In the first part of this two-part series, Justin Simon, founder of Cannabest Productions, explores ways dispensaries can use video to drive sales and increase foot traffic.
The statistics are overwhelming: By 2020, 80 percent of all online content will be videos. If you’re a forward-thinking dispensary owner, you’ve already developed an online marketing plan chock full of creative, attention-grabbing videos.
But your social media feeds aren’t the only places video can deliver for you. If you don’t have videos running on screens or tablets in your dispensary, you’re missing out on massive revenue opportunities. Here are five reasons you need to incorporate video onsite now.
1. Increase Your Margins
You’ve got half a dozen vape cartridges, five kinds of gummies and edibles from four different bakeries. Your dispensary doesn’t make the same margins on each. On-site videos give you the opportunity to draw attention to the products that are going to increase your bottom line as customers are steps from your registers. According to Forbes, 90 percent of people are influenced by product videos when making purchasing decisions; digital signage experts Sixteen:Nine says items advertised with digital signage saw a 49-percent increase in sales. Those are massive numbers that you can’t afford to overlook. Ask the brands you are most focused on selling to supply you with product videos. It’s free content for you that will drive higher returns for everyone.
2. Make Your Budtenders A Draw
Walking Denver’s Green Mile earlier this year, I remarked to a colleague: “What are all of these dispensaries doing to stand out and make themselves the destination dispensary?” One great way is to showcase your budtenders, giving your dispensary a personal touch. A short video of budtender “Jessica,” who likes skiing, being outdoors and dogs flows into a natural conversation of what products she likes, allowing her to organically push more product. We often become regulars at our favorite bars because of specific bartenders, yet very few dispensaries seem to be playing up their budtenders. Using video serves as an icebreaker to conversations that good budtenders will turn into larger sales.
3. Flash Sales
What if every day at 4:20 p.m., your dispensary’s digital screens all flipped from your menu to a video of a flash sale? For the next four minutes and 20 seconds, specific products in the video are 20-percent off? Well, you’d see a rush to the counter from people around the store to stock up quickly. Additionally, flash sale videos make for great social media content so potential consumers know there are deals to be had once they are in your dispensary. Vary the times of the flash sales (30-minute lunch spree!), and preview the sales early on Facebook and Instagram, prompting increased foot traffic.
4. Education
Walking into a dispensary can be overwhelming for many newbies. They might enter your shop and think, “There’s so much to choose from. Is there really a difference between sun-grown and indoor-grown? What is a terpene?” For most people, it’s confusing. Creating simple educational videos that are accessible on an iPad on the counter will not only make the consumer trust your expertise, but also serves to keep them in the store longer. And as any business owner knows, the longer a customer is in your shop, the odds of a purchase increase significantly.
5. Video Isn’t as Expensive as You Think
The No. 1 reservation we hear when potential clients contact us is that they don’t have huge video marketing budgets. They seem surprised when we tell them: “You don’t have to spend big to deliver big for your business.” Whiteboard animations, product shot videos and text over photos/stock footage videos are all relatively inexpensive and can be used over and over, amortizing the cost of the videos down to almost nothing. Use Lumen5.com, Typito or iMovie for those text-based videos, and you can brand your own content in a matter of minutes.
Check back next month for five more reasons your dispensary can’t avoid skimping on video if you want to drive sales.
Justin Simon is the founder and executive producer at Cannabest Productions, an industry producer of marketing videos for cannabis businesses. Follow the company on Instagram @CannabestProductions.
