These restrictions require dispensaries to think outside of the box, research and understand ever-changing trends, and act fast on the opportunities that remain.

Below are seven dispensary advertising ideas that are simple yet effective.

Roll in Some More Green with These Brilliant Dispensary Marketing Ideas

1. Create experiences worth sharing

This one should be obvious. Dispensaries are subjected to a ton of local and state laws restricting or eliminating advertising options. Nonetheless, you can turn your marketing focus entirely to the experience you’re providing to your customers.

If you’re running a dispensary with a purely transactional relationship, you’re missing out on a much-needed customer retention strategy.

Dispensaries are the new Starbucks, popping up on just about every corner. If you’re not doing something that differentiates you from the dispensary across the street, you’re automatically losing.

Experiences don’t have to break the bank and are often small tweaks to staff and store flow. Some of our favorite in-store experiences include activities during the wait time, friendly and knowledgeable budtenders, and complimentary refreshments.

2. Web Presence

The ball is in your court on your private website, where you control the conversation and legally engage your audience.

Driving traffic can be more difficult than you think. With so much competition, it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. Dispensary SEO is the most effective way to increase traffic and exposure. Constantly publishing content, and optimizing your site for user experience are practical tactics. And, collecting customer data will keep you at the forefront of your market.

3. Quality Social Content

The most popular social media platforms don’t allow ads from cannabis-related companies. The best alternative to ads is publishing useful content instead.

Dispensary Twitter and Instagram accounts often rank higher than certain web pages brought up in Google searches. Creating social content that contains keywords you want to rank for allows you to rig the system.

4. Online Reviews

As a business owner and consumer, you understand how important online reviews are for your dispensary marketing. A 2019 local consumer review survey from BrightLocal found that:

• 82% of consumers read reviews for local businesses 
• Consumers read an average of 10 online reviews before feeling able to trust a local business
• 53% of consumers will only use a business if it has 4 or more stars
• 89% of 18 to 34-year-old consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
• 97% of consumers read businesses’ responses to reviews

Word of mouth and personal recommendations are the primary sources of traffic for local businesses. Additionally, it is the fastest way to get new customers, especially for advertising-restricted industries. Create dispensary experiences that encourage, amplify, and escalate reviews and referrals.

5. Reward Loyal Customers

Dispensaries face a lot of limitations on how they can engage potential new customers. This makes it even more essential to retain and upsell the ones you’ve already got.

A loyalty or rewards program can foster long-term relationships with your dispensary, increasing the value of every customer.

The most important part of loyalty is communication. Ask for an email address in the checkout line for an e-receipt, and allow them to opt-in for promotional emails, newsletters, product updates, and tips. A great, low-friction strategy is to install tablets that let customers complete orders and fill in information themselves, right at the register.

6. Partner With Other Local Businesses

Dispensary marketing can work well if your business can partner with other local businesses that are cannabis-friendly. This tactic puts your dispensary in front of a warm audience that already engages with a specific product/service that complements your own.

Local restaurants, breweries, and even advocacy groups like NORML can drive traffic to your storefront. This tactic requires push-and-pull marketing. You must make sure you are promoting the other businesses if you expect them to be promoting yours.

7. Community Involvement

Show support for your community by hosting charity drives and volunteering at events. Charities are always looking for community partners to help raise funds and collect goods. Hosting a food, clothing, or toy drive shows your customers that you care. This also works well to get your staff out in the community.

Whether it’s a park clean-up or volunteer day at a shelter, this is a great opportunity to wear your branded swag, get photos for social media, and involve your staff and customers in an impactful way. You can also offer discounts to customers who donate items and volunteer time to drive traffic.

Manage your Cannabis Dispensary Marketing Efforts

365 Cannabis offers ERP software with built-in POS dedicated to the cannabis industry. If you want your cannabis brand to shine, make sure your technology supports all of your sales and customer loyalty efforts.

If you’re a dispensary, a grow operation, or any other cannabis-related business, we’re your one-stop cannabis software shop that’s just a short email or phone call away. Let’s get started with a demo!

The post 7 Dispensary Marketing Ideas for More Sales appeared first on 365 Cannabis.

