Advertising in the cannabis industry is arduous; this is no secret. With laws and restrictions continuously changing and varying from one state to another, it is hard to keep up and make your business stand out. Additionally, big platforms such as Facebook and Google have clear restrictions against cannabis and related advertising. But there are other ways to promote cannabis-related products successfully on other platforms. The main challenge that everybody faces when advertising on platforms that do accept cannabis advertising is not the targeting features themselves, but how to use them to get the best of your campaigns. But, we have a solution for you. In this article, we will walk you through everything you need to know to make your cannabis campaigns successful.
If you are a cannabis brand, a dispensary, or a delivery business, we will guide through everything you need to know, from targeting features to state-specific restrictions. Whether you will be advertising on a local level or state-wide, you will find what you need to get your business in front of the right audience.
Cannabis Advertising with TrafficJunky
At TrafficJunky, we allow cannabis businesses, or cannabusinesses, to advertise their products and services on our network; an opportunity to get yourself known to hundreds of thousands, or millions. Whatever your goals may be, branding, direct sale, or increasing foot traffic, we have the right targeting features to get the job done. Before getting started, all the information present below, majorly focuses on adult-use recreational cannabis in the United States.
TJ Targeting Features
As a cannabusiness, reaching your target audience is crucial to the success of your advertising efforts. At TrafficJunky, we designed our targeting features to help you achieve whatever business ends you want to attain. Our targeting features allow you to obtain unparalleled focus on our audience to single out the ones that interest you most. However, it is not limited to that. Other targeting features we offer, such as conversion trackers, frequency capping, and day and time targeting, would allow you to achieve a variety of your business goals across the spectrum. In the upcoming part, we will be elaborating on individual targeting features, and how it can be useful to you as a cannabusiness.
Geo-targeting
When it comes to cannabis advertising, location matters a lot. Given the nature of the market, all cannabis advertising is state-wide, city-wide, or local. Our geo-targeting allows you to target the audience in a specific state, city, or, better yet, ZIP codes. Wherever the audience you are striving to reach may be, you can reach them.
If you are a dispensary or delivery business, local advertising would be the way to go. We recommend seeing where your customers come from your city. You can segment the areas in terms of categories. For instance, you can separate areas into groups based on purchase behavior. The first category can be customers who buy more frequently but cheaper products. The second category can be customers who buy less often but expensive products. This geo-based segmentation will yield better results. And, our geo-targeting would allow you to reach these customers with ease.
If you are a brand trying to increase visibility, you can target the right audience in your state to make yourself known. As a good practice, you can segment your geo-targeting to make your advertising efforts more thorough. As a brand, you can use city-wide targeting to increase your brand visibility for people interested in the products you sell. Or, you can target cities or areas around dispensaries that sell your product. You can go one step further with this. You can investigate which areas with dispensaries are visited more often. You can find some dispensaries that are frequently visited, but they do not sell your product. This geo-based segmentation can help you create a marketing plan that creates a demand before entering the market.
Conversion Trackers
Conversion trackers are the feature that would allow you to get the data necessary to take your advertising efforts to a whole new level. Conversion trackers will enable you to collect data on the audience reacting with your ads, which allows you to, ideally, build customer profiles. Even if you cannot achieve such an endeavor, you can measure and evaluate your ads’ results. Whether you are a brand, delivery business, or dispensary trying to increase direct or indirect sales, conversion trackers or event trackers are the key to understand if your current implementation and targeting are yielding the results you want to achieve. We will come back to this feature in future sections.
Retargeting
This targeting feature is as essential as conversion trackers. Retargeting is your way to rekindle the interest of your target audience to increase the conversions of your campaigns or to entrench your brand name in your audience’s mind, so when they are ready to convert, they know where to go. If you are a dispensary or a delivery business, retargeting will allow you to get the most out of your targeting, increasing your sales, hence giving you a definite edge over the competition. If you are a brand, retargeting can help you increase sales and brand visibility alike. As aforementioned getting your brand in front of users who are yet to convert would allow your visibility to grow and, with it, your customer lifetime value. You can read more about retargeting in this article.
Frequency Capping
This feature goes hand in hand with retargeting. It is crucial for your ads if you want to prevent “poisoning” your audience and prevent your banners from burning out. If you are repeatedly showing the same ad to your audience, the ad is bound to stop converting. With frequency capping, you can decide how many times an ad will appear to a user. With this feature, you ensure that your audience sees a good number of ads that would allow you to convert.
