While the revolution to legalize CBD has largely been successful, free marketing for the niche still remains a far-fetched dream! Online search engines and several traditional media outlets have placed stringent restrictions on its online advertising and even launched certification systems to regulate its product listings.
How can a CBD brand, under these circumstances, run an effective marketing campaign to boost its revenue? The answer lies in the power of social media, the new-gen, ultimate source of information and entertainment!
Social media platforms get massive traction from cannabis users and enthusiasts across the board, most looking for trustworthy CBD brands that not only offer them reliable products but also keep them posted on the latest industry trends, especially considering how dynamic and evolving they are!
In this case study, we will discuss how we leveraged the benefits of social media marketing to surge our CBD clients’ revenue by 200% in a matter of a few weeks.
Initial Challenges
When we took over the project, our client’s CBD business had just shifted online from a local store in California. Since the site was absolutely new, optimizing it enough to get optimal leads and conversions would take months of SEO work.
Clearly, this was a long-term task, and we needed an alternative to get instant results. We immediately turned to the client’s social media handles with the hope of seizing the day! However, the journey was not as smooth as we had expected.
The client’s social media profile and presence were both extremely restricted, with accounts limited to traditional platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Even on these platforms, the engagement was minimal, postings were inconsistent, and the follower count was so low enough to be counted at the fingertips. There were no traces of paid promotions to drive direct conversions.
Strategic Approach
To turn the tables around, we laid the groundwork for a flourishing social media marketing campaign that would not just build a community of followers from scratch but actually help the client sell out their CBD collection faster than ever! Here are the key features of what we planned.
Content Strategy
In social media, your feed is your stage - make it count! We devised a clear strategy to transform our client’s feed with diverse content types to engage their target audience.
This included short-form and long-form videos of various lengths, product explainer videos, live streams, static images, infographics, shared blog and article links, text-only content, paid ads, user-generated content, and more.
The goal was to strike a balance between promotional and non-promotional content so we could build a long-term network with members of our community and drive revenue growth simultaneously.
Influencer Partnerships
While self-promotion on social media could have worked wonders by itself, it wouldn’t be able to lend the same degree of credibility and reputation to our client’s CBD brand as influencer marketing.
This encouraged us to strategize extensive outreach programs for influencer partnerships that included sponsored posts, sponsored videos, whitelisting, product seeding, and affiliate marketing. The goal was to identify the most followed CBD influencers on social media and approach them to negotiate our terms and conditions.
Implementation
Our strategy was well-rounded, but implementation was the key to our success. We took several steps to make our targeted objectives a reality. Here are their highlights!
Content Calendar
We prepared a content calendar to regulate the duration and frequency of our social media postings. At least one piece of content was uploaded every day. For consistency and pattern, we scheduled each type of content to be posted at regular intervals. Later, as the responses built up, we revised the schedule to increase the frequency of postings for the type of content that got the most views and hits.
Engagement Tactics
Engagement was crucial to building a community of followers from the traffic we were getting. So we started promptly reading and replying to the comments, live streaming, posting live polls, and organizing live events like contests, webinars, and product launches.
One of the most game-changing decisions we took was sharing our content on social media platforms specific to the CBD niche, such as GrassCity, WeedLife Network, Weedable, MassRoots, Duby, and LeafWire.
These networking sites had been the busiest huddles for CBD enthusiasts even when the industry was fighting a legal battle. The client’s presence here exponentially increased the overall revenue they generated from social media campaigns.
Analytics and Optimization
Alongside posting social content, we also focussed on their optimization by using relevant and high-intent keywords in the title, description, and hashtags. Further, we also optimized the social media profiles with detailed user bios, profile photos, featured photos, and catchy usernames.
To ensure our strategy was performing well, we consistently analyzed several social media metrics such as follower count, follower growth rate, user engagement through views, comments, clicks, impressions, video completion rates, brand mentions, and, ultimately, conversion rates on paid social media ads. This helped us make quick fixes and resolve issues instantly, wherever possible.
Results
After consistent implementation and monitoring for 4 long weeks, we achieved phenomenal results from our social media marketing campaign, not just in terms of conversions and revenue growth but also with user engagement, interaction, and traffic. Here are some of the tangible outcomes we achieved!
- Overall follower growth increased by 350% across all social media platforms.
- Conversion rates on paid social media ads increased by 150%
- Referral Traffic from social posts to the website improved by 100%
- The ultimate milestone was set with a 200% surge in the client's revenue through social media leads.
