7 Cannabis Marketing Ideas For Boosting Sales To Existing Customers

There’s no denying that the cannabis industry is exploding right now. The industry expects an annual growth rate (CAGR 2023-2028) of 14.95%, resulting in a market volume of US$102.90bn by 2028 (Statista). While it can be tempting to hone in on marketing to new customers, it’s five times more expensive to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one.

So, how can you ensure you’re showing your existing customers love? Here are six ways you can ensure your cannabis retargeting strategy caters to existing customers:

Keep Your Business Fresh on Their Minds with Programmatic Advertising

Cannabis programmatic advertising offers many benefits, but ultimately, it helps you be specific about who you target with ads while keeping costs low. Retargeting is the ability to specifically display your ads to users who have previously expressed interest in your dispensary, using data gathered via pixels (cookie data). So, if you're looking to keep customers coming back, you can quite literally "follow" them around the web as they browse websites, mobile apps, and even watch TV - ensuring your brand is fresh on their minds no matter where they are. Programmatic advertising makes your cannabis advertising strategy easier than ever, so you can sit back and focus on business.

You can also use your internal marketing data and geotargeting to your advantage. If you have had success selling to males under 50 as returning customers, for example, you can target this specific demographic with ads.

Keep Your Friends Close… and Your Competition Closer with Geofencing

Another significant advantage of programmatic advertising is geofencing, which allows you to advertise to customers based on where they are. Suppose you want to ensure that your loyal customers aren't tempted to shop elsewhere. You can set a geofence around your competitor's locations, allowing you to reach your customers with targeted ads for your business when they get within a certain radius of your competition.

In the same breath, you can advertise to customers based on where they've previously used geo-framing. If you know one of your customers visited another dispensary, you can target them with ads to lure them back into your store.

Take Stock of What's Hot

Keeping a pulse on cannabis trends industrywide is a great way to ensure that your business is on the cutting edge. Let's say that a rival dispensary is offering a new cannabis product that is selling out. You can use tools like Headset, New Frontier Data, Flowhub, or Brightfield Group to stay up to date on cannabis market projections and even products and offerings that are getting attention from consumers.

Keeping "in the know" is also a great way to secure exclusive opportunities for your business, like brand deals and more. Keeping tabs on competitors' product offerings is a great way to get a sense of what consumers want. Once you understand what hot items your rival stores provide, you can include those products in your store.

Work Smarter, Not Harder with Cannabis Co-Marketing Campaigns

Cannabis brand co-marketing campaigns between brands and retailers greatly benefit both businesses. For cannabis brands, you can increase brand awareness for your product and stoke product sell-through by launching geo-targeted display ads to locations around the dispensaries that carry your products. If you have direct-to-consumer distribution channels set up, you are in an even better position to increase sales with geo-targeting tactics when you serve ads to cannabis audiences to whom you can ship directly.

For cannabis dispensaries, cannabis co-marketing campaigns are a great way to leverage the power of the brands you stock to your advantage. Many top-performing display ads feature popular and upcoming products that consumers would be interested in trying. Securing a partnership with a hot and in-demand brand can help boost your popularity with new customers, entice returning customers to come back, and help keep your advertising costs low.

For example, if your dispensary doesn't offer a unique product, like cannabis drinks, partnering with a cannabis beverage brand can greatly expand your horizons and appeal to new customers. Partnerships also allow you to offer exclusive product drops, exclusive co-op events, and vendor days for VIP or loyalty customers, providing even more incentive for customers to visit your store regularly.

Give Em' the Ol' Razzle Dazzle

Knowing your customer base is always to your advantage. Building customer profiles based on returning customer data can help you provide personalized experiences when shoppers interact with your brand. Knowing this data can help you decide what offers will excite them most.

Offering purchase-based rewards, like punch cards and exclusive discounts and events through customer loyalty programs can be the cherry on top of your brand experience for customers. Use customer profiles and get creative to implement rewards and other exciting treats that your customers will be most interested in.

Interested in leveraging third-party data to reach cannabis target audiences? Here are the 9 Cannabis Consumer Archetypes You Should Know.

Hotline Bling: Reaching Out via SMS Text and Email

The average American spends nearly 4 hours a day on their mobile phone. If you aren't utilizing the power of text messaging and email to reach your customers, you could miss out on valuable opportunities to promote your store.

Cannabis loyalty software like Alpine IQ makes it easy for dispensaries to text customers directly with the latest updates about in-store promotions, discounts, and events. But beware, as cannabis is still federally illegal, most phone carriers won't work with cannabis businesses and those that will continue to have major deliverability issues. While email marketing is certainly not a new idea, it can still be a powerhouse of marketing for your business- with content marketers still reporting that email marketing is their highest-performing content type. cannabis SEO strategy in place and are continually producing valuable content to rank for high traffic keywords on your website, you can put this content to good use in your email marketing campaigns and build trust and expertise with your audiences.

Get creative with your email campaigns and consider implementing a monthly newsletter to keep customers in the loop.

Looking to learn more about how you can target your returning customers and the cannabis retargeting strategies we use to drive revenue?

Contact us today to learn more about how programmatic advertising and SEO can help you show your returning customers love.