SEM is a powerful marketing technique for marijuana dispensaries looking to attract new customers, improve revenues, and reduce their marketing budget.
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. In the past, the term SEM describes both organic SEO and paid search ads in the search engine results page. But now online marketers exclusively use the term, SEM, to describe paid marketing on search engines.
Google is the major search engine. Therefore, the most common and effective paid search marketing tool is Google Ads.
Search Engine Marketing allows marijuana dispensaries to attract potential customers as they are looking for marijuana dispensaries online. This is the right way to turn your prospects into customers.
Marijuana dispensary SEM is also known by many other names, so it is important to remember these terms also. These terms can be used interchangeably. It’s also called: Dispensary PPC (Pay-per-click), dispensary paid search ads and dispensary paid advertising
Let’s know how SEM benefits your marijuana dispensary.
Improves Your Brand Awareness
Other types of digital marketing like, SEO and social media, can take more time to gain visible results for your business.
On the other hand, SEM can make your dispensary name at the top of search engine result pages. This allows marijuana dispensaries with low organic search rankings to jump above their top competitors, ensuring they get the high visibility to enhance brand awareness.
You can easily convert that paid search visibility into huge number of paying customers if you have the powerful tools, expertise and systems in place.
Gives Quick Results and High ROI
It is quite easy to set up a basic marijuana dispensary ad campaign in Google Ads once you understand Google’s restrictions and limitations. After you have an effective system in place, you will see large traffic to your website and more paying customers in your marijuana dispensary. Your targeted SEM ads will appear in the search engine results as soon as your ads are approved.
Seems quite easy and simple, right? Generally, yes. But setting up ads for the marijuana industry does mean must jump through some hoops if you want Google to approve your ads.
Creating search ads for your marijuana dispensary needs some additional up-front development and expertise to ensure your campaign launch successful. If you do this in the wrong way, your Google Ads account will get suspended.
Once you have taken all the necessary precautions and your marijuana ad campaign is flying under Google’s radar, your ad campaign will require proper maintenance to optimize a winning dispensary SEM strategy.
High Scalability
One of the most important benefits of applying SEM for your marijuana dispensary marketing is its scalability. You can begin with a small marketing budget. Run tests and know what works. You can easily pause ads that aren’t converting. Change your keyword targeting. Test ad campaign. Collect and analyze demographics data about people searching for marijuana dispensaries in your area.
As you collect more and more data, you will be able to further optimize your ad campaign. You can reallocate your google ad budget towards what is working and improve your budget once you have relevant data to prove you will get a high and profitable return on your google ad spend.
Google Ads allows you to spend low cost per day. That way there is no high upfront cost and you only need to spend more money if you see visible results.
Connects You with the Users at the Right Time and Place
These days people are on their mobiles most of the time and the customer journey almost always starts online. Particularly, on search engines. So your potential customers are on search engines. Are you available there? This is the right time and place to attract new customers.
People use search terms like “marijuana dispensary near me” when they are looking for marijuana dispensaries. Being the top result on Google for that particular search term greatly improves your chances of turning your potential customer into your real customer.
Even if that particular user does not click on your ad, they saw it and are aware you exist. Also, this improves the chances they will click on your organic listing or Google maps listing below your ad. It’s a free click.
Builds Strong Brand Recognition
Recent research shows that consumers are generally exposed to a brand name 8 to 10 times before they make any purchase. This is so because people don’t trust new brand names. The more they see your brand or business name, the more they will recognize and trust you.
This is very important in the marijuana industry where customers are consuming the quality products they purchase from you. If users continuously see your brand name at the top of search en for dispensary related keywords, they start to trust you and identify you as a credible dispensary.
Enables You to Target Your Market
Search engine marketing allows you to reach your target market in a way traditional marketing never could. Instead of pushing your ad out to your general audience, SEM enables you to show your ad to an audience that is looking for top quality products or services that you offer.
This kind of marketing is called inbound marketing. Inbound marketing connects with users at a meaningful level because your online content is particular to your target audience.
