The holidays are fast approaching, which is a prime opportunity for your CBD brand to give out a strong holiday push to sell your products. This is a particularly great opportunity since more people are shopping online than ever before for their holiday gifts. What’s more, your product is a great fit: CBD is legal nationwide, can be shipped anywhere in the country, and is getting more and more popular as a health and wellness product.
But if you want to get on everyone’s must-have stocking stuffers list and have your product stand out as the go-to holiday gift, you have to do more than just say “Buy this because it’s CBD.” That’s not really convincing, and it’s not likely to get you an influx of orders.
Fortunately, there are lots of things you can do to make your CBD products stand out this holiday season.
Differentiate Your Brand from the Competition
The CBD market is booming across the United States. In such a saturated market when everyone is selling very similar products, taking steps to differentiate your CBD brand from the competition can make a huge difference to your success.
What can you do to differentiate your CBD brand?
Go against the Flow
Don’t do everything that everyone else is doing. Does your logo really need to be a green cannabis leaf? Don’t blend in. Think outside the box.
Carve out a Niche
It can be tempting to try to sell every CBD product under the sun, from releaf balms and CBD joints to CBD oils and elixirs. Add in vapes, roll-on pain relievers, skincare products, and gummies, and you have yourself the same CBD marketplace that everyone else has. Why not try carving a niche instead? Maybe you should focus specifically on CBD drops to calm hyper dogs or CBD balms for knee pain. Having a defined unique selling point will help you focus your messaging and get better results.
Share Your Values
If you’re in the CBD market, you probably care about health and wellness. But what about environmental sustainability or empowering communities? These authentic values can help you connect with your audience, so it pays to promote them. If your products are all environmentally friendly or you donate a percentage of sales to a charity, share this information. CBD is not cheap, so people want to know they’re supporting a worthy cause.
Invest in Professional Branding
Starting an online e-commerce business can seem like a low-capital investment, but you definitely should still invest in the things that matter, like branding and design. This is not where you should skimp. A professional branding company or designer can help you stand out from the crowd and create a professional website with professional product images that really make an impact visually.
For example, your design can make it clear that you’re targeting an older audience, women, or people specifically from the coastal regions. From the colors and typefaces you use on your website to the look and feel of your logo, professional branding can make a huge difference.
It’s important to remember that CBD is a premium product. People expect quality for their money. They won’t want to pay $50 an ounce for something that looks like it was made in your garage. A professional website and professionally branded products matter.
Speak to Your Specific Audiences
Sure, you want everyone to buy your products. You might legitimately believe that just about everybody can benefit from the therapeutic effects of CBD.
The problem is you can’t market to everyone and anyone. It won’t work. By trying to cast too wide a net, your marketing materials will inevitably be vague and generic, so they’ll likely miss the mark with everyone. Just saying “CBD is great for everyone!” isn’t all that convincing to anyone, now is it?
Instead, it’s better to zero in on your target audiences or “personas.” Who you target will depend on what you’re selling and who you think is most likely to buy from you. For example, you might want to market your products directly to beginners who are curious about CBD, injured athletes looking for natural pain management, or people who are looking for natural medicine.
While all of these personas are interested in CBD products, they all have varying levels of experience, are looking for different benefits, and would be more likely to buy different types of products. By targeting their behaviors and consumption patterns directly, you can make more sales.
Take on Low-Effort High-Reward Marketing Tasks That Will Help You Promote Your CBD Products
The holidays are only a few short weeks away, so there’s no time to completely overhaul your website or undertake a huge marketing campaign. Fortunately, there are low-effort, high-reward marketing tasks that you can take on to help your CBD products stand out as the go-to holiday gift this season.
Swap PDFs for Product Web Pages
Too many CBD brands make this critical error: They add all their products to their website via PDF downloads. Unfortunately, search engines can’t crawl PDFs properly, so you’re going to kill your search engine optimization efforts if you rely on this format. Switching those PDFs into web pages will help you rank higher on search engines, which will ultimately bring more eyes onto your CBD products.
Add More Detail to Your Product Pages
CBD marketplaces are notoriously short on detail. If the only things your product pages detail are a photo and the CBD ratio, you’re going to struggle to attract shoppers. Depending on how many products you have, it might make sense to enhance the copy for all products or just the top sellers.
To close more sales, add details about the product’s therapeutic or medical benefits. Who should use the product and what benefits should they expect? Avoid jargon so the copy is beginner friendly, too.
Vary Your Images
How are shoppers supposed to get excited about a product if every single picture looks the same? Whether it’s a bottle of CBD oil or a cannabis leaf shown over and over again, you’re doing yourself a disservice. A picture says a thousand words, and shoppers won’t be immediately attracted to any of your products if they all look exactly the same, so switch up some photos. Better yet, add photos of people using your product or a video of your product being used.
Invest in a Paid Media Campaign
You might think that paid media is off-limits for CBD brands, but that’s not actually the case. It’s tough for cannabis products but much easier for CBD. You have more paid media options than you realize. You can advertise on social media networks; Google Search, Products, and Display Network; as well as many mainstream media outlets. You just have to be careful about how you promote your products. For example, you’ll want to focus on the wellness benefits and avoid adding a direct purchase link on your landing page (although it can reference CBD). If you follow the rules, you can get a great return on your investment with paid media.
Whether you need help creating an effective marketing strategy, optimizing your CBD marketplace website to get more sales, or to ramp up a paid media campaign, Mary Jane Marketer can help. We’re a full-service cannabis marketing agency that can help you promote your CBD products while remaining compliant. Book a consultation to get started.