Are you ready to shift from cold sales outreach to warm inquiries? From an outbound focus to inbound? You can do it with content marketing. In fact, content marketing should be the foundation of your entire digital marketing plan. Why? Because content fuels everything today. Content truly is king, and that won’t change anytime soon.

Why Does Content Marketing Matter Today?

I’ve written about some of the top reasons content marketing is essential for cannabis businesses and cannabis-related businesses here on the Cannabiz Media blog before, and all of those reasons are still valid today. 

To recap, content marketing can help your business create brand awareness and consumer perceptions of your brand. It can also help you generate leads cost-effectively, nurture those leads, and convert them into customers. 

Content marketing can also support your consumer research efforts and inform your future marketing strategies and investments.  Importantly, content can boost your website traffic, improve your search engine optimization and search rankings, and boost social sharing. 

Bottom-line, content marketing is a catalyst for all of your digital marketing efforts to improve revenue and ROI because content provides something of value for people to consume and share. There is no more cost-effective way to increase brand awareness, brand recognition, brand trust, brand trial, and brand loyalty than content marketing.

What Works in B2B Content Marketing for the Cannabis Industry Today?

B2B content marketing for the cannabis industry is no different from other industries in terms of building a strong foundation. Blogging is critical today, and if your business is not already publishing a minimum of one new blog post per week, you’re missing out on the opportunities, demand generation, and sales that can come from excellent blog content.

Why is a blog so important? It’s simple. When you publish authoritative, useful blog posts on a consistent basis, those posts create more entry points to your website for search engines and individuals to find. In other words, more blog posts lead to more search engine traffic and more social sharing. 

As a result, more people will find your content, visit your website, and learn about your brand. Eventually, some of those people are likely to become customers, but that won’t happen if you don’t publish the content that leads them to your website in the first place. 

Furthermore, blog posts give you promotional opportunities. You can use blog posts to feed your social media marketing, your email marketing, your programmatic advertising, and more! 

The more people you can get to your website with amazing content, the more you can learn about your target audience(s) and the more people you could potentially convert into customers and loyal brand advocates. And guess what? When you earn loyal brand advocates, they’ll share your content for you, which extends your brand’s reach (and your potential sales) even further.

Steps to Ramp up Your Content Marketing Plan

Content marketing is where everything starts in digital marketing today, and with so many marketing tactics inaccessible to businesses working in and with the cannabis industry, content marketing takes on even greater importance. If you’re not already committing a significant portion of your marketing budget to content creation, sharing, and promotion, then you need to make some adjustments as soon as possible.

To ramp up your content marketing plan, be prepared to build a team of content creators, designers, and promoters. This doesn’t mean you need to hire an entire team of employees. There are many freelancers who provide these services at affordable rates. Just be sure to work with writers, graphic designers, email marketers, and social media marketers who understand the cannabis industry and have proven expertise. Poor quality content can do more harm than good.

Once you know who will create and promote your content for you (i.e., by sharing it via email marketing, social media platforms, ads, and so on), develop a calendar to create a minimum of one new blog post per week. The calendar should include the topic for each post, where you’ll promote it (e.g., email marketing, social media, ads, etc.), and any assets you’ll need to publish and promote it (e.g., images, videos, charts, statistics and source links, etc.). 

Be sure to include some blog posts in your calendar that promote lead magnets, such as ebooks and checklists, which you can offer in exchange for people’s email addresses. These blog posts work very well for social media sharing and advertising, and the lead magnets will help you build your email marketing list!

Once your content marketing team and processes are in place, you can increase the amount of content you generate and promote (e.g., increase to two blog posts per week). Ideally, you should publish 11-16 blog posts per month to generate the maximum amount of traffic and brand exposure. 

However, don’t expect to be able to churn out that level of high quality content right away. Give yourself some time to ramp up to that level. You never want to sacrifice quality for quantity.

Key Takeaways about Content Marketing in the Cannabis Industry

Not convinced that content marketing is essential today? Here are a few statistics that could change your mind: 

• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing tactics and generates 3X as many leads. 
• 70% of consumers would rather learn about a product from an article than an ad.
• 71% of B2B customers read a blog while on the customer journey.

Now is the time to ramp up your content marketing plan, and when you’re ready to promote that content through email marketing, you can reach verified cannabis and hemp license holders using the email marketing tools in the Cannabiz Media License Database. Schedule a demo to see how it can help you reach your business goals.

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