How to Leverage Social Media to Sell your CBD
How to Leverage Social Media to Sell your CBD
Whether you are selling wellness products, big screen TVs or pet supplies, social media can be an important channel for promoting your company.
Many social media platforms continue to ban cannabis companies, and even CBD brands working with hemp, from running paid advertising. Although CBD companies are unable to take advantage of paid advertising, they are still able to use social networks to promote their brands.
Don’t get caught up in your number of followers. You are seeking to build a loyal community of current and potential customers looking to connect with a brand they love. Here are a few tips for promoting your CBD brand on social media.
Diversify Your Efforts
While you may find that your brand does better on one platform than another, it is ideal not to put your eggs all in one basket. While nearly 70 percent of American adults use Facebook daily, almost 40 percent of adults also log in to Instagram at least once per day. Popular with younger audiences, this social platform has been successful for a number of big-name CBD companies like Lord Jones, with over 750,000 followers.
Being active on all the major social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat ensures you are exposed to the most potential views. You may also find success with less obvious platforms like Pinterest and YouTube.
Stay On-Brand
Internet trends come and go. While it is important to be aware of these trends, you may not find that you need to insert yourself into every hashtag that comes along. Be sure to understand who your brand is and what marketing efforts support this identity. Instead of getting lost shouting in the void of the next trending hashtag on social media channels, engage in a conversation with your followers that furthers your brand story and increases its value.
Give Your Audience Something of Value
Social media is much more than just a sales tool. If you want your social media posts to promote interaction from your followers and ultimately drive customers to your sales funnel, then you will need to give them something of value. There are a number of ways to do this.
You can post announcements such as sales you are running, the availability of new CBD products in your brand, etc. Followers may also be looking for you to answer their questions about CBD, like what CBD’s benefits are, how to use CBD products, and how CBD will make them feel. Try using your social media posts to educate your followers on your products, the benefits of CBD, any recent changes in CBD policy, and more.
Go Multimedia
When you post to your social media, do you just post pictures of your CBD products or links to articles on your blog? If you haven’t started integrating different types of media to your posts, you are missing an important opportunity to connect with your followers.
Short videos can be added to a number of platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, offering a chance to educate your customers about CBD and what makes your products unique. You can also use these videos for quick product reveals or helpful how-to clips.
Infographics are another way to add value to your social media posts. Because they are capable of offering lots of information at once in a clean, easy to understand format, infographics are an essential tool for promoting CBD to a beginner audience.
What About Influencers?
Tapping into social media influencers can help your CBD brand move beyond your loyal followers to reach thousands and perhaps even millions of new customers.
These tastemakers leverage the trust they built among their community of followers to introduce your brand to new customers in an organic way. For consumers who are on the fence about using CBD products themselves, seeing an influencer that they trust and possibly even emulate using your brand is a strong referral to try your brand as well.
When selecting influencers to work with, it is important to consider the type of audience you want to reach. Influencers with a large following may get your brand out to the most potential customers, however, choosing an influencer with a smaller, niche audience can ultimately increase the ROI for your posts as their followers tend to be more engaged. Many influencers also use promotional codes in their posts, making it easy to track sales and see how effective an influencer campaign has been.
Be Sure to Remain Compliant
When posting online, you are representing your company to the public. For this reason, it is incredibly important to remain compliant in all your posts. The primary concern here is making medical claims surrounding your products or CBD in general.
Remember, the FDA has not approved any retail CBD products for the treatment of medical conditions. Avoiding claims that your products, or active ingredients like CBD, are able to aid in health issues in your posts will ensure you stay off the FDA’s radar.
