6 Must-Dos To Maintain Human Connection in Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is one of the fastest changing industries in the world and today’s digital marketing technology is more advanced than ever before. Automation and technology lets marketers do so much more in a fraction of the time. Technology helps us track, analyze and reach target customers.

According to a recent Forbes Insights survey, nearly 62% of brand and agency representatives around the world are satisfied with how well their current marketing technology is meeting their expectation and 57% plan to make new technology investments.

We have technology to help us understand customer behavior and characteristic trends. Growth in smartphone adaption and the popularity of mobile and messaging has exploded since 2005 with 50% of searches done on mobile. Artificial intelligence such as Facebook’s Bot Engine for Messenger, that offer consumer assistance, is one of the biggest trends of 2016. Marketing cloud solutions like Adobe, Salesforce, and HubSpot help us help us automate data across customer lifecycles.

Multi-platform internet usage requires marketers to manage email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, paid and organic search and more across platforms. And more new technologies are coming!

With such powerful automation at our fingertips, it can be easy to overlook the ‘human connection’ involved in digital marketing. How do you think about your customers? How well do you understand your audience? What do they want?

Digital marketers can, and should, be considering customers and prospects in all aspects of digital marketing. Some ways to do this come right out of the traditional marketing playbook. Knowing your customer is the first step to winning others like them to your brand. Customer demographics like age, gender, income, education and occupation are on nearly every marketer’s radar. But what about customer psychographics? What do you know about a potential customer’s interests, activities and opinions?

Here are six ways to understand your customers and to maintain a human connection.

1. Focus Groups. Focus groups offer a great advantage to marketers. Invite a group of people who meet the demographics of those you want to attract to have a discussion. Ask them questions to get at a better understanding of what they want in a product, how they choose to make a purchase, and what motivates them actually make the purchase. The more people who join in, the better your chances to really understand your customer base.

2. Build Relationships. When promoting your product or service avoid pushing information or advertising at your audience. Instead focus on building an ongoing relationship. Social media is designed to let customers look for help and for you to provide feedback and resolve problems. Can you be empathetic with your audience? When you truly understand them and care about what they want, the better that relationship will become.

3. Create a Customer Persona. Consider creating a marketing persona to represent your customer. Include demographic information, their goals and challenges, their values and fears, as well as their interests, activities and opinions. How do you do this? Review your website analytics to determine additional demographic information about your customers. Use social media listening to find potential customers. What are they saying already?  You could also bring a group of colleagues together—human resources, customer service, accounting, etc—to share their customer perspectives with you. And, a really sound approach is to ask your customers questions directly. Conduct a survey, a focus group or one-on-one interviews. Once you’ve pulled together a customer profile or persona, give her/him a name. Bring them to life for your marketing team so every interaction is personal.

4. Use Emotion in Marketing. People are, after all, human and as humans most of us have emotions and often make purchasing decisions based on emotions. Rather than base marketing strategies on hard data, add emotion to your marketing. Tell a story with humor, excitement, action, adventure…whatever motivates your customer.

5. Show Your Own Humans. Marketers usually promote a company filled with people. Why not show—through photos and videos—those who connect with customers? This helps humanize your company and your marketing efforts. Use testimonials, statements about company philosophy, why customers matter, etc to show that the company cares about customers.

6. Get Personal. Can visitors find a telephone number easily on your website? When they call, do they get an automated answer or does a person pick up? The last thing you want is to lose a prospect because they can’t reach a real person. Ensure that customer service representatives—or anyone who interacts with customers—knows how to be friendly and professional on the phone. And, set up policies and procedures that reflect how you feel about your customers so everyone within the company understands how important this is.

Try not to get mired in digital marketing technology and automation. Learn to listen to your customers. Treat them like people by keeping human relationships at the forefront of your marketing and customer service.

Moving a Mountain: Pioneer and Advocate Jeff Jones Reflects on 20 Years in the Cannabis Industry

Note: This blog post was originally written for Oaksterdam University’s Cannabis Industry Today.

