About 48% of Americans now live in a jurisdiction in which recreational cannabis is legal. The cannabis industry is completely new to most people. As more states legalize it, the popularity of cannabis is growing, but the space is also changing quickly. If you own a cannabis business, you may not have the best understanding of your customers. Cannabis research can help you get to know your audience better so that you can effectively market your brand and increase sales.
In this guide, we’ll go over everything you need to know about understanding cannabis customers so you can grow your brand. Keep reading for more.
The Importance of Understanding Cannabis Customers
A business can only achieve success if it understands its audience. As such, you need to understand cannabis consumer buying habits and behaviors so that you can succeed.
Looking at things like purchasing decisions and patterns will give you a better idea of what your customers want and need. Based on this information, you can tailor marketing content to appeal more to your target audience. You can also improve your offerings and provide a better customer experience.
Through observation, you can identify market trends. For example, you might notice a particular product that’s selling better than others. You can use this data to plan promotions, optimize inventory levels, and make other strategic decisions.
The cannabis industry is evolving quickly, so you need to stay adaptive if you want to keep up with the competition. Keeping track of customer behaviors will help you stay ahead of the curve and remain a leading business within the industry.
Perhaps most importantly, understanding what your customers want and need will help you improve your strategies so that you can increase sales. This will lead to larger profits which will help your business grow.
Cannabis Market Research Methods
Success within the cannabis industry isn’t something that will simply happen. You need to conduct efficient market research to know how to market your brand and drive sales.
There are several market research techniques you can implement. Consider your goals, budget, and timeline when deciding which methods to use and how to go about them.
Online Surveys
You should have a website to promote your business, and you can implement online surveys to gather useful information from customers. You can ask them about their wants and needs, as well as their overall experience with your brand. You should keep these short as longer surveys will only put people off.
Focus Groups
Focus groups are an ideal way of gathering more detailed, in-depth information. You can ask customers for feedback and they can discuss topics related to your business and the cannabis industry in general.
Competitor Analysis
It’s important to not just understand your customers, but also your competitors. You can see what other similar brands are doing well, and where they’re falling short.
You can look into things like product offerings, marketing tactics, pricing strategies, and more. This will help you improve your own operations, and you can figure out ways to make your brand stand out from the competition.
Online Analytics
You can analyze a range of metrics through your website to better understand customer behavior. This will help you make SEO improvements which can result in more organic traffic and better reach. You can also track metrics through the social media platforms that you use.
Secondary Research
You can also find valuable information from other sources like government reports and industry associations. It’s worth noting that as a new and quickly changing industry, this may not be as effective for a cannabis retail business as it might be for other companies.
Steps to Conduct a Market Research Survey With Cannabis Users
There are plenty of options available when it comes to market research. 46Mile can help you determine the best approach for your business. The typical outline will consist of several important steps.
1. Define Your Research Objectives
Before you start carrying out any research, you should define what you want to achieve. All businesses should have specific goals – not only because you want to achieve them, but because they can help guide your business operations.
You should have an idea of the information you’re trying to gather, who you’re targeting, and what you want to achieve through your research. This information will help us develop the ideal survey.
2. Develop Your Survey Questions
With your goals in mind, we can start working on the questions your survey should ask. You want them to be clear and concise so your customers can answer them with ease. Avoid any leading or biased questions as these might not give you genuine results.
Having a good mix of questions will give you a broader range of details to work with. It can be a good idea to soft launch your survey with a small user base to see how things go before launching it to a wider audience.
3. Distribute Your Survey
When you’ve decided that your survey is ready for your wider customer base, you can distribute it and start gathering data. There are several ways you can do this including social media, email lists, and trusted third-party vendors.
Depending on the type of information you’re gathering, you could also include a live reporting link. This will allow users to see the results gathered from your survey as it may be of some interest to them.
4. Analyze and Interpret Your Cannabis Consumer Data
Finally, you want to analyze the data gathered to gain better insights. By identifying trends in the results you’ll be able to make better-informed business decisions. If you’re working with a third-party company for your survey, they should also handle the analysis for you.
Benefits of Cannabis Research
Ultimately, the purpose of market research is to improve your cannabis sales. There are several benefits that suitable research offers that will help you achieve this.
Better Understanding of Target Consumers
This is perhaps the main benefit, as understanding your customers will allow you to produce more relevant and effective marketing messaging. You’ll also be able to make various other business decisions based on what your customers want from your brand.
Enhanced Product Development
Some of the more in-depth insights you gather will include things like the perceived benefits, factors, and pricing that can influence customers’ decisions. This can help you refine your offerings so that you can sell products that better meet your customers’ needs. Along with this, you’ll have an easier time knowing what suppliers are best to work with.
Competitive Advantage
All businesses have competitors, and things are no different in the cannabis industry. Most of your competitors will be new businesses like yours that are working to get ahead of the competition in a new market.
Effective market research will give you an edge over your competitors which can help you grow and develop your brand faster. Doing this sooner rather than later will help you establish your brand as a leader in the industry.
Improved Advertising Effectiveness
Your advertising will have a huge impact on the success of your brand. Knowing what appeals to your customers will make it easier to determine what advertising tactics produce the best results. You can then adjust your strategies to produce better advertisements and improve your ROI.
Higher Customer Satisfaction
Acquiring new customers through effective marketing is essential, but it’s also important to keep these customers coming back. Customer feedback will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your brand.
You can then manage problem areas to improve customer satisfaction. This will help improve brand loyalty, trust, and customer retention.
Boosting Your Cannabis Sales
The quality and variety of your products are vital for making sales, but you need to go deeper than this. How you present your brand to your audience will be a huge driving factor.
Use Educational Videos
In today’s digital world, video content is seen as one of the best types of marketing content available. You can use educational videos relating to your products or your brand as a whole.
You can post these videos online or have them on display in your store. Note that if you want to share videos on social media platforms, you should check each specific platform’s rules and regulations regarding cannabis marketing first.
Turn Your Budtenders Into Brand Ambassadors
Your budtender will interact directly with your customers, so you want every interaction to be a good one. They should have a strong knowledge of your products so they can answer any questions and make recommendations to customers. Training and merchandise will turn your budtenders into brand ambassadors which will lead to increased brand visibility and sales.
Use Premium and Sustainable Branding
Building an effective marketing plan isn’t easy. Working with a professional marketing agency is the best way to ensure you can produce quality marketing materials that will remain relevant. You need to be adaptive so you can change your marketing strategies in line with industry trends.
Professional Cannabis Marketing
Thorough cannabis research is vital if you want to improve your marketing strategies. 46Mile is a full-service marketing and advertising agency.
We use relevant data and quality analysis to create the most efficient marketing strategies. Get in touch with our team today to find out more about how we can help your cannabis business.
