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Cannabis Marketing Summit 2021: Resources, Key Learnings, and Takeaways

by | Jun 10, 2021 | Event News | 0 comments

It has been Cannabis Marketing Association’s pleasure to host the 2021 Cannabis Marketing Summit.

We have created a list of resources and key takeaways from the Summit speakers. Follow up, connect, and engage with the content provided. As always, show this year’s Summit speakers some appreciation by connecting with them on LinkedIn.

Summit Attendees receive 10% off CMA Business Membership through June 18, 2021 using the code “SUMMIT10”.

June 8, 2021- Day 1 Opening Remarks: Cannabis Marketing Association’s CEO, Lisa Buffo, kicked off the Summit by reminding attendees of the importance of being future-oriented when developing your brand. Marketing is undergoing immense change and consumers are the driving force behind this change. Building relationships with your consumer will take time, but it will be the foundation for your brand’s success for many years to come.

Marketing Across State Lines: How to Effectively Market Cannabis In a Heavily Regulated Landscape

Key Takeaways

  • Learn how to adapt to bridge the gap between your brand, brand love, and loyalty. Adapting is the easiest if you stay true to your core values as an organization. It is the physical manifestation of a consumer who is ready to invest in your product and mission.
  • It is important to create a brand story best fit for your mission. In the future, it will help you leverage media: online and print. These are the modes of connection for the consumer. Loyalty rewards programs and in-person events are great ways to maintain brand loyalty. These create inviting spaces for those invested in cannabis as well as the community. 
  • Education remains a focal point to understanding the needs of the consumer. Employees working with the public should remain well versed in product knowledge and should cater each experience to the consumer. Even if the consumer did not have a great experience, using the knowledge about that experience can help keep your brand aligned with its core values. 

Advertising Cannabis on Mainstream Media: What Brands Need to Know About Doing it Safely and Effectively

Key Takeaways

  • Spend time on platforms where you are able to run cannabis advertising. Many people look to Google, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter as their best resources despite not being their only advertising channels. Diversify advertising between print and digital to maximize this effort. There is more for cannabis marketing now than there ever was. 
  • In the last year, people have increasingly begun to use digital since the pandemic has brought a change in protocol. Digital allows for opportunity beyond traditional advertising and marketing channels. Any organization can be connected to large audiences to test for different aspects of your brand. Colors, testing promotions, and design are all areas in which a brand can utilize the internet’s audience for a relatively low cost. 
  • Get your foot in the door. Cannabis marketing sits on tricky terrain because the landscape is always changing. It makes compliance difficult but can further hinder creative aspects to your brand that often create authenticity. 

Building and Leading Creative Teams: Diversity and Compassion as a Gateway to Creativity — Members-Only Track

Key Takeaways

  • People are one of the greatest assets to you and your organization. The traditional leadership paradigm often focuses on a top-down approach and does not build a productive culture. Though the leadership style has provided great innovation, it is not in an organization’s best interest to use this method of leading.
  • Your organization should focus on building a creative team and culture. Focus helps establish more meaning in your employees’ work, leading to a higher quality outcome. Autonomy and mindfulness should also be encouraged. It motivates teams and prepares them to make the best decision possible.
  • Talented people want to work as a team with other talented individuals. Make sure your team members fit within the culture you create within your organization.
  • Diversity of the mind is one of the most important aspects when creating a diverse team. Each person has a different set of experiences that shape their perspectives. It decreases workplace-related errors. Diversity of the mind also increases your brand’s overall creativity to balance out a system very easily skewed.  

Summit Attendees receive 10% off CMA Business Membership through June 18, 2021 using the code “SUMMIT10”.

June 9, 2021- Day 2 IDFA &Cookie Regulations: What Cannabis Marketers Need to Know Now

Key Takeaways

  • Building a direct dialogue with the targeted consumer is one of the best ways to engage and add value to your marketing efforts.
  • Buy into consent. Social forces are changing the marketing landscape. Cannabis marketers should leverage the first-party data collected to market to the new consenting customer. This helps cultivate an independent relationship between the brand and the consumer. to buy into brand loyalty as well as build a new customer base.

