Cannabis Marketing Best Practices: Education

Illustration by Jarita Hui

Even if you’re doing everything “right”, marketing for cannabis companies can be a struggle. There are more hurdles to overcome than other industries, from unpredictable Instagram removing cannabis business accounts to Facebook making companies jump through hoops and causing massive headaches for cannabis brands. 

It’s not all hopeless out there, though. Just look at how many companies are thriving with their cannabusinesses and successfully sharing their brand on social channels. If you want to know how to market cannabis online, whether you’re focused on how to market a dispensary or bring attention to your newest tincture blend, I’ll be sharing cannabis marketing tips on this blog to make your brand stand out.

Education over everything 

Educating your audience is the most important thing you can do. When it comes down to it, isn’t your brand’s goal to provide some sort of value to your consumers? Teaching your target audience about the plant and its potential is going to be more valuable than trying to shove sales talk in their faces. 

Plus, shoving sales talk in faces can get you in trouble. 

Cannabis marketing and insta-bans

You may notice major cannabis brands on Instagram tend to have something along the lines of “NOTHING FOR SALE” on their bios and safety disclaimers on each post. This is an intentional move. 

You can NOT sell cannabis products on Instagram. You can not encourage others to click on pages where cannabis products are sold. If you share a link to educational content, double, no triple-check that you’re linking to the right page on your Instagram. If you accidentally link to a product page….INSTABANNED!

So how are some cannabis brands doing so well on Instagram? Many are focused on lifestyle and wellness content and piquing their audience’s interest with educational topics. 

Blogs can educate your audience and market your cannabis brand

Whether you’re selling a proprietary blend of essential oils and cannabis to the sophisticated user or trying to get your dispensary on the radar, you can’t go wrong by answering common questions in a blog post. 

Here’s an example: You’re selling a sleep tincture with CBD, THC, and melatonin. How can you leverage this to educate/market to your target audience? How about, “How Can CBD Help With Sleep?” or “What Is Melatonin and How Does it Work?” or “What Is The Difference Between CBD and THC?” or “Can I Take Melatonin And CBD Together?”

That’s four new blog ideas right there. That could be a month’s worth of content if you’re operating at the bare minimum, which is always better than nothing. 

Your blogs can work to draw more traffic to your website, especially when you’re answering common consumer questions. Be sure to do your keyword research to target common keywords, but don’t always try to compete for really popular keywords. “What Is CBD?” has a ton of pages and your likelihood of landing on the front page with that query is very low. 

With your well-researched blogs, you open up many avenues of marketing your cannabis brand. Share the link on Instagram to lead users to your blog, ensuring you are linking to the EDUCATIONAL content and not your online shop. Share it on Twitter. Send it out in the next email to subscribers to continue adding value after they’ve already made their way onto your email list. 

A word of caution 

There’s a fine line between answering common questions with research-backed information and straight-up making medical claims. Don’t make medical claims. Don’t ever say cannabis can cure this or do that unless you have some mighty fine research to back this up. Medical assertions will get you in trouble. 

Instead, guide your readers to other resources and research, break down the studies to make them easily digestible, and tie the information back to your brand. 

If you want to stand out in the world of cannabis, you need to step up your game and offer value to your readers on a consistent basis. This means well-written, credible blogs and articles that can be later marketed on other channels. 

While some people are able to make this happen on their own, it’s a lot of work to keep up with on top of the actual act of running a cannabis business. That’s why many companies have a marketing team or hire an outside contractor to do the heavy lifting. 

If you need help writing content for your cannabis brand, I can help. Send me an email and let’s get those blogs in circulation!