by Marissa Black-Smith, Content Director at NisonCo
If there’s one thing I’ve learned through my journey in cannabis content marketing, it’s that a solid strategy is your best friend. For budding entrepreneurs starting fledgling cannabusinesses, establishing marketing foundations are a must to ensure success down the road.
In a cannabis industry plagued by unique market challenges like advertising restrictions, market saturation and plenty of stigmas, let these five essential steps guide your way to building a recognizable, trusted and lasting brand presence.
1. Lay the Foundational Language and Style for Your Cannabrand
A strong brand identity is the foundation of any successful cannabis startup. Your brand is more than just a logo; it’s the story you tell, the values you uphold, and the connection you create with your audience. Any brand requires foundational language to uphold its marketing efforts.
If You Haven’t Already, It’s Time to Talk Mission and Brand Values
Your brand identity should be as singular as a Malawi Gold cultivar. Define your brand values and mission clearly and differentiate yourself from the competition. Are you committed to sustainability? Focus on identifying which eco-friendly initiatives you’re undertaking and why. Are you a go-to luxury cannabis product? Prepare to list differentiators and describe in detail why those choices are impactful. In short, know your brand intimately.
Carefully Create a Curated Cannabis Brand Style Guide
Aligning brand terminology with your target audience is essential to effectively crafting a guide to go the distance. Deciding how your cannabis brand does and does not describe itself and your work is imperative for strong positioning.
Your brand style guide should be a living document and reference guide for any content representing your brand’s digital and print assets. If this sounds like a lot of work, have no fear — the Cannabis Marketing Association offers an excellent free Cannabis Brand Book Workbook resource.
2. Build Your Online Cannabis Brand Presence Brick By Brick
Building a strong online presence for your cannabis brand isn’t just about throwing a website together and calling it a day. It’s about creating a digital experience that feels like a warm hug from a trusted friend — one who also happens to have the best cannabis SEO game in town.
Build a User-Friendly, Cannabis SEO-driven Website
Focus on UX/UI design to ensure your visitors have the best possible experience. This is the art and science of making your site look good and work seamlessly. The essentials for building a cannabis website are:
- Clear navigation – Make it easy for users to find what they’re looking for.
- Engaging content – Keep visitors interested with blog posts, videos, and product descriptions that are informative and entertaining.
- Compliance – Ensure your site adheres to all legal guidelines for cannabis marketing. This will keep you out of hot water and build trust with your audience.
Now, let’s talk about the secret sauce: SEO. At NisonCo, we started offering cannabis companies SEO services after doing the work for ourselves and seeing just how effective it can be. SEO is not a one-time effort. It’s a living, breathing process that needs constant attention and care. Adjust your style guide with top-targeted cannabis keywords on a rolling basis to ensure maximum strategic yield. This means staying on top of keyword trends and integrating them naturally into your content.
Leverage Targeted Social Media Platforms
Choosing the right platforms for connecting to your audience is essential. Whether your crowd is chilling on Instagram, getting creative on TikTok, staying updated on X (formerly known as Twitter), watching videos on YouTube, or networking on LinkedIn, you need to be where they are (with an optimized profile). Wherever your audience is, regularly create platform-specific content that engages and excites them with the aid of a content calendar.
For example, at NisonCo, we’ve found particular success by engaging actively on LinkedIn and maintaining a presence on Instagram. LinkedIn helps us connect with industry professionals and share our expertise, while Instagram allows us to engage with a broader audience through visually appealing content.
3. Furnish Your Cannabis Content Hubs with Valuable Resources
I may be biased, but I’m a firm believer that cannabis content is king, queen, and everything in between. Your goal should be to provide value to potential and current customers or clients through educational, entertaining, and engaging cannacontent.
What Types of Content Resonate with Cannabis Consumers?
Dive into cannabis consumer insights and data to ensure the content you’re creating is helpful to customers. Here are a few content categories I see universal client success with:
- Educational blogs or articles
- Product reviews and personal stories
- How-to guides and FAQs
- Short-form video content
- Email newsletters
4. Move Into Strategic Cannabis Thought Leadership
The next step in your content path is to elevate the conversation. Touting your product or service and creating direct marketing resources and relationships with consumers is all well and good, but what about cementing your brand’s place in the cannabis business ecosystem?
