Top 5 Coronavirus Digital Marketing Tips for Marijuana Businesses

Many marijuana dispensaries & cannabis businesses are scrambling due to the Coronavirus outbreak. Traditional foot traffic & marijuana promotional events will not work now. Despite these challenges, most cannabis businesses are still open for business. However, they have challenges on how to keep locations clean & safe. Here are the top 5 things your marijuana business can do during the Coronavirus pandemic to make more money.

1. Add marijuana online ordering & pickup. This helps reduce the number of customers in your dispensary at one time. Online orders also increase sales. The average online weed order is well over $100! There are many great online order companies for marijuana businesses. However, they are not all created equal. Our favorite is Dutchie Online Ordering. They have flat fee per monthly pricing. Dutchie also has curbside pickup capabilities. Dutchie online marijuana ordering system also lets you “white label” your online order system. Beware of companies that charge a percentage fee for online ordering systems. Don’t use WeedMaps or Leafly for online orders. Why? Because you are promoting them. And, it takes people off your website. Which means they can shop Weedmaps Leafly for your direct competition. Which is never good. Dutchie can link to your current POS system such as Flowhub, etc. You will know when orders come into your POS. And, the system can text customers when their order is ready for store pickup. As an added bonus, the online order systems collect both phone numbers, and emails, for future special marketing. Digital 303 just added online ordering to Oasis Cannabis Superstore. It only took a few days. Oasis Superstore had almost 100 orders, and 10,000 in online revenue in the first few days!

2. Make sure your Google My Business (GMB) account is fully optimized. Did you know that businesses with more GMB photos get viewed more than those who have less? People use Google for just about all online searches. Your Google My Business listing is the first thing they see (assuming they see your GMB listing at all). Google does not treat all GMB accounts equally. They will display the ones that are best optimized. The others get pushed down the list.  Most people do not know how to optimize a Google My Business listing. However, professionals can do it in just a few hours. Pay them. It will be worth every penny. Now is not the time to use your in house general marketing person.
3. Optimize ALL your local directory sources. Local directories Include: Google My Business. Yahoo. Bing. Apple Maps. Yelp. Waze, Uber, Tom Tom, ShowMeLocal, Hot Frog, and many more. Digital 303 can fix and optimize all 20 local listings in one day. Call us for our $999 local directory setup special. We can get you 100 percent scores in all local listings immediately. Digital 303 customers get over 100,000 Google My Business views every month. You can boost your local smartphone traffic 10-50 percent in 30 days!
4. Optimize your website for organic Google Search (SEO). People are searching for open dispensaries. Adding organic digital SEO helps get more customers from the web, and on smartphones. Professional marijuana digital marketing experts can add custom SEO to your key website pages quickly. The results in Google just keep getting better once you add custom SEO to your website.
5. Add a CRM or Loyalty tool that lets you text and email your existing customers. If you have thousands of emails, and phone numbers, put them to work for you! Add a special for 10 percent off of the first online order, etc. Email and text your customers.

Conclusion: There is a lot of demand for dispensaries that are open during the Coronavirus epidemic. You cannot rely on foot traffic, events, and other traditional cannabis marketing. Digital marketing is where the money will come from. Digital 303 is open. And, ready to help your marijuana business get more business today! Call 303-941-3799 for help.