Marijuana Advertising Agency Digital Marketing

An average marijuana business should spend between $112,500 and $225,000 a year on marketing and advertising expenses, or roughly 7.5% – 15% of annual gross revenue. The total amount may be higher if you are in a highly competitive industry, want accelerated growth, or your business generates high income during the holiday shopping season. 

Marijuana Business owners are often heavily involved with the day-to-day operations of their business. Some of the most common challenges for a marijuana business include: 

1. Federal Legalization Status: One of the most significant obstacles facing marijuana companies in the United States is the federal legal status of cannabis. While many states have legalized cannabis for medical or recreational use, it remains illegal at the federal level. This conflict between state and federal laws creates numerous challenges, including restricted access to banking services, taxation issues, and legal uncertainties.
2. Banking and Financial Services: Due to the federal prohibition on marijuana, most banks and financial institutions are hesitant to provide services to cannabis companies. This forces marijuana businesses to operate primarily in cash, which poses security risks and complicates financial management, including paying taxes and securing loans.
3. Regulatory Compliance: The cannabis industry is subject to complex and ever-changing regulations at both the state and local levels. Navigating these regulations, which cover licensing, product testing, packaging, labeling, and more, can be a formidable challenge for marijuana companies. Ensuring compliance with varying rules in different jurisdictions adds to the complexity.
4. Taxation: Marijuana companies face unique tax challenges, including the burden of high federal taxes due to Internal Revenue Code Section 280E, which disallows standard business deductions for businesses trafficking in controlled substances. This results in higher effective tax rates for cannabis businesses and can impact profitability.
5. Access to Capital: While the cannabis industry offers significant revenue potential, accessing capital for expansion and operations can be challenging. Traditional financing options, such as bank loans and venture capital, are often limited due to federal legal concerns. As a result, many marijuana companies must seek alternative sources of funding, which may come with higher costs.

Because marijuana businesses are so focused on these challenges, it often becomes very efficient to bring in outside experts to help manage and ensure specific tasks are done correctly. Marketing and advertising are two of the most commonly outsourced areas businesses use because they are critical to their success. 

Marijuana Lead Generation 

Many marijuana companies are focused on generating leads. This can include building an internal email list for marketing purposes or generating high-value leads that can be quickly contacted to grow revenue. Lead generation typically involves creating a specific incentive, offer, or informational guide and then driving prospects to a landing page to collect their information. You can also manage the prospects’ information on a lead form hosted by the ad platform. Both options can be connected with your CRM or email marketing system so automatic calls, emails, and SMS messages are sent directly to your new prospect. If you want to help set up a lead generation for your cannabis office, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Increasing Marijuana Sales 

The most popular of all advertising objectives for weed companies is sales. Increasing revenue is essential for every marijuana company to succeed. Many ad platforms have new tools that allow you to pass through values for each customer, which means they associate more weight towards the customers spending the most. This will enable them to find more customers like your top spenders. If you want to help grow your cannabis, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Marijuana App Installs

Perfect for any marijuana business that has a mobile app. The mobile app objective allows you to run ads for new app installs or for app events, which are specific events set up inside your app, such as account creation, payment method added, or transaction completion. It can also monitor usage inside the app or if users reach a particular area. This allows you to display highly targeted ads relevant to each user who sees your ads. The most common types of apps are games, utilities, or informational mobile apps. If you want to help grow sales or usage from your weed mobile app, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options.  

Marijuana Local Traffic 

Many marijuana companies have locations they are looking to drive local foot traffic to. This can be for a special event, promotion, grand opening, or daily usage. Local ads can be targeted down to a single zip code or a 1-mile radius around a spot on a map. This ensures you can reach the individuals close to your weed location and get your ads in front of them. If you want to increase foot traffic for your cannabis location,  please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Marijuana Brand Awareness 

As your weed company grows, it will become essential that you stay ahead of your competition. This is generally done by Brand Awareness campaigns, which focus on reaching a vast number of targeted users consistently over a long period. This ensures that your marijuana company stays at the top of mind for your consumers, who continue to purchase your products and services. If you want to increase your Brand Awareness, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

The marijuana industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, and marijuana companies are looking for new and innovative ways to market their products. By effectively utilizing content marketing, marijuana companies are finding ways to connect with their target audience, educate consumers, and build brand loyalty in a highly competitive market.

1. Educating Consumers: Content marketing allows cannabis companies to educate consumers about the various aspects of cannabis, including its medical benefits, different strains, consumption methods, and potential risks. By providing valuable information, businesses can position themselves as trusted sources of knowledge.
2. Destigmatizing Cannabis: In many regions, there is still a stigma associated with cannabis use. Content marketing offers a platform to challenge these misconceptions and provide evidence-based information about the plant’s potential benefits and responsible consumption.
3. Building Brand Authority: By consistently producing high-quality content, marijuana companies can establish themselves as authorities in the industry. This not only attracts more customers but also fosters brand loyalty.
4. Compliance with Regulations: Content marketing allows cannabis businesses to stay within the bounds of advertising regulations by avoiding direct promotion or endorsement of cannabis use. Instead, they focus on providing educational and informative content.
5. Engaging with the Community: Content marketing provides an opportunity for marijuana companies to engage with their community. This can be through blog posts, social media interactions, podcasts, or videos that address common questions and concerns.
6. SEO Benefits: Creating and publishing content online can improve a company’s search engine rankings. When potential customers search for cannabis-related information, well-optimized content can help businesses appear in search results.

The world has changed for marijuana, looking to increase their marketing and advertising efforts using AI. Various new tools enable automation and AI to be used in areas like sales, graphic design, video production, content creation, voiceovers, spokesperson, video creation, blog writing, and more. 

