For any cannabis brand, advertising has been a critical part of business planning. Like any business, advertising is essential to raising awareness and bringing back your repeat customers. However, the ever-changing landscape of cannabis law has turned advertising into a constant obstacle course of what you can and cannot design, print, publish, how you can advertise, and where you can advertise. Every state has different laws and over time, those laws have evolved.
Fortunately, the medical marijuana market has existed long enough now that the laws are settling down just as technology makes it easier to adhere to the important restrictions like age and location of your customers. It is finally possible to explore programmatic marketing for medical marijuana and the cannabis industry as a whole.
DID Marketing for Medical Marijuana Brands
Right now, the best application for programmatic marketing involves the use of DIDs. Device ID marketing allows you to identify individual customer devices along with a few anonymous yet key data points to improve your marketing results and ensure you are marketing safely only to local adult customers. Let’s dive into what your medical marijuana brand can do with programmatic marketing using device ID data.
Identify In-State and Out-of-State Customers
It is common to have customers visit from out of state. While they are local, they may appreciate programmatic alerts about your daily deals for delivery or in-store sales. Of course, it is illegal to carry cannabis over state lines and once those customers go home, those updates will no longer be useful.
Device ID data will tell your programmatic system which phones are in-state and out-of-state at the time each advertisement is pushed. This makes it easy to conveniently exclude customers who are no longer within the borders of your state so you are only advertising to the customers that make sense to advertise to.
Ping Customers Who Travel Near Your Dispensary
DID location data can also reach out to customers who are nearby running errands or enjoying a night on the town. Programmatic marketing makes it possible to let customers know that a quick detour could be an opportunity for great deals and a pleasant selection.
Use separate data based on location change rate to determine those who are on foot, who may enjoy a quick pre-roll or infused beverage, though may respond from a more limited area. Those moving quickly are more likely to be in vehicles with a longer detour range but potentially more pressing current obligations.
Send Daily Deals to Nearby Customers & Seasonal Deals to Regional Customers
Some customers love getting alerts for daily deals and may swing by several times a week for medical marijuana products in response to text messages. These tend to be customers who live close to your dispensary with free time each day to make the trip. Alternately, customers who drive in from far away, or who are currently at some distance, may benefit only from weekly deals.
DID-powered programmatic marketing makes it possible to know which customer device IDs are close by for daily deal alerts versus those who live further out and may only be able to take advantage of weekly and holiday-related deals.
Don't Send Updates When Customers are Near Schools or Parks
In many states, marijuana marketing is illegal near schools and parks. You can make sure even your programmatic digital ads adhere to this (and exclude students with their parents’ phones for the day) by never sending an advertisement to DIDs in the radius of schools, parks, daycare, and other child-populated areas in your town.
A simple set of exclusion zones can not only adhere to local laws, but it can also protect you from accidentally marketing to phones in the hands of minors, even if those phones officially belong to adult customers.
Programmatic marketing has incredible potential for cannabis businesses because, with precision, you can carefully adhere to every local and federal marketing law while also optimizing your opportunities to reach interested customers. For more cannabis industry insights and solutions, contact us today.