Establish Authority and Credibility in the Cannabis Industry
Procuring thought leadership content to ensure brand authority is a top-down effort, requiring a handful of brand representatives willing to write on various hot industry topics. This could mean writing insightful articles on emerging cannabis trends, publishing comprehensive white papers on groundbreaking research, or penning opinion pieces that challenge the status quo. These efforts are not just about being seen but about being seen as an authority.
Whether your niche is medical cannabis, sustainable farming practices, or the latest in cannabinoid science, your content should reflect deep industry knowledge and forward-thinking perspectives. When you consistently produce content that informs and inspires, your audience of fellow cannabusinesses and consumers will start seeing you as a go-to resource in the sector.
Activate Media Interaction Via Public Relations Engagement
To amplify your thought leadership efforts, team up with a reputable PR firm that knows the cannabis industry inside and out. A good PR firm will pitch your stories, interview opportunities, and editorials to relevant media outlets, securing you spots in print and online stories, podcasts, popular YouTube channels, the local news, and industry publications.
Media marketing engagements are crucial for extending your reach and solidifying your authority. It’s one thing to publish a brilliant article on your blog, but it’s another to have that article featured in a top-tier industry magazine or discussed on a high-profile cannabis podcast.
5. Analyze and Adapt to Keep a Roof Over Your Brand’s Head
As any seasoned content marketer will tell you, success isn’t just about getting things right the first time; it’s about continuous improvement. Analytics are your roadmap to understanding what cannabis content is working and where you need to pivot.
Monitor Key Cannabis Content Marketing Metrics
To ensure your content is hitting the mark, keep a close eye on essential metrics such as traffic, engagement, and conversion rates. Regularly tracking these metrics will help you understand which pieces of content resonate and which might need a little tweaking.
Google Analytics is a powerhouse for tracking website performance, offering insights into user behavior, traffic sources, and conversion paths. Dive into your site’s data to see where visitors are coming from and how they’re navigating your content. Social platforms offer their own analytics tools to help you measure engagement and reach. Use these insights to gauge the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.
Stay Agile to Fine-Tune Your Strategic Cannabis Marketing Gameplan
With the data in hand, it’s time to adapt your strategies. If a particular type of content or a specific social media channel is driving significant traffic or engagement, double down on those areas. Conversely, if certain strategies aren’t performing as expected, consider refining or pivoting your approach.
Regularly revisit and update your content strategy based on the latest trends and data insights. This agile approach will help you stay relevant, maintain a strong connection with your audience, and keep your brand growing and thriving in the competitive cannabis market.
Startups Need Strong Content Marketing Strategies to Succeed
At the heart of cannabis content marketing lies a simple truth: it’s all about connection. By crafting a strong brand identity, engaging your audience online, providing valuable content, and positioning yourself as a thought leader, you’re building more than just a business — you’re creating a community. By continuously analyzing and adapting, you ensure that community grows stronger, more engaged, and more loyal with every piece of content you share. So, go forth and nurture those relationships—your brand’s success depends on it.
If your head is spinning from all these steps and strategies, don’t worry — you don’t have to do it alone. NisonCo’s comprehensive cannabis content creation services can help you create any of the strategic resources mentioned above. Reach out to our experienced firm if you’d like to create a holistic content, media and internet marketing strategy for your cannabis startup.
About Marissa Black-Smith:
Marissa Black-Smith is the Content Director at NisonCo, the nation’s first cannabis PR firm, where she began working in cannabis content media marketing in 2019. With a culinary and small-business operations management background, Marissa brings a unique blend of organizational prowess and creativity to her role, including curating compelling content to uplift varied cannabis and psychedelic brands. Marissa finds fulfillment in collaborating with NisonCo’s experienced and socially conscious team, collectively striving to foster social justice and accountability in the cannabis industry.
