How To Increase Your Smoke Shop Sales – Part 1
In Part 1 of the series we look at Digital Marketing & Outreach
Increasing your sales at your smoke shop is usually the number one goal of any entrepreneur in the space. With thousands of smoke shops across the country all fighting for space, how do go about even starting to do that?
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization or “SEO” is one of the first things you can do to help get eyes on your business online. Making sure keywords are injected in your content relevant to the smoke shop space and making sure you are ranking is paramount. The old adage about SEO is “The best way to hide a dead body is to dump it on Page 2 of Google search results”, honestly this could not be closer to the truth. Think in your own search activity. How often have you gone to page 2 of Google to look for something relevant? Hiring an SEO company to make sure you rank is key.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media is today’s hottest trend in digital marketing, and making sure you are always on top of Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and Facebook, is necessary to reaching both new customers, while keeping your current ones engaged with your brand. While cannabis paraphernalia DOES get scrutinized by Social Media platforms, hashtagging is a fantastic way to market your brand. Analyzing hashtag trends and making sure you are always keying in relevant terms is how you both get on top, and stay on top. Websites like Hashtagify can help take the guesswork out of your marketing strategy, and automated systems like Hootsuite can help you from having to sit by your computer and phone just to post at the perfect time.
Email & SMS Marketing
Sending updates directly to the customer is a go-to for top brands to make sure you are always letting your current customers know when the top sales are happening in store or that the newest products arrived on your shelves. But how do you get started? On the email side, MailChimp is a great way to get started sending out template based email updates to your customers on a recurring basis. From there you can segment your lists based on what they like, sending only vaporizer updates to those who like vaporizers, or any other type of segmentation you can think of to increase the relevancy to the end consumer. SMS or Short Message System (Text Messaging) is another great way to send updates to your customer base about sales or contests. Companies like Slick Text, help deliver your relevant message direct to consumers phones.
Make sure to stay tuned to Part 2 where we discuss Design and Branding
