In this episode, Alex Quin interviews Keven Pimentel and Michelle Chia on what the future holds for marketing CBD brands in 2023. With a vast knowledge of content marketing, SEO and social media, Keven and Michelle will discuss the various strategies involved in building successful CBD brands as well as trends that are likely to emerge in the future. Tune in to find out what they have to say!
Wisdom Nuggets:
- SEO takes time to reflect. You investing in SEO now does not mean you will instantly start seeing results. If anything, you'll start getting results in a few months or a year, depending on the agency you work with. It is also essential that you look into the agency that you work with to see that the blogs that you upload have the right keywords that you're targeting and have awesome graphics. It also has to be content that you pre-created and curated. So, it's not just a matter of creating good quality block content in written form, but photos and videos contents are also important for your business growth.
- Keven identified the two layers of SEO, which are the content and technical side. The technical side here is how to communicate with the algorithms of Google, website speed, broken links, website structure, headers, etc. They advised that you hire an expert if you aren't the expert already.
- Niche yourself. Do not try to sell to everyone. Think about an audience. Pick an audience that you're comfortable with or an audience that's worth really diving into. Speak to them, create for them, talk to them, nurture them, love them, support them and make a brand that's so undeniably relevant to their life and lifestyle that you are the go-to option, and you own that part of the market.
Podcast Outline:
Alex: (00:40) All right, so we're back. I think it's been what, like a year since we did this? At the beginning of last year, we did a podcast episode. Right? Michelle's not scared of podcasts anymore, so when we ask her to be on a podcast, she's ready.
Alex: (1:28) By the way, this is Hustle Inspires Hustle. Kevin Pimentel, Michelle Chiia. Kevin Pimentel is the founder of kamasa Marketing Agency. Michelle is the global marketing director at UADV and is the marketing powerhouse behind pretty much every single one of my brands.
Keven: (1:47) All right. So yeah, with that background, so I do have the agency outside of that, I've actually dabbled in actually developing within the CBD space itself. I mean, I learned a, a lot extraordinary amount of information from that experience alone. And then also the brands that even like we've even started working on together which, you know, we can talk about later on.
Keven: (2:23) CBD basically also equals cannabis a k a marijuana. But there is a difference in distinction between the types of plants, which we can get into later on. But the idea here is anything associated to that, it's a hot zone.
Alex: (2:47) Yeah. When it comes to like c b marketing, you're kind of marketing with one and a half pants tied behind your back. So yeah, you're kinda like a chef in the kitchen and you have to cook this whole recipe, but you only got like 20% of, of the ingredients. And what I mean by that is obviously there's a lot of regulation, right?
Alex: (03:03) When starting your CBD business, it's not just marketing, but also like the payment processing part is a little bit complex. Not every payment processor is gonna accept you cuz you're considered high risk. Not every bank's gonna accept you. So there is a process for that, a process that you're really helpful with on one of our most recent projects. So let's dive right in. Right? Let's dive into what are the elements of advertising CBD online.
Alex: (03:26) First and foremost, we have SEO, we have influencer marketing, we have content marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing. And then we'll also talk a little bit about hemp versus CBD. There's a few other marketing channels that we could probably talk about. We'll go one by one. SEO, let's talk about SEO. This is where Michelle jumps in.
Michelle: (3:56) I mean, yeah. So SEO, if many of you don't know; it basically stands for a search engine optimization. What it basically means is whenever you go on Google and you search something like Nike Red Shoes and a blog or a pro product page comes up, the reason it comes up is because of SEO.
Michelle: (4:36) And also that you have to also really look into the agency that you work with to see that they're not just uploading blogs willy-nilly into your website. So make sure making sure that the blogs that you upload have the right keywords that you're targeting have awesome graphics.
Alex: (5:14) s it easy for me to digest from the headlines to the graphics? A lot of people in blogs, they just wanna put an image to kind of just fill in between the words and miss the whole point of being able to use infographics sometimes to get the point across. A lot of people search for a keyword, let's say, what are the benefits of CBD or a full spectrum CBD oil, for example.
Michelle: (05:52) CBD is such a new and up, not new, but like somewhat new up and coming product that's like almost trending now to people like always using it for their pets to sleep for pain anxiety. And since it's such a new and unknown, I guess, type of um, territory, people are always gonna be looking into educational stuff.
Alex: (6:26) Especially people that could be a little bit confused because they don't know, the, I guess they're, there's a blurred line between CBD, and cannabis. Will CBD get me high? We'll see, can I take CBD with this supplement or with this medicine? Can I take CBD while pregnant? Can I, there's so many different topics that you could talk about. A great tool that we like to use here is Answer the Public is a tool Keven's always talking about. That's a great tool to be able to draw data from.
Alex: (7:09) So yeah, Uber suggests answer the public Sam Rush hfs. Yep. All of these are great tools to be able to market. Now SEO is complex. A lot of people decide to outsource it to an agency. Others wanna learn it in-house. There isn't a right or wrong answer there, right? There's a lot of great courses. One great course we always recommend is Ryan Stewart's SEO blueprint, right?
