Before diving into CBD marketing, let’s explore a little bit about what CBD is and then how we can effectively set up targeted CBD marketing campaigns and ensure your marketing budget is getting the attention it deserves from CBD consumers.
In this blog, we will also be covering how CBD is disrupting multi-billion dollar industries like conventional medical prescriptions and supplements industries globally and how we can encourage people to explore natural CBD medication while making the most out of our marketing budget.
In order to market your CBD products, first build an understanding of what it is, where it can come from, the medical claims and the compliant channels to communicate with your CBD customers.
Cannabis marketing and industrial Hemp CBD marketing are two different avenues, depending on where the CBD is derived from. With hemp-derived CBD you can market to all 50 states legally, with cannabis-derived CBD you can market only within the states that a recreationally legal or have special advertising restrictions in place, but more on that later, first up let’s define CBD.
How does CBD compare to THC?
CBD is short for cannabidiol, which is one of the many cannabinoids found in cannabis and hemp plants.
The CBD industry has been accelerating wildly with popularity in recent years. It attracts new customers who necessarily want don’t experience the psychoactive effects that THC provides, but do enjoy all the soothing and healing effects of CBD. Essentially, new customers can experience the benefits of CBD without feeling high while going about their day.
CBD is a natural, effective way to treat many different health issues that are usually approached by conventional pharmaceutical solutions such as painkillers and anti-inflammatory topicals. For example, CBD oils and topicals can be easily applied to aching pains, and inflammatory conditions and can even be used to treat anxiety and depression.
CBD sources – Hemp-derived vs. Marijuana-derived
If you are marketing your CBD oil or product, it is important to understand the different types of CBD sources that are available. CBD can be derived from either industrial hemp or marijuana. Hemp-derived CBD is legal in all 50 states, as well as certain forms of CBD advertising, while CBD derived from marijuana is only legal in certain states.
CBD can also be isolated, full spectrum, or broad spectrum. Full spectrum CBD contains all of the compounds found in the hemp plant, while CBD isolates only contain CBD. While broad-spectrum CBD contains a variety of compounds from the hemp plant it does not contain THC.
What traditional industries have been disrupted?
By replacing opioids and other pharmaceutical pain and inflammatory relief medication with CBD compounds, CBD can alleviate consumers’ pain without the side effects of heavier, more addictive pharmaceutical alternatives.
Inflammatory topicals such as Diclofenac (Voltaren) are also being disrupted by CBD topicals and other naturally derived cannabinoid compounds. Epsom Salts and other soothing bathing products are also being disrupted by CBD-infused bath bombs. This is only the tip of the iceberg, as research amplifies not only the types of CBD products available but also the medical research into how these products can benefit the CBD consumer.
Benzodiazepines are another class of pharmaceuticals that CBD products and CBD concentrates are forecasted to disrupt, as clear evidence of reducing anxiety and increasing a sense of calm can be attributed to CBD products.
What sort of health benefits can CBD products provide?
The benefits of CBD are quite robust with very few negative side effects, compared with their opioid counterparts. However, the method in which you ingest CBD can alter the effects. CBD can be consumed through a variety of different mediums including; edibles, tinctures, CBD oil & sublinguals, vaporization and combustion. The tail end of those mediums, such as CBD strains of flower or CBD vaporizer cartridges, produce carcinogens that can create respiratory problems similar to smoking tobacco.
However, if you select the proper medium, CBD can healthily address and treat a variety of conditions including; anxiety, pain and inflammation. With the CBD oil segment of the market leading the charge.
So, keeping your CBD customers informed of innovative alternative CBD products with consistent marketing efforts can help their pain management, while simultaneously helping to build your CBD brand awareness. In addition to all this, it’s important to know what to promote. So, let’s take a look at which types of CBD products we can market and why.
What types of CBD products are available?
CBD oil has become one of the most popular health and wellness products on the market and its popularity is only increasing as an effective alternative treatment. However, CBD products come in many forms than just oils, such as tinctures, capsules, edibles, flowers, vaporizer cartridges and topicals.
