YouTube marketing for the cannabis industry

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Research shows that your customers are already watching videos online and many of them prefer to learn about products and services through video content. In 2020, the time people spent watching videos online increased by 43%. Additionally, 31% of cannabis users prefer to find out about products on YouTube today. In fact, YouTube was the second most popular source for learning more about products as a whole.

In other words, the data shows that online video marketing must be a priority for cannabis and cannabis-related companies for two simple reasons: People spend more time watching digital videos than ever before, and many of them want more about products and businesses Services experience online videos.

Getting started with YouTube Marketing

Whether you are a cannabis company selling products directly to consumers or a subsidiary that sells products and services to cannabis license holders, you can use YouTube video content to achieve a number of strategic goals including:

• Increase brand awareness
• Build brand trust
• Position your brand as a visible expert
• Consumer education
• Increasing positive signals for improved results in social media marketing and search engine optimization
• Proof that your company keeps its brand promise
• Make your brand appear “human”
• Build emotional connections with your brand
• Integrate visual content into your omni-channel marketing strategy
• Leverage content re-use (either from your videos to your blog, email marketing, etc., or vice versa)
• And much more

The key to using YouTube for your online video marketing is setting up your branded channel and posting useful, interesting, educational, and meaningful content. Follow YouTube’s rules for creating content related to cannabis and make sure you don’t break the rules and disable your channel.

Remember, your goal shouldn’t be to promote or sell. It should be about educating, explaining, entertaining and / or engaging.

What to post on your YouTube channel

Very few people want to watch promotional videos. You see enough ads every day that not only do you not post promotional videos, but you also have no problems with YouTube, but also make the viewers happy.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can never create and post promotional videos. Do this sparingly so people don’t see your channel as a series of ads.

For each video you create, think about how you can use it to indirectly promote your business. For example, a video about cannabis culture or research could easily link to the products and services offered by many different types of businesses. Hire a great copywriter and let them do their magic to create a great script!

With that in mind, here are some popular YouTube video ideas to start brainstorming your own content plan:

• Videos with instructions
• Interviews
• Unpack product videos
• Tutorials
• Behind the scenes of your company
• Customer reference videos
• Case study videos
• Product launch videos
• Cannabis culture videos
• Research and data videos
• News videos
• Event videos
• Webinars and presentations
• Demo videos

Don’t be afraid to get creative and come up with various video ideas that can indirectly promote your products and services by providing useful, engaging, educational, and relevant content in video format.

How to advertise and share your YouTube videos

When you post a new video on your YouTube channel, you need to promote it so people know it exists. The top three ways to share your video and get more views is to promote it through your brand’s social media channels, your company blog, and your email marketing campaigns. Let’s take a closer look at each one.

Share your YouTube videos on social media

When you post a new YouTube video, you can share it with your brand’s followers on any social media platform that you have profiles and / or pages on. This includes Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. Depending on the type of business you’re promoting, some social media channels make more sense than others (e.g. LinkedIn is great for business-to-business sharing, but less so for consumer-owned businesses).

Not only can you share the entire video through social media, but you can also break the video into smaller snippets for even more content to share. This shorter video content can work particularly well on some social media platforms like Instagram.

Another option is to take screenshots of compelling frames in your video and share them separately on your social media channel.

Don’t share your entire fortune at once! A single video can create multiple assets that you can use to promote and re-promote it over time.

Write about your YouTube video and share it on a blog post

The content of any video you post on YouTube should be the subject of a dedicated blog post.

Don’t write about the video. Instead, write about the topic covered in the video and offer the video as another way to consume the content. After all, not everyone likes to watch videos, so it’s important to offer the content in writing on your blog (this is also great for search engine optimization).

When you create the blog post, embed the video directly into the post so that the visitors who want to view it can do so without leaving your website.

Promote your YouTube videos in email marketing campaigns

Email marketing is a great way to make sure your audience knows that your video exists and why it is relevant to them. Embedding a video in an email marketing campaign is a spam flag. Therefore, do not include any embed code in your messages that will allow your videos to be played from a recipient’s email inbox.

Instead, take a screenshot of a great frame from the video and save it as a PNG or JPG image of the size you want it to appear in the final message. Create your campaign in your email marketing platform and include the image in the message along with a link that recipients can click on and view the full video.

Ideally, if you want to get your website visitors to look around, learn more about your business, and possibly make a purchase or contact you, you should create a link to your blog post that has the embedded video. On the other hand, if you want to increase the number of YouTube subscribers, the link in the email message should lead to the video on your YouTube channel.

Your next steps in using YouTube marketing for your cannabis business

YouTube is an important part of the content marketing strategy for all cannabis and cannabis companies. First, create your brand’s YouTube channel, put together some videos, and promote them on social media, on your company blog, and in your email marketing campaigns.

Did you know already? Subscribers to the Cannabiz Media License Database can promote their YouTube videos and other content directly to cannabis and hemp license holders using the built-in email marketing tool. Schedule a demo and see how you can connect with verified leads from cannabis and hemp license holders in the US, Canada, and international markets.