10 Things Cannabis Dispensaries MUST Do In 2022 To Scale Efficiently
This is CRAZY! Today marks 5 years of consulting dispensaries around the United States. I’ve seen familiar trends working with dispensaries and some simple implementations that must happen to scale aggressively in today’s cannabis market.
First off there are 3 main things dispensaries should pay very close attention to if wanting to scale. Each of these things requires an equal amount of attention and expertise to drive sales dramatically.
They are:
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Increasing Average Order Value
- Customer Retention / Frequency
If you are a cannabis dispensary owner and know these metrics off the top of your head you are off to a good start.
Now let’s dissect these vital metrics and get into the “Top 10 Things Cannabis Dispensaries Must Do To Scale Efficiently” in no particular order… (If you like this so far, schedule a call with me for a discovery call at the end of this article)
1. Having A Clear Call To Action
This is very important because it hits the nail on the head as to “Why” a customer should visit you and be a loyal customer. What incentives are you giving to get them to whip into their car and drive over to your dispensary “today” and not tomorrow?
2. Good Form Fills To Collect Data (measure conversion rate)
You must be collecting as much data as possible because this is what makes you valuable and the gold of your business. You should be collecting Name, Number, Email, and Birthday to give personal messages too.
3. Knowing Where Your Customers Come From
You need separate form fills / URLs to understand if your new customers come from:
- Walking Ins
- Referral
- Website
- Social Media
- Events
4. Generating Leads Daily
Every business owner should ask how we are generating leads daily and is it scalable? What is the cost of a lead and is that good or bad? Utilizing advertising giants like Google, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok is a goldmine of customers that you can be in front of daily for a cheap cost. The average cost to see 1000 eyeballs on Facebook is 20 dollars and is infinitely scalable when you crack it.
How many people do you think you can convert if 1000 targeted eyeballs saw you?
There is a false belief that dispensaries can’t advertise on these platforms. That is wildly incorrect. You just have to understand what you can and can’t do under their advertising policy.
5. Audience Segmentation
You absolutely must segment your data and understand it to market correctly and make sure you’re using the right messaging to your customers. If a customer only buys edibles you don’t want to send them text / emails talking about flower and wax.
You must know who your top 10 percent spenders are and treat them like royalty just as much as knowing who hasn’t been into your store in the last 90 days and sending them a message saying “Hey, (name) I haven’t seen you in a while and would like to see you back into our store – here is a special 10% discount just for you to earn back your business.”
Hint: This falls into the customer frequency category for the 3 metrics to scale.
We are almost there, bear with me, these next things are critical!!!
6. Understanding Lifetime Value Of A Customer
This is probably the most important metric to understand because it allows you to budget accordingly for scaling and marketing.
Fun fact: Did you know Starbucks calculates that their LTV for a single customer is $19,234 over a 20 year span. That is how they have a Starbucks on every corner because they know their customers will be with them for 20 years.
Now for the cannabis industry, how long is a customer going to be loyal to you? 3, 5, 10, or 20 years? This has to be understood ASAP.
Hint: The average LTV for a cannabis consumer for one year is $1000 in the United States and comes in 12.6 times a year on average. In Canada with 3 years of data, their LTV is $3,200.
7. Relentless Follow-up
You must be sending SMS, Emails, Push Notifications at least 3-5 times a week. Blasting your whole customer list is ok but if you want to increase your order frequency and LTV you have to send messages that make sense to specific audiences if you want to survive long term in this industry.
Note: if you’re getting leads you have to follow up with them immediately. Budtenders should give new customers a call and see what they are looking for and when they can come in.
Be sure to track follow-up accordingly.
8. Branding Customers
Farmers brand their cattle, and Nike and Adidas brand their athletes. When a new customer comes in you must make them feel welcomed and a part of your community. Building a community is key because they are the ones that are going to rave about you on their social media and their friends and family.
Make your customer feel special and experience a higher LTV.
Tip: To increase AOV give nice stuff away if they spend a certain amount – get creative but if your AOV is 80 dollars put a special gift out for the people that spend 120-200 dollars.
I have a customer we increased the AOV 8 dollars overnight and dramatically increased revenue.
9. Relying Too Much on WeedMaps
Weedmaps is a trap and you can’t scale aggressively on it. Now I’m not saying Weedmaps is bad for business but all your competition is usually there and Weedmaps collect all your data. These shoppers are usually just looking for the best deal and not loyal fans of yours.
If you do use Weedmaps you must be number one or two because these are high-value shoppers and you will get the most traffic in those spots – the problem is you get into a bidding war with your competition.
Fun Fact: Weedmaps only has 12-13M views on their website a month. Google / Facebook & Instagram has 100s of million a day just in the United States.
If you’re a public company wanting to increase your stock or a small family business looking to one day sell you dramatically increase your value when you own your data and can split it up into audiences easily.
10. Knowing Important Metrics / Clear Dashboards
Ask yourself if you know / understand these metrics well:
- Cost Per Lead
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Life Time Value Of A Customer
- Average Order Value
- Order Frequency
- Customer Fall Off Rate (Important to know to market harder – you want to have a healthy fall off rate if you have a big audience size)
- Likelihood of the number of days a customer is going to come back
Bonus Tips:
- Have heat maps on your website to optimize correctly
- Write a blog post weekly to keep your audience engaged / informed. This will also help your SEO.
- Clear phone number, email, address at top of your website (don’t make customers dig around for it)
When You Do All This Well:
Wahooo that's a lot of gold. I hope that helps you in one way or another. ONE last thing that I think is cool… hint it's an easy calculator to forecast revenue. Keep reading, we are almost there.
Owning a business takes a lot of small things done well to create massive change. My mentor told me to be successful it takes imperfect action and to not focus on being perfect (Hense some grammar errors). In about 30 days, you can implement these things in your dispensary and start building your financial snowball for your dispensaries. My company Dispensary Traffic has a team of experts that can help you every step of the way.
Make sure you adventure down the path of least resistance and schedule a discovery call to help your dispensary grow. My calendar link is right here. Don’t be shy and I’ll be happy to help you with some more tips on how to scale.
I’ll show you our revenue calculator prepared by my investment banker friends so you can forecast growth and yearly revenue. It’s cool and you’ll see how to plan to scale accordingly.
Also, we will dive into your dispensary targeting on major platforms to see the audience size you can go after in your market.
Thanks for making it this far and look forward to talking soon. Please share this with a friend if you found any value.
About Cameron Tennant:
Owner of Dispensary Traffic, Cameron has been an internet marketer for over 8 years. He first started with e-commerce on Shopify dropshipping products from China all around the world.
He learned the sociology of customer experience, follow-up, and customer service to drive sales today and not tomorrow.
Then he moved to lead generation because margins started to get tight with long shipping times.
With lead generation, he excelled and became a top internet marketer for high-growth affiliate networks. He won affiliate marketer of the month in 2021 by spending 25k a day on Facebook and other traffic sources scaling clinical trial ads.
Cameron’s main focus now is helping Dispensaries scale with unique strategies and putting systems in place to spend money on marketing at ease. He says, “nowadays spending money on advertising is fun because you know exactly what you’re going to get back with the right tracking and monitoring in place.”
