It’s no secret that CBD oil is a quickly evolving industry, and it’s set to become one of the biggest industries in the future. Believe it or not, consumers bought 260 billion dollars worth of CBD in the U.S. alone from 2014 to 2016.
This is a lot of CBD, and it shows that the industry is growing, as more and more people are putting their trust in it.
Of course, this is excellent news for anyone who owns a CBD company and is trying to sell their product online. If you want to sell your CBD product online, though, you need to have a pretty good idea of how the market works. You also need to know how online marketing works, too, and while there are a number of proven ways to do this, the more you know about what you’re doing, the better.
How to Market CBD Oil Online
In this article, we’re going to talk about how to market your CBD oil successfully, so that you can have a piece of the industry pie. Let’s take a look at six proven ways to market your CBD product online.
1. Social Media
Just like the CBD oil industry is growing, so is social media when it comes to marketing. It may have started out as a way to connect with the people that you care about, but as it grew, more and more companies saw it as an opportunity to connect with their customers and drive new ones to their products and services.
There’s no reason why you can’t use social media to help you get ahead and sell more of your CBD product, too. Let’s take a look at some of the different social media companies out there that are worth your time in terms of product marketing:
- Instagram: we all know how successful Instagram has become. It started ten years ago, and ever since then, it has grown in leaps and bounds, attracting both individuals and brands with its cool visuals and awesome extra features. Instagram is one of the best platforms to promote your CBD products, and you can even include a link in your bio to connect potential customers to your website. Now that Instagram has videos and Instagram Stories, you can also use this as a way to keep people interested in your CBD products. It’s also recommended to get some third party help to grow your Instagram to take some of the pressure off.
- Twitter: Twitter is one of those social media platforms that, if you are clever with your words, can really work in your favor. When it comes to marketing CBD oil and other products, it’s a great chance to get personal with your audience and connect them to other facets of your brand, like your website. Third party help is available here.
- Facebook: Instagram and Facebook are one and the same. With Facebook, you can start up a business page for your CBD oil, where people can leave positive – and negative – reviews about your products. Facebook also has ads that you can purchase, just like Instagram, which can be a good way to get your product out there.
- Pinterest: there are all different kinds of demographics out there, and these change depending on what social media platform you’re on. If you’re on Pinterest, you’re much more likely to connect to moms than if you’re on Instagram, for example. However, everyone is starting to see the benefits of CBD, including moms and older women who need natural relief for a variety of health issues. Pinterest is a great way to keep your brand visual, too, and share your pins with others. You can get help with marketing your Pinterest here.
All of the social media channels that you see above have one thing in common – they all have third party companies out there that can help with their growth. Third-party companies are social media experts who have a lot of industry knowledge, who can help you get your CBD products out there for the world to see. They have a variety of different ways of doing this, and they all work toward helping you gain better brand exposure and build up your clientele on all kinds of different social media channels. As you can see, social media is a sure-fire way to get the name of your brand out there and build up a business.
2. Lead Magnets
Another proven digital marketing technique that you can use to promote your CBD product is to offer a lead magnet, in exchange for somebody’s email address. A lead magnet is something that offers value to the recipient, and of course, their email address is going to help you develop a relationship with this person that could potentially turn into a paying customer.
So, what exactly is a lead magnet, then? A lead magnet is an incentive that is given in exchange for a piece of contact information, like an email address. A lead magnet could be anything from a video and an eBook to a report or a checklist.
If you’re trying to expand your email list, then using a lead magnet is one of your best bets. As long as the lead magnet you’re offering someone is a valuable resource and may actually help them, then this tactic is definitely going to work in helping you grow your CBD brand online.
The lead magnet also needs to be related to your products, though. They have to convince the customer that your products are worth checking out and even buying, and it has to be convincing enough for them to also maybe share the lead magnet with friends.
To get people to want this lead magnet, you’ll need to promote it through social media advertising, or paid promotions on Google search. The more valuable and informative your lead magnet is to the user, the more likely they are to click on it and receive it in exchange for their email address.
When you market your lead magnet through Google or social media websites, you want to make sure that they are targeting the right audience. The more relevant the audience is, the more likely they are to click on it and then turn into paying customers. Remember to promote your lead magnet on your own website, as well.
A lead magnet is going to help you increase brand awareness, build up your brand’s credibility, and increase the number of emails you have on your list.
3. CBD Blogs
Content marketing is one of the best ways to promote your CBD products. This is a great way to turn interested readers into paying customers because there’s a good chance that they’re reading your blog because they searched for it on Google. This is much better than marketing your product to someone who isn’t even looking for it.
If you’ve got someone reading your blog because they searched a keyword that’s relevant to it, they’re halfway there. For this to happen, you need to make sure that your content marketing strategy is going to match up with relevant Google search results, so that people who are highly likely to want to buy your product can find your blog.
Using SEO to optimize your content marketing is one of the best ways forward, and we’ll talk about this a bit further on. The more you push for relevant blog articles on your site that answer questions that your target demographic is asking through Google, the more likely they are to want actually to purchase your products.
This is also beneficial because, instead of having to pay for ads, you’re optimizing your blog content with SEO, which means you can end up saving money and implementing a much more effective marketing tactic.
One of the reasons why people love using blogs with SEO to connect with their target audience is because there’s no need to pay for traditional advertising. It can also help to increase your brand’s visibility online dramatically, and it can drive more traffic to your website organically, without using paid promotions.
4. Email Marketing
This could be one of the last things you think of when you think about getting your product out there in front of the people who matter, but it can actually be an incredibly effective way of driving more traffic to your website.