It should be noted, that not many millennials tend to gravitate toward the CBD capsules or tinctures category, so being cognizant of who you are marketing these CBD products to and how you market CBD is very important for your CBD brand.
CBD retailers need to be prepared to market CBD online to reach multiple target audiences who enjoy these different product categories. Leveraging the audiences’ preferred medium to reach them effectively requires understanding your CBD customer demographics.
Understanding the demographics of your market.
In general, many CBD businesses are using non-compliant or outdated marketing strategies or are simply unaware of the pitfalls of contemporary content marketing and social media while marketing CBD oil or products.
With such a saturation of inbound CBD business, your branding and your CBD marketing strategy takes advanced planning, creativity, and consistent execution to really stand out in this budding industry. Content marketing for your CBD marketing strategy should be delivered via multiple mediums including; SMS marketing, native apps, email marketing, CBD focused blogs, to connect with your local consumer demographics appropriately.
First, let’s take a look at how the age of your available audience reacts to different marketing mediums.
Understanding how demographics, like age, will impact your campaign engagement.
According to Informatics, the age of your target market can certainly influence the digital marketing medium they engage with the most. Consumers aged 19-29 are likely to respond well to influencer marketing, video and loyalty programs. Consumers aged 30-60 are likely to seek out reviews, videos and affiliate marketing. While consumers aged 60+ are more likely to respond to your marketing campaign sent via email and engagement through portals they are comfortable using.
Having an omnichannel marketing campaign solution and CBD advertising strategy that targets consumers based on their preferred communication medium can help your CBD brand get your marketing strategy in order. Targeting by medium and the appropriate age can certainly influence your open rates and other valuable metrics discussed below.
What marketing avenues are available to CBD producers and distributors?
Many different digital marketing avenues are available to CBD producers. Email & SMS marketing, native apps, social media platforms, search engine optimization & web design, plus influencer marketing are all semi-viable ways to target customers to generate organic growth.
But let’s look at each medium for how effective it can be, for creating an ROI-generating CBD paid ads campaign. As a CBD brand or retailer, it’s important to evaluate each medium and align it with your local CBD market demographics, while also paying attention to local advertising restrictions and the quality of your content.
Using a Social media platform and Influencer marketing
The most contemporary CBD marketing strategy is also one of the least consistent, social media marketing. The issue with social media platforms and influencer marketing currently in the cannabis and CBD marketing space is that the social media platforms can act independently of state governments and federal governments to remove your CBD marketing campaign from their platforms, at will. Most of the time automatically with AI. Meaning that the CBD oil campaign you just targeted on Instagram to your followers can be completely removed with reimbursement.
Even if you satisfy all the regulatory compliance requirements, social media providers can remove your CBD oils campaign without warning and without refund according to their terms of service.
Without POS integrations it is also very difficult to measure the efficacy of your CBD marketing campaigns with regards to ROI, hindering your marketing tactics going forward.
So, with that being said social media platforms and the paid ads they provide are some of the least consistent marketing tools available to supplement your CBD marketing strategy.
SMS & CBD marketing strategy
Many CBD brands do not believe that it is compliant to use SMS or even email marketing as a marketing tactic under their CBD marketing strategy, however, this is not the case.
CBD marketing can be completely compliant in both those respects with minimal requirements for the consumer; double opt-in enrollment and unsubscribe buttons meet the necessary TCPA regulations. The average person has their phone within arm’s reach 24/7 which makes SMS and email marketing one of the most effective ways to stay top of mind as a CBD brand or retailer. With 98% open rates, SMS messages are hard to ignore.
Consumers can also register directly at most cannabis-specific POS and Online store platforms during the transaction for streamlined enrollment.
Email Marketing strategy & CBD content marketing
Email marketing should still remain a large portion of your CBD marketing mediums, with a large demographic of seniors turning away from pharmaceuticals for the natural benefits of CBD.
With email being their preferred communication medium, and seniors being one of the largest consuming age groups of CBD, it is important to advertise CBD to this demographic through their most understood medium, email marketing. Crafting a newsletter or email campaign can really increase your organic traffic and ultimately your revenue. Again, with springbig’s 30+ Integrations this can easily be achieved, with the supporting sales data to measure campaign success.
