Creating a dispensary brand from scratch can be a daunting task. Nurturing that brand over time to become a self-sustaining, powerful force is even more difficult, but this long-term investment is essential to your success.
To achieve growth, many new dispensaries begin aggressive advertising campaigns with online listing services like Weedmaps. These websites have high domain authorities, and they can drive some traffic to your shop. However, these campaigns are ultimately short-term ‘highs’ that undermine your brand and fail to deliver on a healthy, long-term ROI. So, how can you create an empowering dispensary marketing strategy?
You Need the Traffic & the Data
The best way to build your brand is by driving as much traffic as possible to your website and dispensary as possible. However, for many dispensaries, their Weedmaps profile can start to outrank their own website in online searches. Over time, these listings services can begin to dominate your name, stripping you of control.
Now that listing services offer online ordering, some dispensaries are not concerned about being outranked. After all, an order is an order, right? Wrong. When a consumer is placing an order for pickup for delivery on Weedmaps.com, they need to register for an account. At this point, they are officially becoming a Weedmaps customer, and not one of your specific brand. The orders are real, but you are essentially renting customers from Weedmaps.
You should fight to control every part of the customer journey. When customers visit your website and follow your carefully designed path, you gain valuable information and insights which you can use to create a stronger marketing strategy.
Future Proofing Your Business
To create long term growth, you need to craft a marketing strategy that builds positive momentum, so each new customer is easier to acquire than the last. When you think of your customer funnel, there are two ways to decrease your customer acquisition cost. First, widen that funnel and bring in customers from many different sources. Second, make it as easy as possible to rush through the funnel and place an order.
With expensive online listing services, you are spending more and more each year to acquire the same customers. Instead, you should spend smarter and seek sustainable marketing methods. Sustainable marketing means setting up a system that does the work for you and makes it easier to recruit customers in the long run.
To acquire customers sustainably, you can focus on on-site and off-site SEO to support your website. Google frequently makes updates to their algorithm that benefit websites with high quality links, hyperlocal focuses, and quick page-loading speeds. Another strategy is to attend events – in-person or virtual. Show your support to the community, and they will support you back. Finally, focus on customer referrals. Word of mouth is one of the most cost-effective form of marketing for dispensaries, and referral programs can be strong incentives for your customers to do the marketing for you.
The second sustainable strategy is to enhance customer loyalty at your dispensary. Customer loyalty is a highly desirable goal, as the cost of acquiring customers can be massive. Research shows it costs 7x more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain one, and returning customers spend 120% more than new customers. To do this, you need a robust CRM and rewards tool to create an effective dispensary loyalty program. Your rewards could be anything from discounts to offering a beautiful rig or a tour of a nearby grow facility. You can even do surprise rewards to keep your customers on their toes. Variable rewards bring people back often as they like to see if it’s prize day. Through experimentation, you will find that a great loyalty program will deliver a great ROI. The Leafbuyer platform offers all of this at your fingertips, as you can use the loyalty and texting tools to communicate with your customers.
Own the Order
One more way to put your brand first and own the customer journey is with a dispensary online ordering tool. When you process orders on your website, you own the bottom of the funnel. This gives you control over the customer data and helps you convert that newcomer into a loyal patron. Leafbuyer online ordering is the best way to process orders without giving up control. With just a few clicks, you can install online ordering on your website and begin to gain valuable insights. Leafbuyer also offers custom photography packages so you can display your best products on your website.
Looking Ahead
Strengthening your dispensary’s brand and developing sustainable marketing methods is not easy. It takes patience and fortitude to skip the short-term fixes. If you are looking for support as you start down the proper path, Leafbuyer is here to help.
With Leafbuyer Loyalty, you can communicate with customers using our dispensary text marketing tools. For example, the Auto-Connect texting feature automatically sends texts based individual customer’s activities. Looking to own the order? Install Leafbuyer Online Ordering on your website in just a few minutes. The most important thing is to begin taking steps in the right direction as soon as possible. In the beginning, you may encounter resistance, a withdrawal of sorts as you break your addiction with your current marketing methods. However, once you begin you will find that each step is easier than the one before.