Congratulations on launching your cannabis company. You might be wondering what the next steps are in order to get your business on its feet.

Welcome to the wide, wacky world of cannabis advertising, one of the most challenging industries to market products. Although challenging, it can be done. Whether you choose to hire a cannabis marketing team or tackle it solo, we’ve included a brief guide on what to know and what to avoid when advertising cannabis products.

Read on to learn more about cannabis advertising, its restrictions, and creative ways to reach your target audience without crossing laws or community guidelines.

While it may seem daunting, cannabis brands can find creative and legal ways to advertise their products. 

Although a cannabis marketing team can help you understand all the marketing restrictions on various social media platforms and within your local area, doing it yourself is also 100% possible. 

Below, we’ve included some restrictions from cannabis marketing you should be aware of, along with creative ways to market your products without crossing laws or community guidelines.

Some entrepreneurs want to launch a cannabis brand but don’t because of all the legal restrictions. Others that go through with launching a company must spend time understanding what’s allowed and what’s not, which can seem pretty daunting.

We’ve included some basic restrictions for cannabis brands below:

Product Restrictions: The most common restriction for cannabis advertising is promoting a product itself. While this recently changed on Twitter, other channels like Instagram and Facebook strictly ban the promotion of products, prices, and distribution.

Age Restrictions: It’s vital to ensure your marketing campaigns are not geared towards minors and anyone under the legal age to consume cannabis. In most states, it’s 21 years old and 19 years old in most provinces in Canada.

Content Restrictions: Certain aspects of content must be avoided when marketing cannabis, including images and videos of consuming/using cannabis products, making medical claims about products, testimonials or endorsements about the product, and giving false or misleading statements.

Channel Restrictions: Where you choose to market your cannabis brand and products is also important, and some of your chosen marketing channels might ban cannabis content. Traditional channels like print advertising for billboards may be banned in certain areas, as well as television advertisements. Digital channels may also struggle, as some platforms allow advertising while others make it incredibly difficult.

Location Restrictions: Staying up to date with local laws and regulations is essential. Whether it’s your state, province, country, territory, or county, knowing what’s legal in your area will help you get a better view of how to tackle cannabis advertising. This includes physical advertising like billboards, which may be restricted in certain areas like near public parks, schools, daycare centers, etc.

Due to advertising restrictions, cannabis brands have to jump hurdles when looking for creative ways to market their brand and products. We’ve included a few surefire ways to advertise cannabis products below.

Partner With Influencers: One of the most creative and reliable ways of marketing your cannabis brand and products is partnering with social media influencers. They use their own platform to talk about your brand and products while introducing your company to an entirely new audience.

Create Website Content Using SEO: This is often overlooked by cannabis companies since it takes some extra work. Still, it can be incredibly beneficial. Creating original and educational content about cannabis and/or hemp using SEO strategies and keywords will drastically increase traffic to your website. These blog posts will appear in search engines like Google. Using SEO and keywords will help bump you up in Google’s rankings, meaning more traffic and potential customers.

Email Marketing: On your website, having a section for potential customers to sign up for your newsletters not only helps build brand awareness but legally keeps people up to date with your latest product offerings.

Twitter: Twitter made headlines recently when the social media platform recently became the first to allow legal cannabis advertising. What does that mean for cannabis brands? You can reach an entirely new audience without crossing community guidelines and getting your post taken down (cough cough, Meta). Now’s the time to make a Twitter account, follow people and companies in the industry, and get your name and products out there.

Meta (Facebook & Instagram): Meta is notorious for frowning upon cannabis advertising. However, there are a few ways to get around it. Avoid marketing your products and prices, and focus on advertising your company to build brand awareness. You can talk about your customer service, why you’re in business, share news about your company, and create posts that focus on your brand as a whole.

Hire A Cannabis Marketing Team: Work smarter, not harder. Online media companies focusing on cannabis marketing already have strategies and techniques to advertise your weed brand. 

Cannabis advertising can be tricky. Knowing the restrictions of different social media platforms and the local laws where you operate is essential to not only stay afloat but thrive. 

Luckily, there are a few surefire ways you can market your weed brand and products without crossing laws and community guidelines. If you’re still unsure, cannabis marketing teams with proven systems and strategies can help you avoid headaches and get the task done how you see fit.