Evaluating optimum CBD marketing avenues.
CBD retailers and CBD brands equipped with the appropriate sales data available through these integrations can begin to segment and target CBD customers on products they currently enjoy, ensuring repeat visit frequency and larger basket sizes.
This makes SMS and Email marketing strategy one of the most effective and compliant CBD advertising and CBD marketing strategies available, followed swiftly by native apps white-labeled for CBD and cannabis marketers directly by springbig.
Deciding who should receive which marketing medium is one of the main tricks to keeping your consumers engaged and your marketing budget controlled.
What demographics make up my CBD audience?
By enrolling your consumers into a loyalty or marketing program, such as the industry-leading one springbig provides, you can begin to understand who is shopping around you and most importantly how likely they are to respond to certain communication mediums. These tools will also help build brand awareness for your digital marketing strategies.
What metrics should I pay attention to when marketing CBD products?
Using a tool like springbig’s impact report, you can see how your local market is broken down by age, shopping tendencies and where their purchase habits fit within the forecasted CBD projections listed below. How your target market engages with your paid advertising campaigns will likely be a result of proper content creation and reaching your target customers. CBD marketers should be very wary of a few different statistics when sending out their marketing campaigns. These numbers are your key performance indicators or KPIs.
KPI’s
The most important numbers to pay attention to when launching your paid advertising campaigns are the following;
Deliverability
How many messages that you sent actually were delivered to your target market CBD user.
Open Rates
Of those messages sent, how many were opened by your target audience?
Click Through Rates (CTR)
How many people who opened the sent messages, followed through and clicked on the targeted marketing tactic or promotion.
Conversion Data
Data like revenue and sales from your POS or E-commerce platform are directly synced, from one of our many integrations.
Measuring these KPIs
Through the springbig dashboard, your home page monitors these KPIs conveniently on one screen, so you can easily access and see the effectiveness of each of your campaigns locally, all in one place.
With this information accurately measured and displayed, you can begin to understand which communication mediums are working well and which are not, you can learn from your database as it grows and begin to tailor CBD oils and other CBD products directly to match your local CBD consumer market.
Navigating without these tools
Without these insights, it becomes challenging to navigate through your target audience and create a product catalog that competes effectively.
As a CBD marketer, without springbig’s tools, how can you ensure your marketing communications and advertising budget is well spent? Market your CBD with data-driven decisions and watch the revenue flow in. Now let’s take a look at future growth within the CBD industry.
The CBD market in the US and global growth projections.
Forecasted US CBD Growth
Currently, according to Grand View Research, the 2021 CBD market in the US is sitting at $5.18 Billion USD. With the forecasted projections of the CBD market to compound at 16.8% annually until 2030. This market is only projected to grow and having stable client retention and a CBD marketing system can certainly solidify that growth.
It is also important to note that while the US is slowly moving through legalization from state to state, the globe is taking recognition of the CBD industry and its’ value with regard to medical treatments and CBD businesses.
Global Forecasted CBD Growth
According to a new report by Global Market Insights, the global CBD market is projected to reach USD 56.2 Billion by 2028. Meaning expanding your outreach globally is something many companies cannot ignore as more EU countries like Germany are currently rolling out their recreational cannabis industry and CBD advertising regulations.
Why should I market my CBD product?
New users entering the CBD market daily
Because CBD is a relatively new product, many pain medication users are still not familiar with it, as more disruption of inflammatory topicals and opioids occurs the consumer base is projected to climb exponentially. With the stigma still surrounding the cannabis industry in general, many new entry-level hemp-derived consumers are exhilarated to compliantly substitute pharmaceuticals with natural hemp CBD supplements, garnering their attention can be critical. However, so will the competition to meet this growing demand.
Targeting New and Existing consumers appropriately
Having a rock-solid CBD digital marketing strategy that incorporates loyalty programs and an omnichannel communication engine will be critical to successfully marketing CBD. Retain your customers shopping exclusively with you by providing a strong, consistent consumer experience that matches growing consumer expectations. Stay one step ahead of your CBD competitors and explore springbig today!
