In recent years, CBD oil has grown in popularity, becoming a multi-million industry with an estimated CBD market of $2.5 million by 2022. Being among the most-profitable products, experts project its revenues at $1.6 billion in the U.S annually. However, as more people leverage the benefits of CBD, legislators and the medical community are also taking notice.
Despite the surge in popularity, major advertising channels, including Google, Amazon, and social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, restrict online brands from promoting CBD products. This makes it challenging for CBD users to find the best brands online. Similarly, CBD companies should find alternative ways of building their brands online and generate awareness. That said, below are creative strategies to market your CBD brand online.
1. Display Advertising
The fact that Google restricts the use of CBD ads shouldn’t mean that it is impossible to market your brand through display advertising. You can leverage a wide array of platforms that enable CBD brands to access display inventories and run CBD-related ads apart from Google Display Network. One of the major platforms that capitalize on the CBD ads restrictions placed by Google is FieldTest.
The website has engagement deals with premium-grade publishers across the internet, which are available to CBD marketers from their platform. Placing your ads on such platforms is a great way of increasing brand awareness and attracting more traffic from premium inventories outside the Google Display Network.
2. Native Advertising
Native adverts are publicized digital adverts that don’t disrupt the user experience. In this situation, the ads can be embedded in digital content or are the content themselves. In most cases, native adverts revolve around marketing through third-party websites, which are billed on a CPM or CPC basis.
However, as mentioned, most native websites have restrictions on the content that can be promoted from their platforms. Fortunately, you can leverage some strategies to navigate through the restrictions. For instance, you can share sponsored content to publications such as Forbes, with millions of active users. This significantly increases brand awareness and audience.
3. Using Lead Magnets
Another incredible digital marketing strategy to advertise your CBD oil brand is using lead magnets. Lead magnets provide value propositions to the user, slowly turning them from a visitor to a potential customer. Just to mention, lead magnets are incentives that digital marketers offer website visitors or potential buyers in exchange for their contact information, majorly email addresses.
Incentives used with lead magnets could be digital access or downloadable content, such as an E-book, whitepapers, videos, or PDF documents. Lead magnets provide an easy way to grow your email list, which is a game-changer when marketing your CBD business. The core idea of lead magnets is to provide valuable resources to potential customers at no cost.
This strategy aims at providing insightful information about your brand to customers that convince them to purchase CBD oil from your brand. They can as well share with other people, who make up future customers of your products. That said, you should promote lead magnets to a relevant audience through Google search and paid or organic social media marketing methods.
4. Content Marketing on CBD Focused Blogs
Even with the imposed restrictions on marketing CBD products online, you can still advertise your CBD brand without relying on paid ads campaigns. Over time, content marketing has grown in popularity, as it targets cold prospects and directs them into your conversion funnel. This digital marketing strategy is effective as more people are actively searching for various CBD products, different types, health benefits, and where they can buy CBD oils.
Prospective customers will likely use the same keyword phrases and other semantically search queries when looking for such information. Therefore, to market your CBD brand successfully, you should implement an effective CBD marketing strategy that provides relevant content to drive content into your website.
You can use several content marketing approaches to market your CBD blog. The best way is creating SEO optimized content, which has proven effectiveness in marketing CBD oils. You should also publish relevant articles that directly answer questions your potential customers have.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing and the use of lead magnets go hand in hand. Unfortunately, most people often discount the use of email marketing as a valuable digital marketing strategy for your CBD brand. Surprisingly, email marketing could be the easiest way to reach your target market, especially through mobile, with minimal investment. A 2019 report indicated that those using email from their phones increased from 232.8 million to 251.8 million over three years.
That said, email marketing can be a lucrative method of marketing your CBD brand and increasing sales if done strategically. To achieve this, create a CBD focused newsletter with relevant content, new product announcements, and CBD product reviews that will drive your target customers into your website or ecommerce store. Email marketing also provides an opportunity to keep your prospects and customers updated on new CBD products.
6. Podcast Ads
Advertising through Podcasts is not a widely used digital marketing strategy. However, with existing advertising restrictions, CBD brands should leverage this avenue to boost awareness. You should consider partnering with Podcast platforms with active listeners. With 76 percent of Podcast listeners attesting that they act on Podcast ads and sponsorship messages, you should find one with a good number of listeners to market your brand.
With moderate popularity, the cost of advertising through Podcasts is still unstructured. However, expect to pay between $18 and 50 for every one thousand impressions. Podcast ads are often billed based on the number of downloads. This is undoubtedly a unique way of finding an actively engaged audience.
Use Alternative Strategies to Market your Online CBD Brand
Without a doubt, the use of CBD is increasingly gaining traction globally. As such, nearly all CBD entrepreneurs are on the lookout for marketing strategies to increase brand awareness and sales for their products. Unfortunately, the restrictions placed on common marketing strategies make it challenging to reach all the target customers. If you are in the same fold, take advantage of the alternatives mentioned above to reach more audiences.
