I answered this on Quora June 22, 2017:
Q. As the manager of a print and marketing department how can I acquire more clients in California’s cannabis scene?
I’m talking gaining clients to get their printing needs done; business cards, flyers, banners for events, signs…etc
A. If you want to niche down to the cannabis industry, I’d suggest developing your brand around it. Heck, you could probably just use a good, thoughtful slogan with your existing logo to do the trick.
From there, write (film or record) a lot of great content that is non-spammy, but interesting to this industry. Post this on your blog, then share on Facebook at least a couple times per week.
Supplement the content with shared pertinent content to build relationships, not to mention take away some of the burden of developing all the content needed yourself.
Where do you get the ideas for this content?
- Original content: Build an RSS page that feeds the best new articles to you, so you don’t have to go out searching for them. Write, film or record (blog, YouTube or PodCast) about what you learned on a regular basis. Be organized and consistent and find your voice
- Curated content: Use Quuu for finding high quality, pertinent content and Buffer to push it out. You can use the free versions of both of these for your purposes. There’s several good YouTube vids on doing this. Just don’t overdo it with this curated content. People will catch on real quick that it’s not authentic.
Strategy for sharing this content?
- Your audience is largely going to be on Facebook. “Like” appropriate cannibus-related industries and “Like” and “share” good posts that you find in their timelines. You’ll organically build more and more of a following if you share great content and stick to these relationship-building techniques.
- Don’t be a dick. Even when others are trolling you or your post, don’t get baited.
- “Boost” some of your better posts out with Facebook Ads. Again, there’s plenty of info on how to do this correctly, so I’m just going to stress that its a highly targeted and effective way to reach your audience.
You’ll start to develop friends and followers. The fact that you want to niche down like this makes it very doable to become an influencer in this field.
If you stick to the above as 80% of your online marketing strategy, then you’ve earned the right to put out 20% in offers – such as a monthly or weekly coupon, or invite to a special event. Just make sure that you get an email address in exchange for it. This list that you’ll build will become your distinct customer base.
