The world of marketing is already difficult to navigate, and the competitive realm of cannabis marketing is even more so. To get more insight on the secrets behind the scenes, CULTURE chatted with Madison Fiore, cannabis marketing trailblazer and head of growth for Hawke Media. Having worked with brands like dosist, Papa & Barkley and Highline Wellness, he knows his way around the industry.
How did you get involved with cannabis marketing and branding?
In 2018, we started working with Papa & Barkley, and quickly realized that the cannabis space needs to be treated differently than the typical e-commerce or D2C brand. With all of the restrictions and limitations on advertising, we learned to get creative and scrappy in order to hit the company’s revenue targets and goals. Since then, we have had a chance to scale over 50 different cannabis brands, both CBD and THC. It has been one of the most challenging and fulfilling parts of my career.
Why is good marketing key to standing out in the cannabis sector?
Well…quite frankly, the cannabis space is not known for quality marketing or branding. Currently, many of the top revenue driving brands have what I would call sub-par websites and marketing funnels. The entire industry is not nearly as sophisticated or competitive digitally as most of the other D2C or consumer-facing brands. For brands early in the space, there is a massive opportunity. We are seeing a handful of brands take that opportunity and quickly become movers and shakers across the United States, quickly evolving to become top multistate operators. It is still very surprising how many brands lack the basic fundamentals of digital marketing best practices.
What are some cannabis branding mistakes you’ve seen in the cannabis industry most often?
The easy answer to this question is that most brands are not putting in the necessary work to truly build a credible brand mission, and story. With that said, there is an immense opportunity for talented marketing and branding experts to play a role in the positioning of incredible cannabis brands.
What do you predict the future of cannabis marketing will look like?
The future of cannabis marketing will no doubt move towards the e-commerce look and feel. We are starting to see platforms like Dutchie, Jane, Vana and Proper make a massive impact in their website integration and delivery functionalities, so customers can easily land on a website, add products to a cart, check out and have it delivered to their door within a few hours. Quite frankly, it is a luxury that very few e-commerce brands have—to be able to quickly land products in customers’ hands within a few hours. Over the next 12 to 18 months, I anticipate that most top brands will be leveraging this, and starting to develop a much bigger strategy around how to acquire new customers this way. The core reason I believe this to be true is because budtenders currently hold so much power inside dispensary doors. Many of the top brands are spending 80 percent or more of their annual marketing budget towards budtenders over the actual retention of customers. I spoke with a brand the other day that is spending hundreds of thousands of marketing dollars towards budtenders in 2021, without a single planned dollar going towards customers. That seems to be the most common marketing strategy, currently.
Is there anything in particular you have going on that you want to highlight or promote right now?
Right now, with Hawke’s experience—developing and growing brands online—we are leveraging all of our personnel, experience and expertise, migrating cannabis brands to that e-commerce funnel I previously mentioned and redeveloping their websites with all the best practices around load times, check out procedure, blog content, SEO, global optimization, site speed and more. Once we have these brands built out with an e-commerce solution, nurturing that site and traffic with ecommerce email marketing best practices, display retargeting, email capture, content management, organic social and third party content/validation, we are seeing these brands receive an immediate impact on traffic and revenue.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
We can all agree that the cannabis space is going to evolve rapidly over the next one to five years—and beyond. I am proud to be as intimately involved as I currently am, and am excited for the impact that cannabis as a plant will make on our society—on both the medicinal and recreational level.