With the recent struggles brought on by COVID-19, businesses are trying to come up with innovative solutions that will help them thrive amid unprecedented times.

We asked 6 thought leaders what innovative things they are doing to maintain business.  

Read on for creative tactics to add to your business plan during the new normal.

Create a Payment Plan

Creating a payment plan for clients is a realistic way to keep business and income flowing in. As businesses begin to re-open, it is imperative that companies adjust. More likely than not, your clients want to return to doing business with you but finances can be a holdup. By being flexible and offering a payment plan for your services, you are keeping clients and showing that you value them.

Megan Chiamos, 365 Cannabis 

Find a Bigger Purpose to Serve

Embracing the situation is going to be hard, but I can think of a few ways in which you can utilize the current situation and your transparency as an honest business-owner to the benefit of your company.

I’m talking about finding ways to serve the greater good and share them loud and proud. This new form of advertising is going to hit home with Millennials and Gen Zers as they are distrustful of traditional advertising and big on authenticity these days.

Find a cause that you feel strongly with and work with this within your company ethos.

Andrew Taylor, Net Lawman

Offer No-Contact Payment Options

One way to help your small business adapt to the “new normal” is to offer your clients payment options that minimize physical contact. It’s no secret that cash and credit cards are dirty from being passed around so much. By offering contactless payment solutions, the interactions between people and common surfaces will be minimized, and this will help to combat the spread of the virus.

Eric Brown, Aliant Payments

Test New Methods to Run Your Business

Some innovative ways to survive the new normal is just that: innovate. Pivot. Test. How can you make your product easier to access from home? We are a video company and we started to offer a way to produce zoom style interviews for companies – and it took off! Your old way of doing business won’t work anymore – innovate! My tip: Test out one new product a week.

Trevor Rappleye, CorporateFilming

Be Prepared for an Economic Downturn Beforehand

Preparation for anything does not help you avoid facing a dangerous situation but gives you the courage to face it and cope up with it. Make sure to execute some financial models with recession assumptions, it will help you keep prepared for any unexpected economic fluctuations and might help the business to stay afloat.

Rameez Ghayas Usmani, PureVPN

Don’t Rush Back to the Office

Though restrictions are beginning to lift in certain states, it might not be such a good idea to return to the office. As a business owner, the cost of running an office is huge. If working remotely went well for your business, you might want to consider continuing that for the remainder of the year. As a business operating in the midst of a pandemic, it is crucial to cut costs where you can, and eliminating rent will be one way to keep finances in the positive. 

Brett Farmiloe, Digital PR Agency

The post 6 Innovative Ways to Help Your Business Survive the New Normal appeared first on 365 Cannabis.

With the recent struggles brought on by COVID-19, businesses are trying to save time anywhere they can. Many companies have turned to software to tackle the repetitive tasks they cannot afford to spend their time doing.

We asked 7 thought leaders what tools they use to help automate their business. 

Read on to discover the different tools these leaders suggest for your day to day operations.

Zappier

For businesses looking to alleviate the tedious steps that come with the day to day tasks, Zappier is a great program to use. It allows users to create automated actions on apps like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. It also syncs up with programs like Asana and Slack. Zappier has really helped our office alleviate the pain of having to open an application and do the same repetitive tasks over and over. It saves us a lot of time and opens up space for other tasks to become a priority.

Megan Chiamos, 365 Cannabis

Outsource Shipping and Fulfillment

We outsource our shipping and fulfillment to a third-party company. This means, in practice, that when a customer places an order on our site, it’s automatically shipped out by our partner company. They have two locations (one on each coast) to maximize shipping efficiency. I know a lot of eCommerce business owners like to handle the shipping themselves, but there is a significant opportunity cost to making multiple post office trips daily. I’d recommend every business owner selling more than three products a day consider outsourced fulfillment.

Calloway Cook, Illuminate Labs

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is the best and most affordable email automation tool I’ve ever used. It’s just incredible how many insights and how much data it gives you for a fairly affordable price. The standard membership gives you everything you need to understand what is and isn’t working in an email marketing campaign.

