Far too often, cannabis companies publish online content without a content marketing strategy in place.

And when they don’t get the results they want, they feel frustrated.

“If content is king,” they wonder, “why aren’t we seeing lavish results?”

If you’re a cannabis business (or any kind of business for that matter), you need content. But content alone is not enough.

Having a content marketing strategy in place will significantly improve your chances of getting the results you want.

And even if your strategy isn’t bringing in those results, you’ll at least be in a better position to identify what’s not working and fix it, as opposed to throwing various types of content at the wall and praying something sticks.

Use the following five tips to help you develop a content marketing strategy for your cannabis business!

1. Define Your Goals

This is the most important part of your content marketing strategy: deciding what you want your content to achieve.

More web traffic? More foot traffic at your retail location? More email subscribers? More online sales?

These are all viable content marketing goals. You just need to figure out which goals make the most sense for your business right now.

You should also keep in mind that certain types of content are going to be more effective at helping you reach certain goals than others.

For example, an email marketing campaign may be better for increasing your online purchases than your podcast about the latest cannabis trends, which might be more appropriate if you’re trying to increase your subscriber base.

2. Perform a Content Audit

A content audit involves a thorough examination of all your past content so that you can evaluate how well it’s performing, particularly in relationship to the goals you’ve set.

More specifically, you can examine the level of user engagement your content is getting, or not getting, as well as which pieces of content need to be updated, replaced, or removed all together.

3. Identify Your Target Audience

Your objective in creating content is not to just create something that you think will be interesting. It has to be content that your audience finds interesting and will be actively searching for.

If you’ve already created a buyer persona during the earlier stages of your marketing planning, you’ll have a headstart in this area. If not, it’s time to get cracking!

Get into the head of your potential customers. What are their wants, needs, and pain points?
What types of online search queries are they most likely going to use?

Identify the content experience they’re looking for, and then create a plan to provide them with it.

4. Perform a Competitive Content Gap Analysis

A “content gap analysis” will help you find the disparity between your customers’ search queries, goals, and desires and the content you’re currently offering them.

If your customers aren’t satisfied with your content, they’ll go to your competitors instead. For this reason, you’ll also need to identify how your competitors’ content is meeting customer needs.

Take special note if you see that your competitors are outperforming you on an SEO level!

5. Develop a Content Plan With a Calendar

Now it’s time to decide what type of content you’re going to be publishing. Here are a number of popular forms to choose from:

• Blogs
• Videos
• Social media
• Podcasts
• Ebooks
• Infographics
• Press Releases
• Surveys

Which ones should you employ?

Again, that goes back to your goals as well as the type of content that your target customers engage with the most readily.

Social media is probably a given, and a blog is a simple way to add more content to your site and improve your SEO ranking (please note that when we say “simple,” we don’t mean “easy”).

You’ll also need a content calendar so that you can create a posting schedule. It’s important to publish your content regularly and according to the schedule because that will help you:

• commit to publishing content and avoid publishing lapses
• build expectation and anticipation among your most loyal customers and followers
• provide you with a more balanced set of data to analyze when you do your next audit

Need help developing a content marketing strategy for your cannabis business? Give us a call at 702-600-9687 or email us at hello@hazymarketing.com for a free consultation!