Offers You a Competitive Advantage
Most marijuana dispensaries are not fully aware they can run relevant search ads on Google. And the dispensaries that are aware aren’t telling their competition. The owners of marijuana dispensary and advertisers always discuss about how Google has strict policies against marijuana industry and completely rule it out as a marketing strategy. Google does have strict policies against marijuana, but there are ways to promote your dispensary within their restrictions.
Search engine marketing works as a bidding system. Of course, the highest bidder with the most relevant content gets the top position on Google. There is very little competition for marijuana dispensaries at the moment because not many marketers understand how to run paid ads.
SEM for marijuana dispensaries is an effective tool. There are over a hundred thousand dispensary-related searches per day that are up for grabs with no competition. Now is the right time to add SEM to your marijuana marketing strategy and improve your business growth.
Does a competitor marijuana dispensary rank above you in the search engine result pages and local listings? You can rank above both types of search results with paid ads.
Cost-effective
You do not need to spend huge front cost with paid search ads. You only need to pay when people click on your ad. You can plan your marketing budget and control your daily ad spend. It is quite easy to increase or reduce your campaign budget. If your campaign is not working, you can stop. If you only want to run ads on weekdays, you can easily pause the campaign on weekends. You have complete control on your campaigns.
The main money-saver with SEM is the analytics. You will have access to all the required data that tells you what is working and what isn’t. Your analytics will provide you insights into how users respond to your ads and directly attribute specific website conversions to an ad.
This will enable you to learn more about your potential customers and make practical marketing decisions for your growing marijuana dispensary. You are only here because you want to attract more traffic, right? Then you need to implement everything that Google and your customers love most.
Whatever marketing agency you choose to hire, you will be guided on local optimization, keyword research, content, link building, and responsive website.
Local SEO
Is marijuana is legal in your particular area? Do you own brick-and-mortar marijuana store locations? If yes, congrats! You have really met the major criteria for creating a Google My Business account.
Engaging Content
Considered to be one of the effective online marketing strategies, content marketing will help the marijuana dispensaries to provide relevant information regarding the availability of quality products at their dispensary. It will help the customers understand the existence of the reliable dispensary through the information being provided through content marketing.
After proper keyword research, you can start creating content to cover them. One main thing to remember before you begin– you should never downplay the significance of quality copy. When it reaches target market, helps customers, and is relevant, content propels SEO for marijuana dispensaries forward.
Link building
Dispensary websites come and go, and so do the links placed on them. It is difficult to build many of them to a marijuana dispensary as there is always the ban risk. The right solution? Your link-building strategy should revolve around the diversity of quality websites.
The right way to turn your marijuana dispensary into a magnet is also about informative content. When it is worth sharing, other businesses and informational resources will put references to it, making your backlink profile stronger. Try to post useful dispensary SEO content that your target market wants to read.
Mobile-friendly website
If you want your dispensary business to grow, you need to make an effective way. And mobile optimization is one of the main steps to begin with. Do not expect high traffic any sooner until your website runs like a well-maintained machine on all the devices.
Team up with the best marijuana marketing agency. You need professionals for dispensary marketing by your side because they know how to navigate through niche-related searches. It is a tricky thing to handle on your own as Google imposes limits on marijuana website rankings and doesn’t reveal huge keyword data. Those who are experts at marijuana marketing, however, can easily hand-pick traffic-generating target queries for your dispensary.
Video Creation
From explainers to product presentations, all these can liven up your website and improve conversions. With videos, you can showcase your best-sellers, new arrivals, or even your team to be closer to your target audience. This type of content works best when fueled by marijuana dispensary SEO.
To promote their business effectively, dispensaries must create a realistic marketing plan with a professional Marijuana Marketing Agency.
Final Thoughts
If you want to drive more customers to your marijuana dispensary, people need to be able to find you on search engine result pages. After they find you, you need to delight them with a smooth website experience and convince them to visit your store. Get creative with your dispensary marketing with us! At Power Funnels, we help you reach your target audience and increase sales through performance-based dispensary marketing techniques. Contact us today to know more about our powerful marketing techniques.