Time Targeting
With time targeting, you can limit your ads to times that convert for you. Depending on your business type, i.e., dispensary, brand, or delivery business, there are certain times when conversion rates drop. If you are a brand, there might be hours during the day where your ads will be less effective. As such, you might want to abstain from advertising in said times. As a delivery business, advertising at times when you cannot fulfill orders might not be ideal. You can use time-targeting to limit the times, during the day, when your ads will show. Use this information to save money and avoid overspending.
Day Targeting
With this targeting feature, you can show your ads to your target audience based on your business days. Day Targeting allows you to reach your audience when your business is operational to ensure that you won’t leave any customers hanging until you are open. This feature applies equally to dispensaries and delivery businesses. In our campaign creation process, the day and time targeting features are called “Campaign Schedule.”
Here is a table that would help you decide which targeting features you can use or worth looking at based on your business type. Although it is worth noting that all the features apply to each, it is just a question of how you will use them.
| Targeting Feature / Business Type | Brand | Dispensary | Delivery |
| Geo-Targeting | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Conversion Trackers | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Retargeting | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Frequency Capping | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Time Targeting | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Day Targeting | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Targeting Features: Go Beyond Face Value
Having an array of targeting features to select from is indeed great, but if not appropriately used, targeting features alone will not allow you to reach the level of success you want. Your success correlates to the assumptions you can test regarding your customers. And the quality of your premises is the result of the quality of your data. In the above section, we have brought up a significant point, analyzing the right data. Whatever your business type may be, data is the key to understanding the kind of people interacting with your brand and converting. Such practice is essential for identifying highly valued customers; current customer data is an invaluable asset to be used.
Another way to discern your data, which is applicable for any business type, is looking at your purchase history (frequently brought products, recently bought products, and search history). Look at your data to find patterns that speak volumes about your customers. You can always tap into public datasets for cannabis consumers. What you might have missed during your tracking, you can find in these datasets.
Such a data-centric approach allows you to eliminate any noise when it comes to your targeting of the masses and when you pair this approach with location targeting, you are ensuring that you are reaching the right audience where you are active. When you are correctly analyzing data, things get more comfortable when it comes to optimizing your advertising efforts. This approach makes customizing your messaging to the audience and markets more efficient, productive, and useful. Overall, such efforts will provide a ripple effect that will boost the performance of your business. Remember to keep measuring and optimizing until you find the best way to reach current and potential customers.
Advertising Rules & Restrictions
As mentioned above, cannabis, in our case, adult-use recreational cannabis, advertising comes with rules & restrictions that vary from one state to another. In the United States, individual states allow recreational use and sale, so targeting must be on a state level or city level. Each state has its regulation and limitations when it comes to advertising. We, too, at TrafficJunky, have our restrictions and rules. In the upcoming part, we will be highlighting the simplified rules and regulations for cannabis advertising in the states where recreational cannabis is legal. We will also highlight TJ rules & regulations when it comes to cannabis advertising. Our rules must be adhered to and are outside any country or state scope.
TrafficJunky Advertising Rules & Regulations
The following points must be kept in mind when designing your creatives and messaging for your cannabis ads:
- Depiction of consumption of intoxicants is prohibited by TrafficJunky’s Rules & Regulations
- Depiction of intoxicated persons in sexual acts is prohibited
TrafficJunky Simplified Rules & State-Specific Rules
The following part will breakdown the simplified rules for Cannabis advertising.
DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING SIMPLIFIED RULES ARE NOT A LEGAL OPINION. THESE ARE GUIDELINES TO FOLLOW FOR CANNABIS ADVERTISING. REFER TO STATE REGULATIONS AND CONSULT AN ATTORNEY BEFORE STARTING CAMPAIGNS
Simplified Rules
- No false or misleading statements or claims
- No promotion of overconsumption
- No promotions of creative or therapeutic effects
- No promotion of curative or therapeutic effects (health claims)
- Cannot depict minors
- Cannot appeal to minors
State-Specific Rules
- No promotional giveaways (Alaska, California, Nevada, Washington State)
- No advertising via pop-under (Colorado)
- No depiction of image of cannabis leaf or bud (Illinois)
- No price-based advertisement (Massachusetts)
- Avoid use of slang (Nevada)
State-Specific Rules & Laws
In this part will highlight the simplified state-specific rules for Cannabis advertising. Before that, this is a list of the states where recreational use of cannabis is legal:
- Alaska
- California
- Colorado
- Illinois
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Nevada
- Oregon
- Washington
We are at the end of our cannabis guide. We urge you to read the rules and regulations and understand them before undertaking any endeavor.
Happy advertising!
