Can you advertise your dispensary on Facebook? The quick answer is – YES, you can advertise your cannabis dispensary on Facebook, but you’ll need to be mindful of their ad policies and regulations concerning marijuana.
Marijuana is legal in many states, and it is expected that more will legalize marijuana soon. With all of this happening, the burning question for most marijuana dispensaries is whether or not they can perform paid advertising on Facebook and other social media outlets.
There’s a lot of controversy surrounding advertising for cannabis-related products because federal law still prohibits such advertisements nationwide. Despite these restrictions, there has been no update from Facebook to stop such ads from being posted on its platform as long as they comply with state laws where the product or service is sold legally.
First off, you should know that social media is critical to the success of a marijuana dispensary. Social media can be used as an advertising platform for cannabis dispensaries, and this article will give some ideas on how you can put it into action.
Why Social Media is Vital for Marijuana Dispensaries
Having a social presence on Facebook and other social media outlets is essential for several reasons. The most obvious being it gives your customers the ability to interact and communicate with your brand in real-time.
Here are the top reasons social media is important for your dispensary :
- Increases Your Brand Reach
- Creates a customer-friendly environment
- Increases your online visibility
- Send direct traffic to your website
You need to create original content to grow your online presence through Facebook, Instagram, or other platforms like Reddit, where there are communities dedicated specifically to cannabis-related posts (like r/trees).
Before beginning your Facebook advertising campaign, it is crucial that your dispensary has a well-done website where people can find out about the products and services you offer, compare prices for their region or even order online directly. Websites are critical because they’re often used as an example by lawmakers if there is any attempt to change old cannabis laws in favor of legalization; having this evidence will help support your case against prohibitionists who oppose cannabis use, so it’s worth investing time into making sure yours looks professional enough before trying to advertise on social media platforms like Facebook.
Paid Advertising on Facebook
As mentioned earlier, you have to be aware of when using paid advertising methods through Facebook is their ad policies concerning marijuana-related ads. While Facebook does not allow advertisements for illegal products or services, you should know that they do allow ads that promote the culture of legal cannabis in states where it is permitted.
When done correctly, utilizing paid advertisements on Facebook will help explode your online sales and visibility to your target customers.
Setting up your Facebook Ads
After registering your Facebook Ads account, you will then be prompted to create your first advertisement. You’ll need to be mindful of the images, words, and titles you use throughout your ad copy. Here are a few pointers on what to do and what not to do :
- Do NOT use stand-alone images of marijuana, cannabis leaves, or pictures of buds.
- Do NOT promote the sale or purchasing of cannabis-related goods.
- Do NOT ask customers to contact you about the sale of your items.
- Steer clear of any medical claims, do not mention “medicinal purposes”.
- Never list the prices of your cannabis products.
- DO keep an eye on Facebook’s updated ad policies.
- Always refer to statistics, graphs, quotes, research results, etc.
- It’s okay to post images about cannabis, just not products directly.
Getting your Cannabis Facebook Ads Approved
Now that you have created your ads and are ready to submit them – here is what will unfold :
- Your Ad Copy will be submitted to Facebook’s content review team.
- They will be disapproved if you’ve used any wording around cannabis or marijuana.
- Your ads will be disapproved if you’ve used any imagery of direct marijuana products or pictures of flower.
- You will be allowed to review and re-submit your ads for consideration from the Facebook team.
- Tidy up your ads according to the disapproval comments that will be relayed to you.
- Re-submit your ads for manual review, and you should be able to get them approved at this point.
As you go through this process, keep in mind that multiple disapprovals can affect your Facebook Trustworthiness score, which will impact your future paid advertising campaigns. Your trustworthiness score is a tool that Facebook uses to determine which companies may be spreading misinformation on their platform.
If you continue to break their main two advertising policies, it could result in the platform reducing your visibility or banning your Facebook Ads account altogether.
Advertising Budget for Cannabis Facebook Ads
When it comes to advertising on Facebook, you can expect your ad costs to run between $0.20 and $0.50 per click (CPC), depending on the time of year and how much competition there is for cannabis-related keywords in search engines like Google or Bing.
It’s best to set a daily spending limit that will not deplete your budget too quickly; lastly keep an eye out for social media deals that may come up where you’ll be able to save money by sharing discount codes with friends through Facebook messenger!
You will have the ability to identify your monthly spending budget within the Facebook Ads manager software. Also, you can determine how much you want to spend per day, week, month, etc.
Your typical Facebook Ads budget should be somewhere around $500-$2,000 per month to run a successful cannabis campaign.
How To Successfully Advertise Your Cannabis Dispensary on Facebook Without Paying For Ads
There are still ways to leverage Facebook without spending marketing dollars on paid advertising if you’re on a budget.
Here are some tips to help you accomplish your social media goals on Facebook :
Join as many Facebook cannabis groups as possible. These groups typically have thousands of members that can be reached through the group’s feed, and they’re perfect for sharing updates about your dispensary or products within their niche communities.
Engage with other users’ posts which may include hashtags relevant to your industry. This is a great way to show Mark Zuckerberg’s AI bot (M Suggestions) that people enjoy seeing content from businesses like yours in their feeds! Your engagement score will begin increasing over time if you consistently engage with others’ posts by leaving comments, liking them, etc. Think of this strategy as free advertising since it allows more eyes onto your business page.
Host Facebook Live sessions. It’s easy to record videos on your mobile device, or you can use a professional camera if needed. Be sure that each of these live video posts includes accurate information about the dispensary and what it provides for customers (i.e., an overview of products available, sales & discounts).
Focus more on engaging with individuals following your Facebook page instead of marketing directly to new users by sharing post updates into their newsfeeds. You will have much better luck getting people interested in your brand when they’ve already heard good things from others’ newsfeeds through organic engagement strategies!
Use Facebook chatbots to assist with customer inquiries and communicate with them directly in messenger. This drives your overall customer experience and helps manage your incoming customer traffic.
Optimizing Your Facebook Results Using Analytics Data
Create a Facebook pixel that will track conversions on your site or online shop, then submit it to Google Analytics! This is absolutely crucial if you want to know which ad campaigns are performing the best – and most importantly, how you can improve upon these results! If done correctly, analytics tools like HubSpot Marketing Software, Sprout Social, or Xactly Insights will help you see where each of those dollars spent were allocated with detailed performance reporting.
Next up – be sure to edit ads according to what content converts visitors into customers; don’t waste money promoting irrelevant pages/posts on your business’s social media account. It’s essential that companies become data-driven when attempting to make strategic marketing decisions.
Remember, you can always edit your Facebook ads by clicking on the pencil icon in Ads Manager to see which campaigns are converting best! Make sure that every dollar is appropriately allocated throughout different ad sets based on what’s currently working! You don’t want to end up losing money while running multiple social media campaigns.
Final Thoughts on Advertising a Dispensary on Facebook
The key to succeeding on Facebook is personalization.
You’ll want to create a high-quality product that’s unique and of value for your target market, then use Facebook’s ad targeting capabilities to reach users who may be interested in what you’re offering.
If done correctly, marketing automation tools are very beneficial because they allow marketing teams access to actionable data needed for making split testing decisions! Marketers should always begin with the end goal in mind by determining which KPIs (key performance indicators) need to be met through their social media campaigns before starting anything at all. Then it will become easier to select an approach or strategy best suited for reaching those goals efficiently.
If you want to learn more about our overall cannabis marketing strategies, you may want to read our post on “How To Get More Customers To Your Dispensary” – it’s a complete comprehensive guide on every aspect of increasing your traffic and cannabis sales.
