If you are in the medical marijuana industry, you can find it very difficult to successfully market your products. Many of the platforms we typically turn to for marketing purposes and ads do not allow cannabis companies to market their products. While recreational marijuana is federally illegal, medical marijuana is legal in 33 states with the proper card and documentation. Recreational marijuana is legal in 11 states. The cannabis industry is growing quickly now, but most social platforms disapprove of advertisements for these companies. Here are some quick tips for finding alternative options when it comes to cannabis marketing.

Leafly

Leafly is a platform dedicated to cannabis marketing. On this platform, users can search for strains, dispensaries, doctors, and products. If you own a medical marijuana company, you can create an account and advertise directly on Leafly. People can find you through searches on the site, but ads will increase how often your business in front of potential customers. If you are a physical dispensary, Leafly offers a map feature for people to find the store closest to them. All you have to do is input your location and wait for new customers to find your store! Your store will receive its own page where you can upload your “menu” for people to look through. At the moment, you cannot order marijuana online for delivery due to the legal restrictions. You can, however, find strains you are interested in and find locations where the products are available.

If you are a doctor offering consultations for medical marijuana cards, you can post your business onto Leafly along with business hours, address, contact information, and a description of what services you provide. Leafly is great for cannabis marketing because your strains and products will be organized by effect (ie. relaxing, focusing, calming, etc) so that people can find the exact product they are searching for. If you have a wide variety of products available, your chances of being found are greatly increased, even without ads. While Leafly advertising is certainly a great way to increase traffic to your site, Leafly as a platform is as well. When people go to Leafly, they are there for medical marijuana and CBD products. Your business is in front of exactly who you want to reach.

Weedmaps

Another awesome site dedicated to cannabis marketing is Weedmaps. Similar to Leafly, Weedmaps lets customers easily find dispensaries, doctors, and products near them. Users can input their location and conduct a search so that they only see the brands they have nearby. As a business on the site, you can describe what you offer, write out your business hours, let people know how to get in touch and keep a list of all of the products you offer divided by type of consumption/use. On your products page, you are able to list the prices for each item so that consumers can compare prices.

Another great feature on Weedmaps is the ability for customers to leave reviews for your business. Because of this, Weedmaps is like Yelp but for medical marijuana companies. In such a rapidly growing industry, it is important to establish yourself as a reputable dispensary or doctor. Customer reviews are an excellent way to do this. Customers trust other customers, so peer reviews are very important for growing your business. Weedmaps has been around since 2008, helping out marijuana companies market their products and services effectively. In this mobile-based era, we have some good news… Weedmaps even has an app for iOS and Android! This makes it easier than ever to keep track of your business page and lets customers search for you on-the-go.

Organically Through Facebook

While Facebook will not approve any cannabis marketing attempts, there are plenty of ways to use the platform organically. You should definitely have a business page on Facebook for people to follow you. Fair warning: it can be challenging and time-consuming to gain followers because you are not able to utilize Page Likes ads. You can, however, post in closed medical marijuana groups, CBD groups, and other health and wellness groups. You can also reshare other company’s content if they showcase a brand you carry. Tagging the brand and the other dispensary is a great way to gain followers from their pages. Another tip is to always try to be as engaged with followers as possible so they tell their friends and family about your page and get you more page likes. One final tip: you can encourage your audience to share your page to increase your reach. While these methods are not as effective as running ads, they do allow you to have a presence on Facebook, a critical marketing platform.

Organically Through Instagram

Because Facebook owns Instagram, it’s no surprise that cannabis marketing isn’t allowed on this platform either. Luckily, you are allowed to make a page on Instagram for your business. As long as you can create some engaging content, you will eventually gain followers. One of the best ways to use Instagram for medical marijuana companies is to incorporate hashtags in your posts. Hashtags are a free and simple way to increase organic reach on the platform. By using hashtags relating to cannabis, marijuana, CBD, etc., you will reach people in your target audience who are actively seeking products and services like those you offer.

There you have it; some alternative ways to successfully market cannabis! There are other methods out there as well, but these are those we find most effective. That’s right! Here at Busyseed, we manage medical marijuana marketing. The industry is a relatively new one in the marketing world, but our team has done their research to learn how to grow your business regardless of the restrictions we get on many social platforms. Give us a call today at (888) 353-1484 to get started.