Marketing CBD – Go Beyond The Brand
Many pundits have compared the boom of CBD companies over the past two years to a gold rush or a land grab.
They’re not wrong.
The industry is projected to top $22 Billion in sales per year in the coming years. There will be many companies poised to take advantage of that projected growth, but, sadly, most will not.
CURRENT MARKET LEADERS
If business history holds, the current market leaders will not be the long term winners in what is projected to be a HUGE market.
THE PRICE OF ADMISSION
In the boom to come, a great product will be the price of admission. The companies with poor quality CBD will fail to gain traction. Whether this happens from regulation or the public becoming smarter (think of how people now read food labels) remains to be seen but, history shows us that the companies who are looking to make a quick buck and get our will do precisely that.
As the industry grows and technical knowledge is shared, the overall quality CBD should rise. Think of craft beer. In the late 90s, a small group of home brewers grew out of their basements into microbreweries. Today, there are over 6,300 breweries in the United States. The technical knowledge of brewing beer drove this expansion. Employees of the first microbreweries went on to found the next wave of breweries. Consumers became savvier. Breweries that were not skilled went out of business. The quality of microbrew beer improved. Now we are fortunate enough to be able to enjoy a genuinely first-class IPA from one of the thousands of breweries.
Ultimately, today’s brewers have found out what most CBD companies are coming to realize. Great beer is simply the price of admission. To grow their brand, they must rely on a well designed and executed go to market strategy.
The answer is:
BEYOND THE BRAND
In the first few years of this market expansion, marketing CBD was a challenging endeavor. Efforts focused on affiliate programs, influencer campaigns, and organic social media. All of these have structural problems that make it difficult to scale.
According to one company I spoke with last week, they believed that their company’s sales growth was driven by 60% – 70% word of mouth.
While word of mouth growth is terrific, it is hard to scale up a company by merely relying on word of mouth even in a booming industry.
THE ANSWER
As with any growing business, marketing efforts need to focus on two words.
- Repeatable
- Scalable
Repeatable- The magic of that one social media post. When that one influencer posted and you got a sales bump. When an affiliate flooded your site with traffic for those two days.
None of those are repeatable.
With the emergence of ad platforms such as Google PPC and Facebook ads, smart CBD companies can now focus on building a repeatable marketing strategy based on a firm understanding of their audience.
Scalable- If you spend one dollar you make 2. If you spend $1,000,0000, you make $2,000,000. This accelerator is the concept of scalability of your marketing system. If your plans do not include an element of scalability, you’re not thinking big enough.
WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO
We build replicable and scalable systems for high growth, professionally managed CBD companies. We are not CBD experts, but we are CBD marketing experts.
We love what we do. We are passionate about helping entrepreneurs deliver on their vision.
Think your company is a good fit or want to chat about the state of the CBD industry?