Tips for Infusing Your Cannabis B2B Marketing with Diversity

Key Takeaways

  • Diversity tactics should remain authentic. Marketing your brand is like telling a story. Your brand must be committed to telling stories more than one time a year. For your brand to diversify authentically, you must make an active effort within your business to be brave, transparent, and consistent.
  • Make a diversity plan. Diversity is good for business, and a plan is an easy way to add value to your business. Diversity plans should be easy to find, share, and reference. It helps those engaging in your business make sure their diversity goals align with your brand’s diversity initiatives.
  • Create measurable goals. SMART goals are an easy way to create specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely diversity goals. Not all of these goals are quantifiable. Once you create a goal that aligns with your brand, put it into action.

We Don’t Bite: The New Cannabis Influencer — Members-Only Track

Key Takeaways

  • Media is one of the largest influencers in how content is perceived. Creating media accounts allow your brand to control the narrative surrounding itself and create a voice. This will help expand your brand’s reach and market audience.
  • Use technology to find influencers and other brands that align with your mission. Numbers are important, but they are not the only thing. Focus on the experience your brand can provide and not the product itself.
  • Use new mediums.

Summit Attendees receive 10% off CMA Business Membership through June 18, 2021 using the code “SUMMIT10”.

June 10, 2021- Day 3 Competitive Advantage Through Chemical Differentiation: Translating Scientific Explanation to the Marketing Message

Key Takeaways

  • It is crucial to go through unbiased third-party organizations to interpret the science because it helps create validity for cannabis. It is a way to legitimize the industry and destigmatize cannabis for medicinal use.  
  • Medical cannabis is medicine. It should be a working goal to provide safe access for those who need it. 
  • Be creative. Often, those blocking the transmission of cannabis information do so as a result of a lack of experience with cannabis. Getting creative can help expand marketing channels as well as maintain the focus of your brand. 
  • Use the science. Be honest about the science. Cannabis can work for many different conditions, but to portray falsehoods about it can result in hesitancy. Users do not have the time to unpack the portrayal of information to see if it is accurate. 

I Was Told There’d Be No Math: Examining Brand Loyalty Measures

Key Takeaways

  • Brand loyalty is an important metric to understand. Understanding where loyalty sits will allow brands to compare their products to similar brands within the market. It creates a better position to generate more accurate pricing.
  • Knowing wallet share can help businesses know if they need to work on their existing customer base or if it needs to expand to a new customer base.
  • The customer Repeat Purchase Rate is the percent of customers that returned to purchase a product again. It is an indicator of loyalty that can help you gain a complete picture of your audience. The Repeat Purchas Rate can reveal how consumers see your brand.
  • Discount Sensitivity can help you determine if discounts will be able to compliment your brand’s strategy. The metric used can see how discounts change customer behavior. Discount sensitivity is highly flexible. It is not the same person to person. Age, income level, gender, and market saturation are lenses through which Discount Sensitivity may be viewed.   

Acquisition Workshop: Evaluating a Cannabis Brand — Members-Only Track

Key Takeaways

  • Take a realistic view of the market. It should be both top-down and bottom-up.
  • The brand you are looking to acquire should not have any red flags. Lawsuits and counterfeiting are liabilities anybody should avoid when acquiring a brand. Not to mention avoiding liability will make the acquisition process more streamlined.
  • Take a look at the brand’s intellectual property. Intellectual property can diversify revenue sources, and it can align products to your organization.
  • Acquiring a brand with a focused consumer audience is better than a brand with a broad consumer audience. Brands should be growing but have an established, loyal customer base.
  • Repurchase rates remain high in large markets across the board. Make sure the brand can get people coming back to your store to repurchase from you.

Summit Attendees receive 10% off CMA Business Membership through June 18, 2021 using the code “SUMMIT10”.

Summit Resources

All of this year’s session topics were evaluated and selected by CMA’s volunteer Host Committee.

Summit Attendees receive 10% off CMA Business Membership through June 18, 2021 using the code “SUMMIT10”.

As always, a HUGE thank you to this year’s Platinum Sponsors!

 

Cannabis Marketing Summit attendees receive 25% off New Frontier Data’s Equio using the code CMA2021— subscribe and learn more here: https://newfrontierdata.com/equio-features/

 

 

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