Strategies to get your CBD brand found

Strategies to get your CBD brand found

It’s an exciting time to be in the CBD industry. If you’re considering getting into the business or already in it, chances are you’ve already run into the problem of online advertising. Facebook, Instagram, and Google don’t allow CBD brands to advertise since there’s still a gray area around it’s legality. Even though the farm bill for industrialized hemp was put into law, it didn’t clearly address the legality of CBD. 

Although not being able to advertise on those platforms might feel crushing for your business, there’s a lot of creative ways to build your brand through other channels of advertising. The key to advertising isn’t traffic, it’s conversions. 

Real World Examples

Go Local

If you have CBD products for pets, try going to local small-business brick and mortar pet stores to see if they will carry your pet products. The same goes with doggy daycare businesses as well. If a customer’s dog has behavioral or anxiety issues, it’s very easy for a staff member to make the recommendation to a customer. It’s also your job as a brand owner to make sure their staff is educated about your product. 

If your city has a farmer’s market or local sporting events that allows small businesses to have pop-ups, this is a great opportunity to get eyes and conversations about your products. Website visitors are good, but a conversation in person is better. You can personally address any questions a potential customer has as well as making product recommendations. This is a much better experience than a website. 

Find a Niche

CBD oil is known for it’s anti-inflammatory properties. A great niche for this would be endurance runners or triathletes. Like we mentioned before, go local and find running retail stores and ask if they can carry your products. 

Also, do some searching online and find online publications where these niche audiences congregate. While major ad platforms don’t allow CBD brands to advertise, you can work something out with the publication directly. These types of business models rely almost entirely on advertising to generate revenue, so it would be difficult for them to pass up. 

Build Your List

When we take a deeper dive into some of the actual marketing campaigns you can run online, building your email list is probably at the top of things you should do. We’ll use an example of a drawing or giveaway promotion. What you can do is have a drawing to give away a small bundle of CBD products, all the interested people have to do is enter their email address in a simple web form. If you promote it right, you can get hundreds, if not thousands of people opting in to receive emails from you. Your cost-per-contact will end up being extremely low, we’re likely talking cents per email address. Now you have a list of people who have expressed interest in CBD products, now you can educate and nurture them with your content to get them to purchase. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How do you stand out from other brands? Content, content, content. Producing valuable content is key to differentiating your brand. Since you’re obviously passionate about CBD, you likely have a lot of stories and experience to share with the world. You can write articles about how your products have helped people, customer testimonials, your mission, etc. 

Consistently posting articles that are optimized for SEO on your website will help you get found online. When consumers are searching for particular CBD keywords, the chances of your site being on page 1 of the results increase if you’re seen as a thought leader in the space.

Make sure to have an option for visitors on your website to subscribe to your articles. Building an email list to send and market to is another channel for you to increase sales. We’ll get more into email promotions in another post. 

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