If you do it right, email marketing can be incredibly helpful in terms of profitability. In fact, aside from Instagram, mail is still one of the most popular ways for people to connect with one another. This means that when people check their email on their phone, they will receive your email campaign, and there’s a good chance that this will encourage them to visit your website.
It’s one of the easiest ways to connect with your target audience, and one of the reasons why is because there is so little investment that has to go into it.
So, how do you create the kind of email that’s going to make your target audience want to click through to your website? You make it all about CBD and educating your potential customers about the benefits of CBD.
This is also a great way to keep existing customers in the know about the true benefits of CBD. You can update them when you learn more about it, and keep them in the know so that they feel inspired to keep coming back and purchasing your product.
It may be hard to believe, but people actually actively look out for email campaigns that their favorite brands have created. This is because when somebody decides that they like a product or a brand, they naturally like to stay informed and be updated on what’s happening.
A report says that 28% of online shoppers in the U.S. sign up for an email marketing campaign from a store that they love and would buy from again.
So, why use an email marketing campaign, then? To keep in touch with your existing customers and reach out to people who could become your customers. You can also use it to keep your customers updated and informed on your latest product releases. It’s also one of the best ways to reach your targeted audience while covering any device they could be on, from their computer to their smartphone.
5. Affiliate Marketing and Influencers
There are a lot of existing CBD oil companies out there that swear by affiliate marketing and Instagram influencers to get their brands out there. Of course, if you’re marketing your CBD product on Instagram, you need a lot of followers who are naturally interested in your products.
However, what if you don’t have this kind of following yet, but you’re hoping to grow it? You pay an influencer that’s within your niche to market it to their audience. This is a great way to put your product in front of an audience, pay for a one-off marketing fee and have lots of people want to check out your page and, eventually, your website as a result.
If you don’t just want to stick to Instagram to promote your product, you can also look elsewhere and find successful bloggers who could also be interested in promoting your product. We recommend checking out some of the most popular CBD blogs out there and make a list of who you would like to approach with an offer. They should have close ties to your brand and what you feel passionate about so that their audience is more likely actually to want to try your products.
Using influencers and affiliate marketing through blogs can help your brand reach new levels, and connect you to people who are highly qualified in this niche. At the end of the day, people trust influencers, so it’s not going to be a hard sell. This is also a great way to create a long-term funnel for your sales. It’s effective – and it works.
6. SEO
We mentioned SEO with blogs briefly before, but let’s look at it in a little bit more detail. SEO is when your potential audience is searching keywords on Google to find something they need, and those keywords are in your marketing content.
Because they match up, Google is going to put links to your content in front of them, and they, therefore, find your website organically through their own searches. If you want this to be a successful way of marketing, you need to make sure that the keywords you optimize in your content are the same ones that your target demographic is going to be looking up.
SEO is one of the more difficult marketing strategies to implement because most of the time, you need to be featured on page 1 of Google in order to get people’s attention. It’s very rare that people flick through more than just page 1 when they’re searching for something.
What’s great about using SEO, though, is that you don’t have to worry about the strict marketing regulations that come with selling CBD. It’s also great because it’s totally focused on your product, which is going to send them straight to your website. This type of organic marketing can increase your band’s overall credibility.
FAQs
How Relevant Should My SEO Keywords be to CBD?
When it comes to using SEO to promote your brand new CBD business, it’s quality over quantity. This is because the more relevant your SEO keyword phrases are to your CBD products and brand, the more likely that they’ll work for you and get you more traffic.
You’ve got two choices when it comes to SEO keywords: short or long tail. Short keyword phrases are more popular, but this is also their downside. The more popular a keyword is, the harder it will be to stand out from the crowd. If you choose a longer keyword, you may not get as many searches on it, but those you do search it will be that much closer to wanting to actually purchase your product. Best practice is to find a mix of both, so you cover all bases.
Should I Direct Message or Email Influencers?
The million-dollar question – to message or to email? While direct messaging is a great tactic and convenient for those who don’t have access to an email address, it can also get lost in the hundreds of other direct messages that your influencer will be getting.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter which way you choose to go about it – both have their advantages. An email comes across as more professional, and you can follow up on it as well without looking too desperate. Of course, though, you have to get an email address first, which isn’t as readily available as you may think.
Which is Better – Affiliate Marketing or Influencers?
When it comes to getting your CBD business off the ground, choosing which is better all comes down to personal preference, and what goals you have for your business in general. Affiliate marketing is a great way to make some money if you’re more focused on the blog side of things.
Influencer marketing is helpful if you like visuals and intend to put your CBD company on platforms like Instagram as soon as possible. Affiliate marketing takes customers straight to the product, which influencer marketing can also do, so again it’s all about the type of platform you want to use the most.
What’s the Best Format for Email Marketing?
One of the biggest dilemmas new companies have when they embark on an email marketing campaign is how to format their message. There are definitely do’s and don’ts when it comes to emailing potential customers, and it varies from industry to industry.
There are plenty of helpful tools out there online to get you started – if you Google ’email marketing template,’ you’ll see a lot of search results. In short, though, it’s good to stay concise, professional, and make sure that your subject line is eye-catching. Don’t be too pushy, and make sure that you’re solving a problem they may have with your product.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, the CBD industry is a good one to be in right now. It’s currently thriving everywhere, which means that if you want to try and make it, you could end up being wildly successful. It’s not always a walk in the park, though, and you’ll need to put some good, hard hours into your online marketing to make it work.
If you’ve been struggling to figure out how to do this, check out our list of the best ways to market your CBD product online, and know that they’ve tried and true tactics that some of the biggest brands out there currently use. Whether you like the idea of connecting to people through an email or networking with CBD influencers who can get your product in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of people, get to work today and see what a difference these CBD marketing techniques can make.