From right to left: Jeff Jones, Mikki Norris and Chris Conrad in mid to late 1990s

It’s been 20 years since the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club (OCBC) set up shop in the heart of downtown Oakland. Jeff Jones, who now operates the Patient ID Center and who is an Oaksterdam University professor, was one of the pioneers who helped change the course of cannabis in the United States. Cannabis Industry Today sat down with Jones to remember what it was like two decades ago and to learn just how far the City of Oakland and the cannabis industry has changed since.

Cannabis Industry Today: What was Oakland like in 1995 and `96?

Jeff Jones: Very few people came downtown. It was largely vacant of businesses and still broken down from the earthquake that hit San Francisco, Oakland and Loma in 1989. Rent was cheap and parking on the street was readily available. When I opened OCBC, a patient could easily park right on the street and run in for a pickup.

Cannabis Industry Today: What motivated you to come to Oakland back then?

Jeff Jones: I watched my father suffer from cancer treatment, which is pretty impactful on a teenager. He died in 1988 in home hospice when I was 14 years old. That same year Federal Administrative Judge Francis L. Young had ruled that cannabis should be immediately rescheduled to allow research on its therapeutic benefits. Though I learned this later in my life, I was very frustrated that an alternative therapy could have helped my father but there had been no information about cannabis available or legal access to it for anyone. It wasn’t until I was in college that I heard about the Cannabis Action Network (CAN), which had a hemp booth at a Primus concert. Based in Oakland, CAN was a source of information about marijuana at a time when the government didn’t recognize any of the medicinal properties of cannabis. There I met Debby Goldsberry, who founded CAN, and others and got a crash course in cannabis activism and how to create change at a grassroots level.

Cannabis Industry Today: So you’re in Oakland and decide to start the OCBC. How did that come about and what happened?

Jeff Jones:  I followed in the footsteps of cannabis advocates Dennis Peron and Brownie Mary, who were heavily involved in providing medical cannabis to AIDS patients in San Francisco in the early 1990s. The first time I ever saw any government official supporting cannabis at the time was when then Board of Supervisor Tom Ammiano participated in Dennis’s ribbon cutting ceremony for the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club.

In Oakland, I saw an opportunity to do something that could help the City and help patients who wanted and needed access to medical cannabis. But, I decided to go with a slightly altered model compared to Dennis—one that could become a model for others anywhere in the country.

OCBC was a bicycle delivery business and I worked with the City to create an official Resolution of Support, which passed in 1996. This allowed me to rent space and set up shop right on Broadway downtown and it made the City of Oakland the first U.S. city to contract with a medical cannabis provider. A task force of people from law enforcement, the city manager’s office, the city attorney’s office and the cannabis community came up with guidelines for how the police would handle people using marijuana and how to determine if there were using it recreationally or medically. That’s how the idea of a medical card came about.

There were no regulations in place for a cannabis business, so I self-regulated OCBC with the goal of being a respectable business and good neighbor. Cannabis wasn’t being taxed, but I paid taxes on cannabis sold through a bit of ‘smoke and mirrors’ method. Cannabis items were identified as pens, paper—items that were legally taxed—to ensure I paid taxes on goods sold by OCBC. Word-of-mouth news about OCBC grew and patients only received cannabis if they had a recommendation from a medical doctor.  Many of the practices I implemented then became the tenants of Senate Bill 420 and the Attorney General Guidelines of 2008.

Cannabis Industry Today: How long did OCBC stay in operation?

Jeff Jones: Many city council members helped me legitimize my goal to bring medical cannabis to patients in Oakland. OCBC had operated for about two years before the U.S. Department of Justice sued us; the civil lawsuit caused us to close up the dispensary and to fight the battle in court and public opinion.

The case, which began in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was argued up to the U.S. Supreme Court and was the first case to ask the question for medical necessity patients. From the beginning I was not going to let the federal government call me a ‘drug dealer,’ and that focus and tenacity to continue was important. Without it I would not have been treated fairly.

“We experienced setbacks in the case, but I think we triggered a new feeling that not all marijuana cases filed lead to prison time–a battle that is still being waged throughout the country today–and the case created a discussion about states’ rights that has influenced cannabis legalization around the country.”

— Jeff Jones reflecting on U.S. Supreme Court case United States vs Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club and Jeffrey Jones

Cannabis Industry Today: Were you treated fairly?

