Generational Marketing
So, you want to effectively market Millennials, Baby Boomers, and Gen X’ers for your cannabis business? You want these age groups to use your services, buy your products, basically commit to help you build your business? Makes sense.
PlanetDaily can help with that.
Let’s Decide Who are you marketing to?
The Baby Boom Generation (52-70yr olds)
Characteristics: Experimental, individualist, free-spirited, self-believing, self-fulfillment, self-improvement, rejection or redefinition of traditional values. Influences: The rise of television, the assassinations of JFK and MLK, the Civil Rights Movement, the Beatles, the Vietnam War, the Apollo moon landing, and Woodstock.
What Works:
- Facebook sponsored ads (about 40% are on facebook)
- Free products
- Coupons
- Alcohol related ads
- Easy instructions
- Make it about their close knit friends. In particular their health. Can this new CBD oil developed by a famous Physician in Israel be helpful for their friend who suffers from Parkinson’s? This age group tends to focus some purchasing on whether or not their friends could benefit from it.
- Not a great media presence in this group. Facebook is used by approximately 40%. It is difficult to market such a group for marijuana online for the Baby Boom generation.
- Loyalty rewards
- Coupons/Ads/Discounts
- Consistent dependable and prompt service. They do not want to wait on hold or not
speak to a manager when they ask to. Their word of mouth is worth it to you to be
courteous, patient and comply with their requests quickly. - Door fliers/postcards-NOT on cars
What does NOT work:
- Any advertising left on their property without permission. Especially cars.
- Cold calls
- Ads on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or SnapChat
Generation X (36-51yr olds)
Characteristics: Rebellious, innovator, independent, entrepreneurial, anti-establishment, skeptical, ecologically-minded, anti-consumerist, short attention span, multi-career minded. Influences: Watergate, 70’s oil prices, Iran hostage crisis, increased divorce rates, rise of technology with personal computers, AIDS, and grunge music.
What Works:
- Facebook sponsored ads
- You will need to find what is considered valuable in their lives. “Valuable” can mean a lot of different things, from providing utility or information, or delivering entertainment, or an experience. Strive to create ideas that create memories, have a positive impact and serve a meaningful purpose.
- Pop Culture advertising. Bring back all those fun memories for them like concerts, tv shows, music and style/fashion.
- Give them free stuff!
- Linkedin, Quora, Facebook are all great for Gen X’ers
- Deals, coupons, discounts
- Loyalty rewards
- Great reviews on Yelp
- Show social proof that the product/service/business works. Show research such as “8 of every 10 Physicians agreed Medical Marijuana reduced symptoms of nausea by at least 50%”
- Head to the comment sections on all social media to encourage others to become familiar with your product/service
- Make sure your website has been backlinked on other sites to increase your traffic/ranking to make it easier to see right away. This generation has a very short attention span.
- Comment in every section on weed pages that you can. Get into all the closed groups Live Feeds comments/link to our page/site, Porn, Car chases, Heavy Metal, Conspiracy Theories, Celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Tommy Chong, Martha Stewart, Metaphysical, Meditation, Alternative Medicine, Every disease that can benefit from Cannabis, Parkinson’s, Epilepsy, Cancer, yoga
- Get articles written, not just about cannabis but about marketing, specifically cannabis. Hot Topics! Ask a question to the public like “I can’t sleep. What do you use when you can’t sleep? How much before sleep should I use it?” Need section to allow answers.
- Meetups groups
- Events that combine 2 activities into one. Example: Strain specialists talk with yoga class. Meditation combined with meet and greet of like minded cannabis conscious users-consumption allowed.
What Does Not Work?
- Phone calls/cold calling
- Constant emails. Once every other week is still too much for most users to open and read. IF you insist make it short and place a FREE offer, Yearly SALE, BOGO Friday, etc on the subject line to grab their attention. No need to open unless something good comes of it
- Bait and switch or misleading advertising.
- Bad reviews on Yelp
- Loud or automatic sound on video ads. Let them choose.