The current average cost per click (CPC) on Google ads for the term “Marijuana Industry” is $5.76 and is expected to increase over time. SEO generates these same clicks from targeted keywords for free. SEO has tremendous value as you can generate a high traffic volume for your critical business segments. However, SEO is a long-term investment. We recommend that weed companies should be willing to plan for 6-12 months of SEO services before expecting an increase in results from these efforts. Please know that with SEO, the work is foundational, which means each task builds on top of each other. Each action adds more credibility to your website in the eyes of Google and other search engines. AdvertiseMint only believes in high-quality SEO, or long-game efforts, when building SEO. Most SEO tricks or gimmicks often work for a bit but later hurt your cannabis company when updates are made to the search engines. The only way to move forward regarding SEO is by doing a lot of the right things and doing them faster than your competitors. Marijuana SEO involves three main areas. The first is onsite optimization, which means the pages of your website contain content and are optimized for the search engines. The second step is to build more topical authority around your business to help Google understand that you are an expert in the marijuana area. This is done by writing consistent blogs between 500-2000 words on core topics relating to your business. The final area is off-site linking, meaning other websites link back to your site and use specific anchor text. This can be achieved by public relations, outreach, and building relationships with other websites. When these three are done together, the result is that your weed SEO will improve, and your organic ranking will start to increase, thus sending more traffic to your website. If you are looking to improve your SEO, please contact AdvertiseMint. 

Yes. Every marijuana should have email marketing and SMS marketing for their company. Email marketing has continually been proven to be one of the most profitable marketing channels for weed companies. Email marketing allows you to reach your prospects and customers with specific messaging based on their location in your customer journey. These “flows” can be set up so that every person experiences the same informational process regardless of when they join. This ensures your company communicates 24/7 with the people most interested in your cannibis services and products. SMS messaging is also becoming highly profitable for breaking through all the noise and reaching your most valuable prospects via text. There are many rules regarding SMS marketing and how to add and remove people from your marijuana SMS marketing. If you want to learn more about optimizing your Email and SMS marketing for your marijuana company, AdvertiseMint is here and ready to help. 

Yes, advertising restrictions for marijuana businesses vary depending on the jurisdiction since marijuana legalization differs across countries and states. However, there are common themes in these restrictions. Let’s explore some:

1. Target Audience Restrictions: Most jurisdictions prevent marijuana advertisements from being targeted towards minors. Therefore, marketing campaigns need to ensure that at least 70-80% of the audience is above the legal age of consumption, whether it’s for medical or recreational use.
2. False Claims: Misleading or exaggerated claims about the benefits or effects of weed are prohibited. Companies are usually not allowed to present marijuana as a solution to health problems or suggest it has curative properties without scientific evidence.
3. Promotion of Overconsumption: Advertisements that promote excessive consumption of cannabis products or portray it as being “cool” or “fun” can be a red flag for regulators.
4. Use of Certain Imagery and Icons: Some jurisdictions do not allow the use of cartoons, celebrities, or other enticing images that might appeal to minors. The idea is to prevent the normalization or glamorization of marijuana usage to younger audiences.
5. Public Health and Safety: Advertisements cannot undermine public health messages. For instance, they shouldn’t encourage driving under the influence of cannabis or mix marijuana with alcohol.
6. Platform Restrictions: Platforms like TV, radio, and certain online mediums might have restrictions on advertising weed, especially during times when younger audiences are expected to be active.
7. Cross-state Promotion: In the U.S., even if marijuana is legal in one state, promoting it across state lines where it might be illegal is a big no-no.

You can find examples of marijuana competitor ads online in several places. Here are the instructions for how to view competitor ads running on Facebook, Google, and TikTok ad platforms. 

View Marijuana Competitor Facebook Ads 

1. Go to Facebook Ad Library 
2. Select the country where the ad appeared. 
3. Select ad category (All, Politics, Housing, Employment, Credit).
4. Search by keyword or advertiser.
5. Review Facebook ads.

View Weed Competitor Google Ads 

1. Go to Google Ads Keyword Planner
2. Sign into Google Ads.
3. Click ‘Tools and settings’ in the top nav.
4. Click ‘Keyword Planner’ under the ‘Planning’ heading.
5. Click ‘Discover new keywords’
6. Type a relevant keyword into the box.
7. Click ‘Get Results’
8. Review Top of page bid and Google ads. 

View Cannabis Competitor TikTok Ads 

1. Go go TikTok Ad Library 
2. Select ad target country 
3. Select ad type.
4. Select ad published date.
5. Enter in the desired keyword or advertiser.
6. Hit search. 
7. Review TikTok ads. 

For most companies, revenue is the KPI (key performance indicator) we monitor when determining whether marketing and advertising efforts are successful. The revenue can be used to determine the ROI or ROAS for your campaigns over a set time. ROI (Return on Investment) is calculated by subtracting the initial cost of the investment from the final value, then dividing this new number by the cost of the investment, and finally, multiplying it by 100. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is determined by dividing the total revenue by the actual ad spend for a specific time. 

In addition to revenue, other companies may use metrics such as CPL (Cost Per Lead), CPA (Cost per Acquisition), or CPI (Cost per Installs) for mobile apps. Monitoring these costs over time can help understand factors increasing or decreasing these numbers. They can be affected by various factors, such as landing page optimization, time of the year, and competitors. 

Many digital ad platforms offer a tool called the brand lift study for companies interested in branding and spending over $100,000 on advertising. This study is used to measure the impact on the perception of your brand when running ads. A brand lift study splits a specific audience into two groups. The first group is shown your ads over a particular time; the second group sees none of your ads. At the end of the study, users in both groups were shown a survey by the ad platform. The difference between the first and second groups is called the brand lift, or the increased consumer awareness of your brand due to running advertising.