Every day, not all products manage to catch the consumer market’s attention across the globe within such a short period. With the legalization of marijuana and the increasing popularity of CBD, it’s no surprise why many new hemp and CBD startups are popping everywhere.
Several direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands just started in the growing market by offering their Hemp oil and CBD products. By 2022, the legal CBD market is predicted to be a $22 billion business in the U.S. alone. Demand for successful hemp marketing is on the rise, and there’s no wonder why.
It’s already a challenge trying to distinguish your CBD business from your competitors. If you’re joining in on the green rush and are thinking about how to legally and successfully promote your CBD products, you will need to use an effective technique to market them.
How Did CBD Suddenly Became Widely Recognized
CBD is advertised as a magical elixir currently available in pharmaceuticals, dog treats, and even bath bombs. With its patrons claiming that CBD helps support many problems in the body such as pain, acne, inflammation, insomnia, anxiety, and depression, it has caught the attention and made a good impression on a lot of people.
How Huge is the CBD Industry?
The already huge market of CBD is still developing quickly – thanks to the growing acceptance of consumers.
Conservative data says by 2022, sales for CBD will collect more than $1.8 billion annually, which is an outstanding jump from sales of roughly $500 million in 2018. For how many years, experts have predicted that CBD’s consumer market will soon surpass the whole legal cannabis market.
However, a closer look at trends shows that the Cannabidiol industry in the U.S. is actually following in the legal marijuana industry’s steps, which is approximately to be worth more than $23 billion in the following half-decade or so.
The Difficulties of Marketing CBD Brands
In spite of its success in the industry, Cannabidiol businesses and the entire market are experiencing numerous difficulties, most of which have to do with consumer confusion, legality, and legislation. Here are some of the challenges in CBD marketing.
• Confusing and Contradictory Laws
It’s not a big mystery that laws referring to Cannabidiol products’ sales at the local, state, federal, and global levels are confusing, complicated, and of a conflicting nature in most situations. It has influenced lenders, banks, and other possible partners to recognize CBD brands as high-risk businesses.
Of course, this can make it quite challenging for CBD brands to work with consulting firms, investors, and a cannabis marketing agency.
Creating a customer avatar helps you further understand the market you’re trying to target. The Golden Rule: when you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one.
• Targeting the Right Audience
The legality of CBD products differs from one state to another. Consumers of cannabidiol can come from various age groups, ethnicities, and backgrounds. As such, establishing the appropriate targeting technique can be hard if you don’t have answers to the right queries from the beginning.
Who must be your regular customer? Which age group you must target? What encourages every type of buyer when purchasing CBD oil? What symptoms or health problems your target consumers are trying to alleviate?
These are just some of the important questions that you should consider before developing your brand and developing your marketing strategy for your CBD brand. For instance, if you decide to promote the vaping arthritis sufferers and vaping community, how will you connect both lines?
You must also never forget to consider your competition when choosing the right targeting method. Keep in mind that some of your competitors might not be cannabidiol-oriented. Some of them could offer natural remedies or effective prescription meds.
• Brand Differentiation
CBD products have become a kind of cure-all, making it more challenging for any brand to get into the market to know precisely where you should position it.
Should you work within the food or pet industry? Should you focus on alleviating pain issues? Looking for an appropriate fit for your cannabis brand is significant to position it properly.
Most CBD brands fail to identify brand fit and don’t have a special angle or brand mission that stands out. They sell approximately the exact products and do little to engage new consumers.
Brand fit is a crucial element that can make or break your marketing strategy of your CBD brand. The market needs to be the same since the health benefits of cannabidiol are overwhelmingly diverse.
It’s necessary to situate your brand in a way that correlates well with your target buyers. Create your brand and products to complement your personalities, solve their problems, and fulfill their preferences.
• The Industry is Getting Crowded
The CBD market is highly deregulated. The challenges to enter are so few that literally, anyone who wants to jump on the CBD bandwagon can join easily.
The unprecedented growth of CBD products and its sudden popularity means that the market might eventually face the exact firm issues that once dominated the craft beer industry.
As the industry becomes overloaded, only the most tactical CBD brands will endure the cut-throat competition. That’s where a lot of factors come into the center of attention.
Factors such as product placement, a well-defined Cannabis marketing method, and proper branding are some of the considerations that should be in a position to make sure your CBD brand will grow in this highly competitive market.
• Lack of Knowledge
Regardless of the recent growth in popularity, CBD has been pierced with confusion right at the beginning. Progressively, an increasing number of people know what cannabidiol is.
Most consumers don’t know that cannabidiol is an entirely effective, safe, and legal option for other medications. There’s still a stigma linked with cannabis oil because of its connection to hemp and marijuana, which you can utilize for recreational purposes. That’s why a doubt towards welcoming CBD products continues.
Effective Strategies to Advertise Your CBD Brand Online
Advertising CBD products on Facebook and almost all huge online advertising platforms limit brands from marketing CBD products. However, brands can promote CBD products online. Here’s how.
• Display Advertising
Just because Google prohibits dispensary advertising or promoting cannabis, doesn’t mean that you can’t execute display advertising. Outside of the Google Display Network, there are various platforms accessible to advertisers wanting to access display inventory on sites that will enable CBD-related advertisements to run on their websites.
• Podcast Ads
Podcast advertisements are not generally used as part of a digital technique. Still, they are being utilized by cannabis businesses to increase brand awareness, considering other ad limitations now in place.
For CBD promotions, brands can expect to pay around $18 to $50 for every thousand impressions for podcast ads. These podcast advertisements are billed and measured by downloads: how many times people download an episode that contains an ad.
Podcast ads are a special method for finding an exceedingly engaged audience. CBD brands must consider it if they are not yet ready to invest in brand awareness through popular digital marketing platforms.
• Affiliate Marketing
Since affiliate charges are based on accomplishment, which is the percentage commission from your products’ sales, partnering with affiliates is a low-risk strategy of producing qualified traffic.
There are several CBD brands listed on huge affiliate networks. Affiliate marketing is a strategy available to any CBD company wanting to obtain support in generating online sales for a fixed commission.
• Native Ads
Native advertising is categorized as a sort of digital advertisement positioned on a publication where the ad doesn’t sabotage the user experience. Here, advertisements are inserted in the content or, in some situations, are the content.
This tactic usually involves placing sponsored content on other sites, charged on a CPM or a CPC basis. A lot of native channels have limitations on the kind of content that’s able to be marketed.
• Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing enables cannabidiol brands to go around advertising limitations in place on well-known platforms such as Instagram or Facebook by clicking into the organic following the right influencers on every platform.
Working with influencers in advertising CBD products on Facebook or other platforms allows CBD companies to obtain a wider audience through organic social posts by clicking into people who already have a wide community of followers.
It’s vital to pick the right influencers to guarantee a powerful brand fit. And it would be best if you remembered that sometimes influencers who have smaller audiences could be a better choice for CBD brands than influencers with higher reach but less engagement in the CBD niche.
Conclusion
Although popular social networking platforms don’t allow CBD online advertising, there are still ways to bypass these restrictions. A combination of content marketing and social media offers the right opportunity for cannabis marketers to inform their consumers and establish brand awareness without using desperate selling strategies that could ban your account.
If you wish to join the “green rush” to become successful in this industry, make sure to do enough research before launching a CBD marketing campaign to better understand the cannabidiol industry’s restrictions, federally, in every state, and online.
Before launching your brand, ensure all claims are substantiated, credible, and are complemented by reliable scientific support. Book a FREE call now if you want to advertise your CBD brand with us and start your journey towards your CBD success.
