Jun 9, 2022
As medicinal and recreational cannabis availability expands across the United States, many agencies are experiencing a sharp increase in business development opportunities to serve clients in this skyrocketing industry.
However, because it is not yet federally legal, cannabis businesses face heavy advertising restrictions on most digital platforms. For many clients looking to compete online for traffic and conversions, organic channels can prove a promising avenue.
>>> Read More: The Most Complete Guide to Marketing in the Cannabis Industry <<<
All digital marketing campaigns lead back to your client’s website. This is the sole property that they can exercise complete control over. For a cannabis business, their site is where they have the opportunity to leverage excellent content to educate new customers, build authority and credibility, and inspire conversions.
If you’re seeking guidance on launching a content marketing campaign for your client in the cannabis industry, we have you covered. In this guide, we will provide you with everything you need to know to start populating their website with high-quality copy that generates key performance actions across each page.
It All Begins with Taking Inventory
Before you can develop and implement a content marketing strategy for your client, you have to understand the resources available to you. This will help influence your content calendar as well as the types of content pieces you will create to speak to audiences across each phase of the buyer’s journey.
Depending on the size, scope, and variety of your client’s product inventory, take between 20 minutes and an hour to review every product and product category they offer. This will aid you in selecting the right topics, keywords, and cadence for the content you produce.
Develop a Cadence Around the Buyer’s Journey
Developing a proper cadence for your content marketing strategy will ensure that each phase of the buyer’s journey receives its due diligence. For example, if you spend too much time on decision-stage content, you will miss out on drawing more interest from awareness-stage visitors that may swiftly move further down the funnel.
Strive to develop a content calendar that considers awareness, consideration, and decision-stage audiences equally. While awareness-stage content may not always drive a sale, it can be used to build authority, spark interest in new visitors, and can be most easily used to generate quality backlink opportunities for your client’s website.
How do you break down content by the three stages of the buyer’s journey with respect to cannabis? Here are a few tips:
Awareness-Stage Cannabis Content
Awareness-stage cannabis content focuses heavily on answering basic questions about products your client offers or drawing in interest through adjacent topics. For example, someone familiar with CBD may want to know how it differs from THC. Though your client may not sell CBD, this is their opportunity to capture traffic from that user and educate them on THC.
Some examples of awareness-stage content topics could include:
What is the Sour Diesel Strain?
Dispelling Common Myths About Smoking Cannabis
Similarities and Differences Between CBD and THC
What Are the Medicinal Benefits of Cannabis?
At a high level, these topics provide basic educational information for someone who may not know much about the cannabis industry. These topics can fill a range of introductory knowledge gaps and help inspire interest to move to the next stage.
Consideration-Stage Cannabis Content
Consideration-stage content involves motivating the reader to take the next stage toward making a purchase decision or completing another desired conversion on your client’s website. These sorts of content topics dive deeper beneath the surface under the assumption that the audience has more understanding of basic information pertaining to the cannabis industry.
Example topics of consideration-stage content could include:
Best Times of Day for Sativa and Indica Strains
10 Best Cannabis Strains for First-Time Consumers
(Strain X) vs. (Strain Y) – Which is Right for You?
Our Top-10 Glass Pipes of 2022
How Hybrid Strains are Made and Why You Might Love Them
Here, someone has already decided they are likely to or will soon purchase the types of products that your client offers. The audience member may need help deciding whether your client is the right retailer for them or which products best align with their preferences.
Decision-Stage Content
Once we’ve arrived at the decision stage, the reader is either someone ready to complete a transaction or may be a repeat customer looking to re-purchase their favorite products or try something new.
These topics will focus less on high-level awareness and introductory education. Instead, they will place emphasis on more niche and detailed topics that assume the person reading has purchased cannabis before or is fully committed to do so.
Some examples of decision-stage topics might be:
Why You Need to Try (Strain X) This Year
In-Depth Reviews of New Strains or Accessories
Content Promoting Upcoming Sales at Your Client’s Dispensary
5 Tips for Thoroughly Cleaning Glass Pipes
How to Decarb Your Favorite Flower for Cooking
Topics like how to clean a glass pipe or how to decarb cannabis flower for culinary recipes assume that a person has already purchased products within the industry. Reviews and features of certain strains also are written under the assumption that the reader is an active consumer of cannabis and may want to try something new that your client offers.
Lastly, a post that promotes an upcoming sale on your website can also draw interest from local customers that want to save money on purchasing products from your client. These types of posts may not lead to online conversions, but they can help increase foot traffic on the date of the sale.
Considerations for Cannabis Content Marketing
Because cannabis has not been legalized at the federal level, there are some limitations to where content can be shared. For example, social media platforms may restrict what types of links can be posted to your client’s profile. Google may also penalize your client’s account for attempting to use pages promoting the sale of cannabis as part of a paid search campaign.
Beyond hosting the content on your website, an email list can also prove a powerful tool for generating interest in your client’s content. Build your contact list by placing a digital signup form on their website. You can also create a QR code for them to display at their dispensary to generate more signups from in-store visits.
For organic cannabis content strategies to maximize their opportunity, applying time-tested search engine optimization principles is also necessary. Having a technically healthy website that is poised to generate backlinks from other authoritative websites in the industry will increase search engine algorithms’ perceptions of your client’s website and lead to higher rankings on the SERPs.
Lastly, integrating the proper keywords into your content is essential to maximize its organic potential. Using low-difficulty, high-volume keywords that match your ideal customer’s search intent can draw plenty of qualified traffic to your client’s site. Be sure to include the keyword in the title, metadata, and used where appropriate throughout the paragraph text on your website pages and blog posts.
Develop Quality Cannabis Content with a White Label Partnership
Considering the limitations that many cannabis businesses have to navigate in their digital marketing strategies, partnering with another team of digital marketing experts can help ensure that your client is generating the most desirable results possible for their campaigns.
At Conduit Digital, we partner with successful agencies in North America to drive elite performance for your clients. One of the ways we equip your cannabis marketing agency to pursue better opportunities is by outfitting your team with a full product suite that includes custom audit-based SEO content deliverables.
To learn more about how you can leverage a white label SEO partnership to maximize the health of your client’s website and outfit it with keyword-driven content, schedule a 20 minute call with us today.