Not all potential customers want the high associated with THC
CBD products are becoming more and more popular as people learn about the potential health benefits of CBD, that don’t include the psychoactive components of cannabis. This means that marketing your CBD product can be a great way to increase consumer education and awareness to ultimately attract new recurring sales for your CBD business.
Types of CBD product categories rising
There are a number of different types of CBD products that are gaining popularity, such as CBD oil, CBD gummies, and CBD topicals.
According to a report by our business analytics partner Headset, these categories are only projected to rise as new states and new customers begin to experience the multitude of CBD products from CBD companies in the market currently.
With CBD Oil and capsules leading the growth charge it will be very important to dive deeper into the brand and SKUs under these subcategories and curate a product catalog that keeps up with your consumers as they sophisticate.
National CBD Day is incoming fast!
When is National CBD day?
On August 8th, North America recognizes National CBD day to celebrate cannabidiol and to introduce and attract new entry-level enthusiasts to the cannabinoid substance.
This is a vital day for the CBD industry and should definitely provide an added kick to your CBD marketing campaigns.
Maximizing your CBD catalog
Your consumers are going to be celebrating CBD day with their favorite CBD oil or products, so be sure that your CBD product catalog is efficiently selected to meet this demand. Stocking extra CBD oil or whatever your fastest selling CBD product category is can help you maximize your revenue.
Make sure you are educating and nurturing your new consumers into regulars.
You are also going to have an influx of entry-level consumers flock to your; store, online CBD marketing platform, or website to explore exactly what CBD can provide for them. An accurate education process to handle these requests timely, and teach new CBD users, efficiently and effectively will help you turn these new customers into repeat visitors.
Another tip for CBD day is to look at your competitors and try carrying newer CBD brands that can help you differentiate your catalog and provide exclusive access to certain products.
Check out our CBD marketing webinar!
Springbig recently held a webinar hosted by Justuno and spoke alongside Refersion, Smartrr, Sendlane, and Arctic Leaf to discuss all things CBD and CBD marketing like:
- Accurately engaging your target market with segments of CBD users
- Using SMS and email campaigns to drive results on CBD products campaigns
- Utilizing top CRO strategies to convert more on-site visitors
- Check out the webinar!
Exclusive tour of springbig!
If anything in this CBD blog helps you market CBD or increase the CBD advertising of your CBD brand effectively, springbig would love to be there to show you just how far you can market CBD.
From; CBD oil campaigns targeted and segmented to engaged CBD oil users, to targeting subcategories of CBD brands and CBD products, you can get extremely granular with your communications, while not spending an age installing and maintaining these systems.
Our Auto-Connects feature set can also create static and automated marketing campaigns for you, while you focus more on the operation of your CBD brand and finding new exciting ways to get your CBD marketing strategy out there.
Springbig Case Studies
You can also check out our customer testimonials here, where we show just a few of our brightest retailers and how they achieved their marketing and sales goals, even in mature cannabis markets, much more hindered than CBD products.
Consider springbig’s communication engine for your CBD marketing company.
If you are not using CBD-specific SMS and email marketing then you are missing out on a huge opportunity. CBD users have shown to be some of the most receptive people to text message-based advertising and with an open rate of 98%, it’s hard to ignore the potential this powerful tool has for your business.
CBD SMS marketing allows you to send targeted, personalized messages directly to your customers’ phones in order to increase sales and drive repeat business.
With CBD SMS marketing you can;
– Send automated product alerts
– Offer discounts and coupons
– Send special promotions or announcements to targeted audiences
– Drive traffic to your; landing page, reviews for your SEO and search rankings strategy or blog!
When targeting older demographics, try email marketing and be sure to A/B test your results to find the optimum equilibrium of communication mediums in order to best market your CBD brand and align it with your marketing tactics.
You can also use this form to sign up for an exclusive 1-on-1 virtual demonstration where we’ll teach you the ins and outs of how best to market your CBD products. Click here to explore more today!
CEO and Co-founder of springbig
Jeffrey Harris