Jeff Jones: I think so, yes. We experienced setbacks in the case, but I think we triggered a new feeling that not all marijuana cases filed lead to prison time—a battle that is still being waged throughout the country today—and the case created a discussion about states’ rights that has influenced cannabis legalization around the country. My experience has allowed me to share a cannabis business model…a regulation model…that is duplicable and acceptable around the country.

Cannabis Industry Today: How has Oakland changed since 1996?

Jeff Jones:  Oakland offers the perfect example of how legal cannabis sales can be regulated and taxed and how it creates a positive economic impact. The cannabis industry helped seed change in Oakland and today the city is thriving. Oaksterdam University started here in 2007. The Fox Theater was renovated in 2009 and restaurants have opened all around it. The old Sears store is now being renovated into office space, hotels are going up and there are plans to revitalize Jack London Square, Old Town and Uptown.

The City continues to be open to change. In May, the Council voted to pass the Equity Permit Program, which allows recently incarcerated to be eligible for medical cannabis industry permits. It’s a unique move. Across the nation such convicted felons would be barred from entering the legal cannabis trade. What would make the Equity Program even better would be to also offer loans so these businesses could get set up…give them hope as well as ability.

Cannabis Industry Today:  And, the cannabis industry?

Jeff Jones: We moved a mountain. There are lots of individuals who have made a difference. When I first started advocating for cannabis I thought change would happen faster, but it’s not that simple. I think a lie got started about cannabis and then more lies were added onto that original lie and that’s what people believed. A key turning point in the perception of cannabis came when Dr. Sanjay Gupta apologized on CNN for his original opinions about marijuana and released a documentary called “Weed.” Today support of cannabis legalization among Americans is outpacing opposition to it, 25 states have legal medical marijuana, and we are on the cusp of rescheduling cannabis. I’d say that’s pretty huge.

7 Digital Must-Dos To Promote Your Cannabis Business

Promoting your cannabis business is challenging. Because cannabis is still illegal federally and laws vary from state-to-state, knowing what you can and cannot do isn’t always clear. While you want to avoid advertising with search engines such as Google and Yahoo, sending postcards through the mail, or setting up a store on Facebook, you do have options for reaching your patients and dispensaries.

1. Start With a Strong Brand. Creating a strong brand will build patient and dispensary recognition and give you a competitive edge in the market. Focus on what makes your products different and the shared values you have with prospects. From there it will be easier to connect with customers and introduce new products.

2. Go Organic Strategically. Choose your words carefully for your website and your social media posts. Hone in one the phrases and words patients and dispensaries use when looking for cannabis products, then hone in on other words specific to your brand and the shared values you project.

3. Follow Mainstream Social Media Rules. You can promote your brand on social media if you understand the ground rules. Earlier this year, Facebook dropped some dispensaries from its platform. This rattled the industry but the dispensaries hadn’t read the fine print for using the mainstream platform. Focus on education and brand recognition on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. (see How to Protect Your Cannabis Facebook Page for more insight)

4. Use Cannabis-Based Social Media Platforms. There are social media platforms specific to the cannabis industry and promoting your brand on them will be safer. By now you’ve probably heard of MassRoots, the first to market. But there are others including Duby, which is similar to Instagram and Social High, which is like Facebook–both are specific to the marijuana industry.

5. List Your Business on Cannabis Directories. Many of these directories are free and offer great back links to your website. Some worthy of mentioning include the Marijuana Business Daily Industry Directory, Medical Jane’s Database of Cannabis Businesses, and Ganjapreneur Business Directory, and Dispensaries.com.

6. Maintain a Blog. Writing your own content on your own blog is a great opportunity to share your story and your brand. Blog posts can easily be shared on social media platforms, can be extensions of your website, and can attract prospects based on your knowledge, industry insight, and personality.

7. Email, Email, Email. Connecting with existing patients and dispensaries by email is crucial. Collect emails at every turn if possible–at conferences, cups, online–wherever your brand intersects with prospects. Then create emails with impact and maintain contact consistently.

What’s been your experience promoting your cannabis business online? What’s worked best? If you’re struggling to promote your cannabis business, bring on a digital marketing expert to help!