So you are passionate about marijuana and would like to make it your full-time job. Well, with the power of the internet and the ongoing legalization of cannabis throughout the world, the time has never been better!
Many people want to simply try and sell weed, but this is a low margins business. With the rise of legalized marijuana, you have a ton of new options in what kind of business you start in the cannabis industry.
In the guide, I am going to show you how to start your very own cannabusiness and market it to bring in customers.
Choosing a Cannabusiness
As I mentioned earlier, now its the best time to start a cannabusiness. There’s are so many great markets that legalized marijuana has created. For example, here are some ideas of new businesses you could start that don’t even have to do with selling weed itself:
- Marijuana Product Packaging Designer
- Social Media Marketing for Marijuana Businesses
- Dispensary Security Recruiting
- Marijuana Business Insurance Provider
- Vape Accessories Store
- CBD Store
- Software for the Cannabis Industry
- Web Design for cannabis Companies
Choosing a cannabusiness is probably the most important part of this process of starting a cannabis-based business. You want to be sure to choose a business that can make you enough money to live and even thrive.
There should be a good market for what you are trying to sell or you are going to have a hard time finding customers.
You can do a quick search on Moz or Ahrefs to see if people are searching for your specific product.
Let’s say that you want to start a rolling papers company that makes super special rolling papers. You can do a quick keyword search in Ahrefs and see there are about 12,000 searches a month for this term.
That means there’s a decent amount of people looking to buy rolling papers online. If you’re rolling papers are $2 to make and $5 retail, you will make $3 profit per sale.
Let’s say that you rank #1 for rolling papers (which would be quite difficult) and you get 12,000 visits a month. If just 5% of those people purchase your rolling papers, you could make $1800 a month profit, just from that keyword alone.
This is just a quick way to do some online market research but you should spend a few more hours or days researching what you are selling and make sure there’s a good market.
Starting a Cannabusiness
Now that you have done marketing research and picked your product or service, its time to legally create your business.
You will need to create a business entity that separates your personal and business income so that you can’t get personally screwed if something we were to happen… and trust me, it’s likely.
Depending on your state of residence, you will need to login to the state’s business portal and register an LLC (limited liability company).
This creates a barrier between your personal and business tax, income, and legal issues so that you can’t be liable personally.
Register an EIN
Now that you are a legal business, you have to pay legal taxes. 🙁
The last thing to do to legally start your cannabusiness is to register an EIN with the IRS. EIN stands for an employer identification number. It is basically your social security number for your business. This is how the IRS tracks your income and expenses and you will need it to do anything with the business.
Once you have your EIN, you can sign up to vendors, create a business bank account, get a business credit card, etc.
License & Regulations
If you are wanting to go into the dispensary, growing or cultivating business, then you will need to do a little more work.
Each state has different licenses and regulations that you may need to start your cannabusiness.
For example, In Nevada, you will need to contact the Department of Taxation to obtain your medical marijuana retail license.
If you are in California, you can contact one of these agencies to inquire more about licensing:
To find out how to obtain a license in your state, simply google “{Your State} Marijuana License” and you will find all the information you need.
Marketing a Cannabusiness
Marketing your cannabusiness is the only way you are going to sell anything. It’s probably the most important part of the process so listen carefully!
Now that your business is all set up, its time to market it to the masses. But how in the heck are you going to get anyone to visit your website and buy your product or service?
Social Media Marketing
Using social media to promote your business or product is one of the most popular (and ‘cool’) ways to market your cannabusiness online.
Social platforms like Instagram and Facebook get millions of daily active users, every single day.
First, you will need to create a profile on all of the most popular social media channels including:
- Youtube
On each platform, be sure to fill out your profile as much as possible. Add your website, business name, a nice photo and make sure that you are posting content regularly and following like-minded individuals.
Follow & Engage
On Twitter and Instagram, you can search for hashtags that are relevant to your business.
Let’s go back to our rolling papers example. Search for hashtags like #joint #joints
Simply follow all of these users and engage with their posts and they will usually follow you back.
Run Contest
Contests are a great way to gain more followers and have people engage with your profiles. Simply run a free giveaway or contests by having your followers like a post, tag a friend or retweet… whatever it may be.
You can even run a free giveaway of your own product or service. People love free stuff and will do just about anything to win something for free.
Ask for shares / Retweets
Search Engine Marketing
The best way to get more eyeballs on your website is SEO. Search Engine Optimization is the practice of optimizing your website so that it ranks high in Google for popularly searched terms.
SEO is great for the cannabusiness industry because there are high searches and low competition (for now).
You can break up SEO into 2 distinct categories:
On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO is the method of optimizing your website so that it can rank well in search engines. I’m not going to go super in-depth as we have a number of other articles on the subject.
Most importantly, make sure that your site is mobile responsive, fast, have meta titles/descriptions and you are creating content every week (or multiple times per week).
Blogging is the only way you are going to grow your traffic from Google.
Write content about your niche or business. Going back to our rolling papers business, here are some articles you could write to get more visitors from Google:
- How to roll the perfect joint
- What to know about rolling paper
- Most popular rolling paper brands
Any of these articles will bring in your target customer to your website, where you can then convert them into paying customers.
Off-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO is also a very important piece of search engine optimization. Building backlinks to your website is ultimately what’s going to rank you high in Google.
The more quality backlinks you have to your website pages and content, the better you will rank in Google.
There are a number of different ways that you can create backlinks but here are a few:
- Guest Posting on other sites (read more)
- Cannabis directories (read more)
- Skyscraper technique (read more)
- Coupon Websites
- Review Sites
You always want to make sure your links are relevant to your site or niche… so in this case, marijuana-based websites will give you the best results.
But SEO takes some time… You will not rank #1 in a week. So, if you have some money to spend on marketing, you can try pay per click advertising as well.
Pay Per Click
Pay Per Click is a little more difficult to do in the marijuana industry, but it’s possible.
We run Google Ads for a number of clients and have had great success. Since its actually against Google’s TOS to advertise for marijuana businesses, it makes running ads a little complicated.
You will need to create a landing page because Google Ads will eventually ban your URL if it catches you advertising for cannabis. But if you are an ancillary business, like Marijuana SEO, then it’s likely you will be able to advertise on Google.
For example, here is one of our ads on Google:
If you are an ancillary business, you can get away with using terms like “cannabis”, “marijuana” and “dispensary” but if you are actually selling marijuana, you may get disapproved by Google.
The best way to go about it is to get a professional service to manage your ads for you. Marijuana SEO provides this service for any Cannabusiness looking to advertise online.
Wrapping Up
In conclusion, right now is the perfect time to start your very own cannabusiness. The market is growing year over year and there are more businesses to create than ever! So put on your entrepreneur hat and start making things happen.
Make sure to do extensive market research, legally register your business, and market it online using the latest digital marketing methods.