- Using paid followers, paid posts on ads, paid “likes”. People can easily find this out and
then they feel betrayed - Automatic video or sound on any website/Ad
- Requiring additional private information that they are not required to provide (privacy)
- Canvassing their neighborhood (door to door)
Millennials (18-35yr olds)
Characteristics: Style savvy, tech savvy, making more money at younger ages, independent, socially and environmentally aware, pro-community, multicultural, pro gender equality. Influences: Fall of Berlin Wall, birth of the internet, dotcom boom and bust, 9/11, social media growth, and rebirth of pop culture.
What Works
- Be and STAY human. Show a personal side of your product or service-be specific as to why this person should commit to your product
- When you tell stories about the people that surround your brand instead of stories about the brand itself. The idea is to market around the product/service and focus on the people that make the product/service available
- The concept that your relationship with a Millennial buyer/user is like dating and you are trying to court them. Your approach must make your services/products unique to them.
- Be a part of activism groups they are. Go to meetings, sponsor meetings/events, advocate, follow their interests on social media to be up to date on what the platform is that they are supporting at that time. It will change rapidly sometimes so be always ready to change course.
- Memes
- Video based content no more than 20-30 seconds
- 2 steps to get anything done. 3 will be pushing it. Make your process to purchase or engage simple, dummy proof and as minima steps as possible
- Apps/websites
- Showcase cannabis brands that are pioneers in their product or service.
- Expose cannabis brands that go against the grain of what cannabis stands for.
- Show how you reward the environmentally conscious services/products
- Text notifications with the ability to text back and forth
- Engage them in wanting to help you. Even if it isn’t your event but it is bringing an awareness to a cause be sure to inform them of it. Remind them that you are on the lookout for them. Then, make it easy to get there. Take care of all the incidental issues. They like it to be organized and for them to do as little prep as possible.
- Deals/Discounts/coupons
- Loyalty rewards
- Tumblr, SnapChat, Instagram Ads/blogs/presence
- Making sure your site has been backlinked on several other sites
- Instagram: Photographer of the week, Collage of photos, Pictures with charity causes,-Use creation tool
Clicks to Website – Use this objective if you want to send users to a specific page of your website, such as a page describing your newest product or your hottest offer.
Website Conversions – Choose this option if you want users to take a specific action, such as buying one of your products or signing up for a bulletin.
Mobile App Installs – If you have a mobile app and want to gain more downloads, this is the perfect option for you.
Mobile App Engagement – Use this objective if you want users to engage more actively with your mobile app.
Video Views – If you have a story to tell, this objective is what you need. You can showcase some of your happy customers or make a product video. The choice is up to you.
Reach and Frequency – Use this option if you want to promote your message and have a lot of control over it.
Page Post Engagement – This objective gives you the opportunity to engage people with your Instagram ad and increase the number of your followers.
Mass Awareness – This option allows you to advertise to a big audience, but it’s available only through Insertion Order.
What Does Not Work
- Business cards-straight to trash
- Loyalty or discount cards that are not in an app(no handheld)
- Mailers-Straight to trash can
- Emails-becomes irritating/ignore/delete/unsubscribe
- brochures at events-becomes trash on the ground
- Uninvited texts-catches them off guard/will end up getting blocked
- cold calls-they have no desire to talk on the phone
- Giving them only 1 choice-there are too many choices out there to accept just one.
- Making using your service/buying your product inconvenient-uh Uber…..
- If your company doesn’t support a cause. Millennials are known to pay more for a product/service if the company has a cause it supports. Take a stand.
- Not being authentic to your brand or to your customer. They will know if you are not staying true to your purpose, of which they will want you to have advertised greatly.
- Any advertisement in any way close to advertising to children/under 21 years old.
All generations:
Remember, reviews count heavily in your presence online. Always respond, when able, to any negative reviews. Be sure to create active accounts that you update at least every other day on social media. Register your business on the non-social accounts below.
Twitter
Facebook
Local.yahoo
Send2press
Slideshare
Tumblr
Instagram
Mapquest
Google+
BBB
LinkedIn
Losangeles.com /whatever city paper in your town
Citysearch
Yahoo
Google pages
Yellow pages
SnapChat
Yelp