Acquire New Clients or Fly Blind with Weedmaps 

If you are a dispensary owner, cannabis business owner, or just a cannabis consumer, it’s likely that you’ve heard of Weedmaps. Weedmaps is one of the largest online marijuana communities that allow users to review, rate and discuss cannabis products and the businesses that sell them.

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Taking a look at their traffic, Weedmaps gets roughly 6 million visits a month of highly targeted cannabis users looking to make a purchase, with most of their traffic coming from their app and online when consumers search for “dispensaries near me”. Geolocalized results link up consumers with local businesses, so products end up in consumer hands faster. 

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Weedmaps differentiates itself from competitive platforms because it uniquely showcases dispensaries. Your business gets targeted exposure when it doesn’t have to stand out from a crowd of products, strains, and other retailers. For customer acquisition, it’s a powerful tool. 

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So you might be using Weedmaps for customer acquisition, but you’re flying blind when it comes to retaining those relationships. You might be paying $10,000 each month for those acquisitions. But once a customer reorders, they order from Weedmaps, not your dispensary. You have no data or understanding of the customers you paid Weedmaps to acquire. 

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So how do we make this better?

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The key is to maximize your acquisition dollars to bring in the most new customers, and then use targeted retention strategies to keep them. 

1. Strategically move WeedMaps pins around in areas of opportunity (where you don’t see as many orders) to acquire new customers
2. Once you’ve picked up customers in those key areas, retain them with marketing that speaks to them. What product types and brands are they loyal to? What promotions are you running? When’s the last time you reached out to say thanks?
3. While keeping the customers you’ve gained, move your WeedMaps pins to new areas to continue the growth of your customer base while keeping the existing customers happy

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What makes a customer retention strategy effective? Engage new customers you haven’t messaged yet. First time customers brought in via Weedmaps are the ideal demographic for a targeted message. Leverage targeted filtering software to determine which customers you can reach by attribute. Consider how you are marketing to new customers, how relevant your messaging is to their attributes, how consistently you’re contacting them, and how they are rewarded from this exchange. Products like Happy Marketers specialize in broadening your reach and funneling down your targeted messages by attributes like product preference, brand loyalty, and purchase frequency. You want your customers to walk away with a gratifying, tailored experience, and an incentive to come back to you on a regular basis. 

Looking at the Numbers

To see the real value in acquiring customers and converting them to regular users, we look at CAC, or customer acquisition cost. Many cannabis businesses can engage highly targeted campaigns and track consumers as they progress from interested leads to long-lasting loyal customers. Your acquisition cost is the cost of convincing your potential Weedmaps customers to make an initial purchase. 

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If you’re a dispensary that spends $10,000/month on Weedmaps, you’re paying $10,000/month to acquire new customers. If you pay $0 to retain them and they decide to order again, where do those customers go? If they go back to Weedmaps, it’ll cost you another $10,000 again to make another point of contact. If they come back to you directly, it’s free!

The idea here is getting customers to come back to you so you no longer have to initiate those conversations. Get a return on your investment. Returning customers are 9x more valuable to your business than newly acquired customers. 

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Make the most out of your subscription by finding and targeting newly acquired customers with Happy Marketers. For more information on how to broaden your reach, target your messaging, and track your results, reach out to us at insights@happycabbage.io.