How To (Successfully) Market and Sell CBD Oil Online [NEW]
Congratulations on launching your new site! You’ve crossed one of the major hurdles. But launching your site is only step one; step two is marketing your new site. In order to successfully sell CBD oil online, you will need to be diligent about reaching out to your target audience and make sure they know about your exciting new CBD business.
CBD Marketing Strategy
When building a marketing strategy for CBD, there are a lot of limitations you need to consider. CBD is legalized, but still not officially approved by the FDA, meaning you have to be cautious with how you advertise your product. You are limited on the claims you can make for health benefits. For CBD companies, advertising can also be complicated. The cannabinoid still isn’t entirely federally legal, so it’s difficult to get a CBD ad approved on a platform like Google or Facebook. Facebook is currently relaxing its’ stance on legitimate medical and recreational cannabis brands, allowing them to market their businesses, products and services, however this is still excludes using Facebook sponsored ads, paid advertisements, and using the Facebook marketplace.
So What Are Your CBD Marketing Options?
The good news is, there are lots of opportunities to make money selling CBD oil. According to Statista The total U.S. consumer sales of CBD from 2014 to 2016 increased from $108.1 million to $262.2 billion (USD), and is estimated to reach around 1.8 billion U.S. dollars by 2022.
Use Social Media Influencers To Sell CBD Online
Since you are limited with traditional advertising like Google and Facebook ads, many CBD online sellers have decided to try alternative advertising methods on social media. A great way to advertise your product with a greater reach is partnering with influencers on Instagram. Instagram is currently the top social platform for engagement and with the use of hashtags it creates an ideal place to market a product for a niche community. Finding celebrities or even “mini-influencers” with cult followings with high levels of interaction and engagement on their Instagram posts. It’s a great way to be discovered by new audience, as well as market to your ideal customer.
Before you begin your social media strategy brainstorm through your reasoning for using Instagram influencers. It’s important to establish a “Why” and a “How”, and to determine what your goals are. As with any marketing strategy, having guidelines and a goal/vision are crucial for successfully marketing your CBD website.
Use Email Marketing To Sell CBD Online
Another incredibly useful tool for successfully marketing your CBD website is to connect with your current customer base using email marketing.
Many marketers will claim that “email marketing is dead,” but that’s simply not true. However, it is changing. Email marketing has evolved into a new organism of communication and data collecting. 59% of B2B marketers report that email marketing is their most effective channel for generating revenue. It just requires knowing your audience. Consumers have actually related that they do not mind being contacted by email as long as the email is specific and relevant to their needs.
Making use of segmented emails will dramatically increase the conversion rate that results from email marketing. Email segmentation happens when you use data analytics to divide your subscriber list into smaller segments based on specific criteria such as location, interests, or web behaviors. Using segmentation you can personalize your emails to be sent to the specific customers who will be most interested in the content. Because CBD faces so many marketing challenges, if you have a list of people who have agreed to be contacted by you, chances are they will be interested in any CBD related content you want to distribute.
Email marketing can be a useful tool for your CBD business, because CBD has not become a widely accepted product, and can sometimes even gain negative feedback on a social media marketing campaign. Should your posts be deleted, or even your entire account, having an email marketing list will be helpful for still being able to distribute your content and information to your customer base.
Use Amazon To Market And Sell CBD Oil Online
Surprisingly enough, Amazon does allow hemp products on their platform, and you certainly expand your reach when you merchandise through a wide-spread provider like Amazon. While CBD products are still prohibited, hemp oils and hemp edibles are still widely available on this platform. If you have a hemp product to market, Amazon could be a great platform with built in customer base that is primed to buy. The only thing to consider when determining whether Amazon is right for you, is looking at your increased overhead costs. Amazon does have individual seller fees, per-item fees, variable closing fees, and monthly fees. It’s important to know your profit margin and be familiar with the percentage Amazon will be taking from that margin before you commit to selling through their seller platform.
Use SEO To Sell CBD Online
SEO will become your best friend for CBD marketing. 75% of people don’t scroll past the first page of Google search results so it’s incredibly important that the content on your CBD website is ranking high on Google’s search engine. SEO is all about content keywords relevant to CBD oil, and even linking out to other CBD websites. It’s also very useful if you can find CBD websites that will provide links to your site as well.
SEO is going to be your avenue to stand out from the crowd. There’s a lot of competition, so in order for your site to be successful, you will either need to develop your SEO skills, or find a company to help you create high-ranking relevant content.
Here’s where we can step in and do the heavy lifting for you. epicShops has been working in the SEO industry for over a decade. We manage SEO accounts in a variety of industries from retail to machinery to medical. At epicShops we do SEO that will make you money. Our primary goal is not just to get you seen and discovered in search engines, but also to increase your website traffic and boost your conversion rates. Contact us today to hear how we can help you get ranked in Google and start to grow your business.