Blake Taylor, Synergy Business Brokers

StartingPoint

We have recently started to use StartingPoint and it has been amazing for our client and service management. It allows us to ensure clients and customers are answered. We have a company portal that looks like our brand. We are also able to automate rules for inquiries to route them to the right person. It is an extremely useful tool for small to medium-sized businesses.

Ray McKenzie, Red Beach Advisors

Intercom

I use Intercom to send automatic welcome emails to new people who sign up for a free trial and also to send educational and marketing emails automatically.

Jayson DeMers, EmailAnalytics

If This, Then That Tool

IFTTT is a simple marketing automation tool that creates automated tasks based on an “if this, then that” concept. You would need to create applets to connect social media platforms together in order to auto-post one piece to any number of social sites – IFTTT links them all using your credentials and does so automatically. You may have seen on Twitter or Facebook that some posts are published via IFTTT. Many bloggers or website administrators set up extensive IFTTT schedules to publish or collect data from their social media accounts using IFTTT.

Rameez Ghayas Usmani, PureVPN

Grammarly

Grammarly is an internet browser extension tool that we use on a weekly basis. Our team does a massive amount of article writing which also brings the task of editing for grammar and spelling mistakes. Grammarly allows us to run an article through the software and see any mistakes within seconds. It will also give you the option to automatically fix the mistakes and it truly saves our team so much time.

Brett Farmiloe, SaaS SEO Company

The post 7 Tools to Help Automate Your Business appeared first on 365 Cannabis.

Data is collected from all kinds of sources, including purchase history and interests.

While there is plenty of information to sort through, how to use it often becomes a question for businesses.

Seven professionals share their insights on how they record, track and leverage customer data to maximize sales.

Create a Customer Profile

Customer data is useful to create a customer profile. Use your data to figure out who your customers are, what they like and how you can best serve them. When you know who your customer is, you can then maximize that profile and connect with those types of people who would need and want your services. It also allows you to know how you can best serve already existing customers in order to retain long-term loyalty. 

Megan Chiamos, 365 Cannabis

Personalize Using Customer Buying History

Imagine the next time you reached out to a past customer, instead of just a generic coupon or pitch email, you looked at their buying history and location and instead sent them a personal video email. You tailored the messaging to make it educational and informative and because you are leveraging customer data (from your CRM or wherever you are holding it), the customer gets a better experience that feels concierge. If you are looking to win in sales or marketing in 2020, it’s vital you evolve beyond just selling a commodity. You need to sell an experience. The companies that use data to become relational (vs. just transactional) will win.

Casey Hill, Bonjoro

Provide Useful Information

We are constantly talking to our core customers in-person on the grounds at music festivals, live chat, emails, calls, and on social media to better understand what they are asking for. We take that feedback to our eCommerce committee to execute upon those requests. All CX changes are A/B tested and tracked extensively before and after the changes are made. For example, our customers were having issues determining sizing for different garment types so they requested extensive model measurements including height, bust, waist, hips, etc. We took the extra steps to provide all of those details. This improves the overall customer experience and helps us to meet our customer’s expectations.

Brian Lim, INTO THE AM

Use a Good Email Provider

Email makes up a big chunk of our revenue and segmentation is key for better targeted and personalized emails. Having a good email provider allows you to segment your customers for email flows such as browse abandonment and abandoned carts, which are based on behavioral triggers after they’ve shown intent, and have a great return on investment. Also having a sequence of informative emails that address any blockers for your customers go a long way during the pre-sales process. Just the same, having a sequence of emails post-purchase to ensure the customer has a seamless experience with our product has resulted in additional sales and referrals for us.

Raveena Cheema, Purple Rose Supply

Conduct Outreach

One of the most beneficial uses for customer data is outreach. Using customer emails to sincerely check in on how the customer is enjoying the product or even asking for areas your business can improve on is a fantastic way to build relationships and make future sales to that same customer. 

Brett Farmiloe, SaaS SEO Company

Lookalike Audiences

We try to create a lookalike audience of previous customers in different regions and demographics to boost sales. Now, this is eventually a hit and trial method but once you have a working audience, you can create as many lookalike audiences as you want.

