaranteed promise of physical interaction as a way to get your followers to engage with your dispensary content in a favorable way.

For example, you can use tapping to create a game or to view a stop-motion story. To measure the success of this tactic you can check to see if the “Taps Forward” metric increased compared to other stories you have made.

If you try this tip in your Instagram dispensary marketing stratgey we’d suggest creating a story with at least 6-8 cards, minimum. This gives you enough time and content to create an engaging story.

You can also use the “tap for more” tactic to your benefit by setting up a story slide that teases information. Ask viewers a question that captures their interest so they’ll want to keep watching to see the answer.

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We Can Help You With Your Dispensary Marketing Strategy!

Our team are experienced marijuana marketing experts and can help you craft, implement, and manage an effective marketing stratgey for your online CBD dispensary or retail cannabis store.

We offer social media management services including content creation and daily posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Snapchat.

If you’re looking to promote CBD on Instagram without advertising, we have plans and packages for every budget.

Our team also offers marijuana and CBD advertising options which include social media advertising and Google Ads.

You can reach out using the form below for more information on our services including deliverables and pricing.

Please contact us today to start your Instagram dispensary marketing plan.

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