Did you know that four out of five consumers (80%) like to learn about a business or brand through the company’s custom content? Similarly, 70% of consumers prefer to learn about a company, brand, products, and services by reading an article rather than seeing an ad. Bottom-line, content marketing is a strategic imperative for all companies today.

While meeting consumer preferences is a key reason why content marketing is essential for cannabis businesses and cannabis-related businesses, it’s not the only reason. Following are five of the most important reasons that every cannabis business and ancillary business should be investing time and money in content marketing.

1. Create Brand Awareness and Consumer Perceptions

The majority of companies across all industries that invest in content marketing do so with a primary goal to increase brand awareness. At the same time, creating, publishing, and sharing useful, meaningful content that is relevant to your target audience helps to form consumer perceptions about your brand and build trust in your brand.

Research shows that content marketing influences consumer perceptions with 82% of consumers saying they feel better about a company after reading its custom content. The key to success is to create, publish, and share content that your target audience values.

Start by publishing useful blog posts and sharing them across your social media channels as well as via email marketing to get your content in front of as many people who match your target buyer personas as possible.

2. Generate Leads Cost-Effectively

Content marketing can help your cannabis business or cannabis-related business generate leads and move them through the marketing funnel in an extremely cost-effective way. For example, research shows content marketing generates approximately 3x as many leads as traditional marketing per dollar spent.

Furthermore, companies that publish blog posts get 67% more leads each month than companies that don’t publish blog posts. This is just one more reason why blogging consistently is so important!

But that’s not all. Content marketing has been found to be 3x more cost effective for lead generation than paid search ads, which is great news for businesses working in and with the marijuana industry that don’t have access to most paid search advertising opportunities.

3. Nurture Leads, Support Consumer Research, and Convert

Once your business has attracted leads, you need to push them through the marketing funnel so they make a purchase. Content marketing plays a critical role in providing them with the information they need to research your company, products, and services so they can make a purchase decision.

Today, people seek information and research products and services online. Your business must be easy to find, and the specific information consumers need while doing their research has to be readily available.

According to the data, nearly one out of every two consumers (47%) reviews between three and five pieces of contentbefore they talk to a sales person. When you leverage the information you have about your customers from your CRM and use it to produce the content your niche target audiences need, content marketing helps ensure consumers see the right content and choose to buy from your business.

4. Boost Website Traffic, SEO, and Sharing

Did you know that websites with a blog get 55% more traffic? They also get 97% more backlinks, which are very important to search engine optimization and boosting search traffic to your business’ website.

While content marketing is a long-term strategy to boost website traffic via search engines and social media channels, it’s extremely powerful and worth the investment today. That’s because content marketing delivers sustainable, organic growth that stands the test of time.

When content marketing is done well, it may take six months to a year to see a significant change, but that change will happen and won’t go away once it starts. Instead, the positive results will continue to grow because content marketing has a compounding growth effect.

5. Improve Revenue and ROI

Content marketing generates revenue growth and a positive return on investment (ROI). For example, businesses that prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to see a positive ROI from their efforts than businesses that don’t. Additionally, businesses that create and publish video content grow revenue 49% faster than those that don’t invest in video content.

Based on the positive results, companies are investing more of their marketing budgets into content than ever before, and more than half of businesses that invest in content marketing (51%) are publishing new content on a daily basis.

A daily content production and sharing schedule might seem overwhelming, but by outsourcing time-consuming content marketing activities like writing and design, businesses are able to produce and share more high quality content and improve their ROI. Just be careful if you decide to outsource and be certain you hire the best content marketing help.

Key Takeaways about Content Marketing for Cannabis Businesses and Cannabis-Related Businesses

To generate brand awareness and trust, website traffic, and sales, cannabis businesses and cannabis-related businesses must invest in content marketing. With access to other highly-effective marketing tactics, such as paid search advertising and Facebook ads, unavailable to businesses operating in and with the marijuana industry, content marketing has become even more critical.

Want to learn how the email marketing and CRM tools built into the Cannabiz Media License Database can be used to support and improve your content marketing strategies and results? Schedule a free demo now.