Osama Khabab, MotionCue

Automate Repetitive Tasks

Implementing marketing automation tools that reduce our time spent on admin tasks and free up our sales team to develop stronger relations with clients and leads. Many of these tools have time tracking plugins or features which also help you to improve on your personal productivity.

Mike von Guilleaume, Ecommerce Strategist

The post 7 Ideas To Leverage Your Customer Data To Maximize Sales appeared first on 365 Cannabis.

With the recent economic downturn, customers are tightening their grip on their wallets, resulting in many small businesses fighting to gain their trust.

So how can a business build customer loyalty at a time when so many customers are looking to reduce expenses?

Ten thought leaders share their advice below.

Don’t Sell Yourself Short

As a small business, the way that you interact with your clients during the pandemic will be the thing that makes or breaks customer loyalty. It is crucial to show your customers that you are with them and understand the stress of these uncertain times. Show your clients the true value of your product and be flexible in the services you offer. Customers will remember how your business handled client relations during the pandemic. If you remain client-focused, you will retain long-term customer loyalty.

Megan Chiamos, 365 Cannabis

Be on Your Customer’s Team

We believe in establishing a true partnership with our clients that goes beyond standard support. We provide our clients with resources including live webinars and articles that are relevant to their needs. During the pandemic, we rolled out a new suite of situation-specific resources to proactively help our clients succeed despite the challenges. Our team is always available to our clients for questions big and small and we have continued to remind them that we are an extension of their team during this challenging year.

Brian Carlson, eThink Education

Be Transparent With Your Offerings

Be as transparent as you can with your customers. Offer them what you can and explain the need for any products or services that aren’t being utilized. Focus on the ones that are and offer discounts to keep them loyal and even attract new business.

Anthony Basuil, Technical Recruiter

Find Incentives to Keep Them Engaged

Even if transactions between a company and a customer are extremely low, there is no reason why you cannot keep your customers engaged. Whether it’s an update about company policies, the release of new products or an incentive on a sweet deal, let your customers know that you’re still there for them. Always remember that even if your customers aren’t sitting in front of you, they are still online.

Catherine Howard, Digital Marketing Specialist

Don’t Over-Contact Customers

Be present and supportive but do not over-contact them. Those still working are busier than ever, supporting more with fewer resources. Be clear, be concise and follow up after you’ve allotted them enough time to address their priorities before getting back to you.

Noah Wisnia, Head of Talent

Create To-Do Lists

In pre-pandemic times, clients often “know” what they should be doing, but do not take action. Providing simple prioritized “to-do” lists at this time is a great way to build loyalty and help clients take action they may be more open to acting on in today’s uncertain world.

Keith C Piscitello, Simply Sophisticated Wealth Planning, LLC

Value. Value. Value. 

Teams have to be asking: How can we be more helpful to a client? What could we give them that provides more value? What resources do we have that could be of assistance? Also, be willing to be flexible. Companies are hurting. Why wouldn’t you be flexible on terms if you can be? Kindness and empathy go a long way.

Alex Reiff, Senior Director

Don’t Cut Marketing Costs First

Unfortunately, marketing is one of the first areas to be cut during a downturn and this time around is no different. This is often short-sighted by companies as the number one way to build a rapport with their audience is to connect with them through meaningful and genuine communication.

Sarah Lysecki, Content Strategist

Increase Your Flexibility

One of the best ways to retain customer loyalty is to be flexible. Right now, customer needs are all over the place. It is important to show them that you can be whatever they need at that moment. Making sure your customers understand that they have an ally during these uncertain times will not only help your business survive, but it will also retain loyalty long after the pandemic is over. 

Brett Farmiloe, Ecommerce SEO Company

Find Ways to Cultivate Community

Building loyalty doesn’t have to be expensive. For me, it’s as simple as adding value through more masterclasses and mini-trainings, specific to these times. In addition, this is a great time to cultivate community. 

Kristen Zavo, Find Your Job Joy

The post 10 Ways To Build Customer Loyalty in 2020 appeared first on 365 Cannabis.

