5 Marketing Tips From a Cannabis Branding Pro

When it comes to navigating the marketing side of your cannabis business, it can be difficult to create a plan to effectively market your product and service offerings to your customer base. Olivia Mannix, founder and CEO of Cannabrand, a full-service marketing agency specializing in the cannabis industry, shared with Cannabis Business Times her top 5 tips for a successful marketing and branding strategy.

1. Use branded content.

Branded content is a type of advertising that uses the creation of content as a way to promote a particular brand. Companies should consider investing in branded content, Mannix suggests, to relay information to their customers about their products and services, to engage them and make them remember you.

For example, she described Cannabrand’s Kushmoji, a marketing and ad platform in the form of an emoji keyboard for your smartphone.

“Basically, people can interact with cannabis brands via emojis,” Mannix said. “You can download Kushmoji in the App store, it integrates into your keyboard into your iPhone or Android, and people can learn about brands in the industry, dosing, strains of products, locations of where they can get product [and] proximity.”

Mannix says that various cannabis brands have their own emojis that allow people to learn general information about them, such as where their products are sold. The app also uses location tracking so if a consumer is in a particular city and he pulls up the Kushmoji keyboard, all of the dispensaries and promotions populate. The user can then click on a link and learn more about the products.

On the flip side, Kushmoji tracks analytics, which allows Cannabrand to collect the demographics of the app’s users and provide that information to their partners, who can then see who their clients are.

Neos marketing campaign by Cannabrand. Image courtesy of Olivia Mannix.

2. Use social media to post branded content and to educate.

Mannix says social media channels like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are very important, and that you should use these platforms to post branded content, but also to educate your followers. She said posting photos and videos with the content is also important, as people like to glance through posts and not necessarily read them all in their entirety.

“We are in the age of skim,” Mannix said. “There’s some statistic that people only read the first two sentences of an article, or they’ll skim all the way through it and they’ll just look at the pictures.”

3. Plan your point-of-sale carefully.

For vertically integrated companies with retail (medical or adult-use) space, Mannix says that the way a company’s point-of-sale (POS) is displayed, the way you walk through the shop and its general flow are all important factors to consider when setting up such an area.

“Your point-of-sale or your point-of display of your products in dispensaries is really important to be eye-catching, to be engaging with the consumer,” she said.

Olivia Mannix.Olivia Mannix.

4. Public Relations.

Another part of a company’s marketing strategy, Mannix (pictured right) said, is public relations and the way a brand communicates with journalists.

“Public relations is a great way to also get your brand out there because you’re able to speak openly and honestly about the brand,” she said. “Journalists can speak about cannabis companies without the laws and restrictions about cannabis marketing and advertising.”

5. Avoid counterculture, cartoons and jokes in your branding.

Finally, Mannix advises cannabis businesses to stay away from counterculture, cartoons, jokes and anything that puts a negative connotation on cannabis consumers in not only their branding and marketing strategies, but also on their social media pages.

“You need to be educating people, you need to be informing people, you need to be on a political level and advocating for the industry so we can change laws, especially in this time, and that all trickles back to marketing,” Mannix said.

Top image: Verde Naturals color palette. Courtesy of Cannabrand.