Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Even though cannabis is in high demand, many laws still prohibit how marketers can advertise it. Cannabis is among the listed drugs under Schedule I of the Controlled Substance Act (CSA), and the FDA has not yet approved its use. As a result, most established platforms don’t allow retailers to market cannabis.
Such restrictions pose a challenge to the cannabis industry, especially to new entrants. So how should they operate? Most retailers are getting craftier to reach their potential customers. One solution is geofencing targeting.
While Geofencing has proven to be a promising technology for digital advertisers and businesses, little is known about its capabilities as a targeted CBD-related advertising channel. Let’s dive into this virtual world of geofencing and see what it’s really about.
Related: Marketing CBD Products Is Still Challenging, but It Doesn’t Have to Be.
What is GeoFencing?
A geofence is a virtual boundary around a location or point on the map. By creating geofences, marketers can monitor real-time locations and campaigns for various geo-based promotions and campaigns.
It’s a type of service that offers brands a greater ability to define target audiences, allowing them to track customers who come into contact with their advertising campaign, and determine whether those people have responded positively or negatively to their brand’s messages.
How does Geofencing work?
First, you choose a set of coordinates for your area of interest, which triggers an event whenever someone crosses it. You can then tailor the parameters to your business or promotional campaign. When someone passes through a specified boundary, they trigger an event.
These events can include pop-ups, emails, coupons, push notifications, SMS messages, and more. You can then collect consumer information like browsing data, device IDs, geo-location, social profiles, demographics, and behavioral data. With all this information at hand, you can get an insight into who exactly visited your website or bought your product. Then you’ll be able to target your customers based on demographics, location, behaviors, interests, or social profiles.
GeoFencing marketing strategies
While many industries have used geofencing to identify potential customers, its uses extend beyond simply collecting user data. Some companies have even found success using it as a form of real-time customer engagement.
As a full-service digital marketing and media advertising company, such as Valux Digital, we are always up-to-date with changing customer habits and trends through this kind of marketing technology. We utilize geofencing marketing to help CBD client target local traffics and bring in foot traffics to the store.
So, how do you ensure you get the most out of your cannabis geofencing targeting?
Proximity targeting
The primary purpose of proximity targeting is to reach potential customers in real-time whenever they are within proximity to your store. It helps businesses find potential customers within the neighborhood or catchment area that would buy from them.
With this kind of targeting, businesses can effectively utilize digital ads and even real-time location services to locate potential customers who are likely to make a purchase. That means they will know when someone comes closer to their store or point of interest. Consequently, the business will serve relevant advertisements or promotional messages to potential customers. The goal is to create awareness about their products or services and bring them into the store.
Conquest targeting
You want to ensure that you don’t overreach your ads and targeting options. After all, if you send too many advertisements to someone, they will most likely ignore them. But if you don’t go too far, you won’t end up missing any relevant leads. Therefore, you might want to use conquest targeting for more efficiency.
Conquest targeting involves sending targeted ads to people who have already interacted with other companies that offer similar products or services. It minimizes wasteful efforts. For instance, sending ads to users who visited online dispensaries or drugstores could help improve sales because these users may need something from your brand that your competitors do not offer. As such, this strategy increases sales while lowering costs.
Household trgeting
For those looking to promote CBD products or related items, household targeting may be a great way to start. It involves selecting specific residential addresses that fit your campaign’s criteria. In doing so, you will increase your potential audience size by making sure you cover all areas where CBD users reside.
Household targeting ensures your message doesn’t reach excessive people. You don’t want to promote CBD products to people who are not interested in them. Instead, concentrate your efforts in areas where people are likely to have an interest in purchasing CBD products.
It’s important that you only select high-value households in your geofencing targeting. Otherwise, you may receive numerous calls from homeowners complaining about unwanted intrusive marketing messages.
Lookalike targeting
Lookalike targeting allows marketers to increase ROI by providing accurate consumer profiles. It aids in identifying similarities between people based on age, income, interests, gender, hobbies, behaviors, and so on. Advertisers can also engage customers based on previous purchases and conversions.
Marketers can use lookalike targeting to gain insights into consumer trends and predict future purchasing behavior. They can also use these insights to improve user experience by offering more relevant content and making better decisions regarding ad placements. With such marketing awareness, cannabis businesses can improve conversion rates by predicting people interested in their promotions.
Lookalike targeting works well when combined with segmentation targeting and behavioral targeting.