These restrictions require dispensaries to think outside of the box, research and understand ever-changing trends, and act fast on the opportunities that remain.

Below are seven dispensary marketing ideas that are simple yet effective.

Roll in Some More Green with these Brilliant Dispensary Marketing Ideas

1. Create experiences worth sharing

This one should be obvious. Dispensaries are subjected to a ton of local and state laws restricting or eliminating advertising options. Nonetheless, you can turn your marketing focus entirely to the experience you’re providing to your customers.

If you’re running a dispensary with a purely transactional relationship, you’re missing out on a much-needed customer retention strategy.

Dispensaries are the new Starbucks, popping up on just about every corner. If you’re not doing something that differentiates you from the dispensary across the street, you’re automatically losing.

Experiences don’t have to break the bank and are often small tweaks to staff and store flow. Some of our favorite in-store experiences include activities during wait time, friendly and knowledgeable budtenders, and complimentary refreshments.

2. Web Presence

The ball is in your court on your private website, where you control the conversation and legally engage your audience.

Driving traffic can be more difficult than you think. With so much competition, it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. Dispensary SEO is the most effective way to increase traffic and exposure. Constantly publishing content, optimizing your site for user experience are practical tactics. And, collecting customer data will keep you at the forefront of your market.

3. Quality Social Content

The most popular social media platforms don’t allow ads from cannabis-related companies. The best alternative to ads is publishing useful content instead.

Dispensary Twitter and Instagram accounts often rank higher than certain web pages brought up in Google searches. Creating social content that contains keywords you want to rank for allows you to rig the system.

4. Online Reviews

As a business owner and consumer, you understand how important online reviews are for your dispensary marketing. A 2019 local consumer review survey from BrightLocal found that:

• 82% of consumers read reviews for local businesses 
• Consumers read an average of 10 online reviews before feeling able to trust a local business
• 53% of consumers will only use a business if it has 4 or more stars
• 89% of 18 to 34-year-old consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
• 97% of consumers read businesses’ responses to reviews

Word of mouth and personal recommendations are the primary sources of traffic for local businesses. Additionally, it is the fastest way to get new customers, especially for advertising restricted industries. Create dispensary experiences that encourage, amplify, and escalate reviews and referrals.

5. Reward Loyal Customers

Dispensaries face a lot of limitations on how they can engage potential new customers. This makes it even more essential to retain and upsell the ones you’ve already got.

A loyalty or rewards program can foster long-term relationships with your dispensary, increasing the value of every customer.

The most important part of loyalty is communication. Ask for an email address in the checkout line for an e-receipt, and allow them to opt-in for promotional emails, newsletters, product updates, and tips. A great, low-friction strategy is to install tablets that let customers complete orders and fill in information themselves, right at the register.

6. Partner With Other Local Businesses

Dispensary marketing can work well if your business can partner with other local businesses that are cannabis-friendly. This tactic puts your dispensary in front of a warm audience that already engages with a specific product/service that complements your own.

Local restaurants, breweries, and even advocacy groups like NORML can drive traffic to your storefront. This dispensary marketing tactic requires push and pull marketing. You must make sure you are promoting the other businesses if you expect them to be promoting yours.

7. Community Involvement

Show support for your community by hosting charity drives and volunteering at events. Charities are always looking for community partners to help raise funds and collect goods. Hosting a food, clothing, or toy drive shows your customers that you care. This also works well to get your staff out in the community.

Whether it’s a park clean up or volunteer day at a shelter, this is a great opportunity to wear your branded swag, get photos for social media, and involve your staff and customers in an impactful way. You can also offer discounts to customers who donate items and volunteer time to drive traffic.

Manage your Dispensary Marketing Efforts

365 Cannabis offers an ERP software with built-in POS dedicated to the cannabis industry. If you want your cannabis brand to shine, make sure your technology supports all of your sales and customer loyalty efforts.

If you’re a dispensary, a grow operation, or any other cannabis-related business, we’re your one-stop cannabis software shop just a short email or phone call away. Let’s get started!

The post 7 Dispensary Marketing Ideas for More Sales appeared first on 365 Cannabis.