Social Media Marketing for Cannabis Companies
Social media is probably the most over saturated but necessary platforms to use for cannabis marketing. Since there are still a number of restrictions on ads for the cannabis industry, social media is a great way to reach your audience. While there are still limitations on what you can say and promote on social, many companies find this to be their biggest traffic source.
Marketing Cannabiz on Social Media
Promoting your business on social media is as simple as creating a profile and getting people to follow your content. As long as you are not making claims about health benefits you should in the clear when it comes to compliance and FDA regulations.
The best ways to market your cannabis business on social media
Building a page on Facebook will not just draw tons of traffic to your page. Creating engaging content will draw the right people to your page and posts. Instagram is a great way to share photos, short videos, stories and short visual messages about your company, products and services. If you are not proficient in social media for cannabis, we highly recommend hiring on a team that can help.
Influencer marketing is a great way to connect with a new audience. This can be done with review videos, unboxing videos, client testimonials and much more. There are thousands of content creators out there who will review your products and share their opinions about your product to their audience. Some of them will do it as a trade for free product samples, others usually have a fee added on top of the samples. The paid content creators are generally much better than the free ones in our humble opinion.
How often should you post on social media?
There is no rule of thumb when it comes to how often you should post. Different platforms react differently based on their algorithm. We highly recommend posting at least 1x a day if you can and if you have the content available to do it.
What should you post?
We recommend switching up your posts. Sharing service, products, updates, reviews and promotions is a great way to engage your audience. This also allows you to get a good idea of what your audience interacts with more.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Cannabis Marketing on Social Media
the simple fact is, is that most cannabis business owners don’t understand what can and cannot be done on social media on their website, on their Facebook, on their Instagram, on their Twitter, on their Pinterest, on their YouTube, on their, you know, on anything on their advertising. So we’re gonna go over that here. And the other thing is that like roughly a good bulk of the quote unquote writers out there don’t actually understand what you can and cannot do in regards to writing content for a cannabis website.
The 420 space right now, is the wild west in regards to content creation. Having the wrong information on your website can get you flagged or completely removed from the platform. Imagine having a hundred thousand followers and that’s your main stream of income and all of a sudden that disappears. That’s scary.
What we want to do is basically inform you on your dos and Don’s what you can do so that you can avoid being in a world of Facebook violations and losing all your stuff. Don’t lose your account because of somebody else’s lack of information.
Facebook Restrictions
Ads must not promote the sale or use of illegal prescription or recreational drugs. And right now, you know, until it’s federally legal cannabis, THC and all just about all of its you know, this includes CBD. This includes Delta eight, this includes D 10. This includes HHC THC O Delta nine. Everything is still considered a recreational drug. So you cannot promote the sale of it, right?
Instagram Restrictions
According to Instagram their policy prohibits any marijuana seller, including dispensaries from promoting their business by providing contact information like phone numbers, email addresses, street addresses, or by using the contact us tab, any Instagram business accounts.
Twitter Restrictions
Twitter prohibits the promotion of drugs and drug paraphernalia.
LinkedIn Restrictions
Linkedin adds to a legal prescription over the counter or recreational drugs are prohi prohibited think CBD as well.
TikTok Restrictions
TikTok your videos will likely be removed that they include basic words or hashtags as sorted with cannabis like weed cannabis, stoned high, you know, four 20 shadow banning is a real thing. So spelling, you know, you can get away with using spelling variations and also like emojis but avoid smoking on videos and, you know, watch your numbers to make sure that you don’t get, you know, tagged with this.
The pro’s & con’s of Social Media Marketing
The benefits to social media marketing is obviously everybody uses it. You can attract new customers on a steady basis, and get lots of engagement, lots of interactions and grow your brand. The cons of social media marketing though there’s a ton of restrictions around cannabis, a ton of restrictions around the industry, a ton of restrictions around THC related businesses. Shadow banning is real. IG accounts also get hacked regularly.
The most important thing here that you do not own the platform. You do not own Facebook. You do not own Instagram. You do not own Twitter. You do not own TikTok.
You created an account, you created a free account on their platform, which means you’re subject to their rules and regulations, which means that they can shut you down anytime they want for policy violations. And that’s scary. That’s really scary for a lot of business owners.
I met somebody who lost a hundred thousand followers and that was their main source of reaching their market, their audience, their fans, and just like that, they lost it.
Leveraging Social Media
You should never have all of your marketing eggs in one basket. A website on your own hosting account is a great idea. Website builders, platforms like that are like self hosted, like w Squarespace goad, web builder, and others can literally lock your site and shut you down if they do not like what you publish. We saw a lot of this happening. And I can tell you this from a web design standpoint, from a marketing standpoint, from an SEO standpoint, a business standpoint, from a branding standpoint, you should own your own hosting account and you should own your own domain.
Like never leave it up to a thing like Squarespace or Wix, because they, you know, they’ve got those great ads, look at the discre, you know, website. I just created with WIX! Those, I just built this wonderful blah, you could lose your whole business. One day you have a website the next minute you don’t. Especially if it’s set up for e-commerce, if it’s set up for lead generation, you lose everything, you lose all your traffic. And then what do you do? We highly recommend you know, getting your own hosting obviously and building and optimizing your own website to claim to claim your brand’s space on the internet.
Realistically your website is where people find you. If somebody Googles your brand name, if somebody looks up, you know, whether it’s like dispensaries or me, or like, you know, cannabis shop me or cannabis attorney, near me, cannabis accountant near me. Any of these other terms that are gonna happen when people are searching online.
Let’s just say you’re a specific brand and they’re looking for the brand, they should find your website, your website has all of the information. It’s got all of your contact stuff. It’s got all of your lead generation stuff. It’s got all of your marketing stuff.
It’s not just an Instagram thing with cool pictures. Okay. Now you could incorporate IG into a website and if you ever lose your IG, you still have your website. But if you only have IG and you don’t have a website, your is gone, done, okay.
Proper SEO can deliver a steady amount of organic prequalified traffic to your site every single day. And what I know by that we’ve worked with some of the largest CBD companies in the country. We’ve worked with some really great like local you know, CBD dispensaries hemp, dispensaries, you know, cannabis dispensaries in, across the country. And I can tell you this, having a properly optimized maps, maps listing in a properly optimized website can drive traffic to your business every single day. You know, literally people driving to your business every single day to shop or going to your website to pick up the phone and call you to shop or going to your website and ordering to shop. Okay. And it’s not just because of Instagram. It’s actually because of Google because if somebody’s looking, it’s like, Hey, I want to go.
If you’re in a state, that’s legal, you know that the walk-in traffic is gonna bring a lot of business to your door. A good location can make anywhere from man five to 20, 30,000 a week minimum, you know?
So that’s why, so if your Instagram gets shut down, who cares? Like you’re still getting traffic for maps. You’re still getting traffic from your website. That’s how you leverage that.
Now, one of the things that you have to be aware of is that the federal government, the FDA will actually send out or the FTC will actually send out letters. You know, this is this is a real warning letter sent out to CBD com companies back in 2019. And I’ll zoom in for you here. And let’s just highlight this real quick, but the federal trade commission is an independent blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We’re writing to express concern that you may be making false or unsubstantiated advertising claims about the health benefits of products containing Canabidiol CBD, a chemical compound, derived from cannabis plant sections five, a and 12 of the FTC act prohibit unfair and deceptive advertising.
Contact us today to help.