Alex: (08:05) Why do we talk about SEO first? Well, if we didn't have advertising limitations in the CBD industry or even in the cannabis industry, we would just say, Hey, just click on some TikTok ads, click on some Facebook, Instagram, or even YouTube and Google ads and just drive traffic, measure that traffic and see what's working, what's not working. That's what we were referring to at the beginning. We got hands tied behind our back. We gotta do the best we can with what we have.
Michelle: (08:28) And there is a way to defeat like kind of like find loopholes and defeat the system for ads. Like we've seen ads ourselves at like, say like, oh, like where they blur out the word cannabis and like stuff like that. So there is a way, but that's I guess a different episode.
Alex: (08:53) So what we're gonna talk to, to you guys about here today is like solid ways you guys could advertise if you're looking to start a CBD brand or already have a CBD brand to be specific My bad. Yeah. To market a CBD brand. Um, alright, so we talked about SEO a little bit. I mean, we're not gonna dive super deep into what SEO is.
Keven: (09:30) You know, I'll just make one comment real quick, just so, so that this one details is understood. One thing that Alex mentioned about either insourcing or outsourcing seo, the most important question you need to ask yourself is how much do you really know about seo?
Keven: (10:02) That's something I would much rather, even in an agency that has to handle that will still work with someone who just does that part because it's so minuscule in terms of the details that you can miss that is meant to kind of communicate with the algorithms of Google and anything that's that your website is existing online. Yeah. So make sure that that's something you really understand.
Alex: (10:20) Like website speed. Yes. What else? Like broken links, website structure, headers, everything has to be right. Or, or also when Google crawls it, you're not, it is not gonna get that data correctly and then spit it back into the, into the search engine results.
Keven: (10:33) And one thing is, there's value in SEO because of what they said of it being a marathon because that value continues to compound. And even in the future, if nothing else was done, that value keeps building for free.
And so in the future you will have people clicking onto your website for free that are searching for things that you posted about way in the past and it builds value. So when you ask yourself why is SEO expensive or why can SEO be such a large part of the budget of a marketing plan, or agency, it's extremely important to understand the minutiae that goes into this and the value it brings to you as a business.
Keven: (11:33) So just remember that value as a client or as a business that's considering this higher experts if you aren't the expert already.
Alex: (11:49) Another thing to keep an eye on, and we're talking about this on the car on the way here, if you're an SEO or considering seo, keep an eye on chat GBt cuz I believe Chad GBt's completely gonna change the way that SEO works.
Alex: (12:41) Now influencer marketing, okay, you can't run ads for CBD yet on certain platforms maybe in the future. So you do seo if you already have SEO locked in or decide, hey SEO's not for me right now, maybe that's the last thing I'm gonna do. Influencer marketing is another one, right? So let's talk a little bit about that.
Micelle: (12:56) I think, I think influencer marketing, sometimes people have like a negative view towards it. They're like, oh, like social media influencers, you know? But ultimately influencers can be taken in a way that it's people who love and support your brand without any compensation in a way.
Alex: (13:18) You could go down the route of people that are just generally like support the brand. Like ambassadors. You always have to, like, as a disclaimer from a legal standpoint, whether you're paying somebody to advertise your product or you're sending it to them for free, you have to disclose the relationship.
Michelle: (14:53) I mean yeah, cuz the benefit and like the reason why influencer marketing and affiliate marketing and all of referral marketing works so well is because people have fomo and like people always don't wanna miss out on like, what's the next best product.
Michelle: (15:12) if Michael Jordan comes out and is like, oh, this sore muscle pain relief cream is the best one on the market, you best believe everyone on the and the basketball industry is gonna buy that. Yeah. So that's essentially what influencer marketing is and wow. How powerful it can work.
Alex: (16:30) And it doesn't just have to be influencers. Um, you know, there's many ways of doing affiliate marketing through blogs through in, in, in some cases like YouTube channels, magazines. That's a really great way of doing it because you have no limitation there. You're not gonna get your ads blocked the way you would if you try to launch a campaign on Facebook and like advertise CBD.
Keven: (19:02) So the biggest thing that happens a lot of times is companies just assume influencer means someone has a lot of followers, and you just pay 'em money. And because they're famous, people buy your product. In some categories, that could happen. I guess it really depends on the product, but ultimately focus on who's actually relevant to your customer.
Alex: (21:02) While we're on the topic of influencer marketing, I want to give one of our friends, Olivia Ormo a shout out because Olivia just launched a project called Maven. That's right. Olivia is also a marketing agency owner out here in Miami. Very well respected and she's always also worked for the influencers. Olivia has married those two worlds, which is brands looking for influencers and influencers looking for brands into an app.
Alex: (22:13) Okay, now moving on from SEO and influencer marketing, let's talk about content marketing, which is falls into both of those things that we just talked about, but very important to create content, photo content, video content, written content, user-generated content, people using your, your products for YouTube, shorts, talks, reels on your website, on your blog.
Michelle: (23:17) Yeah, I think product content is also really important. I mean, like the number one page but besides the homepage is the product page for, especially for, like your CBD brand. People like should really invest into having really nice high-quality product photos, whether it be like on a white background or whatever color, brand color background you have. You could literally send, there's companies that you can send your products to and you pay them a small fee, and they will shoot the content for you and send it back to you.
Alex: (24:38) And a lot of the times, all you need to is to do is showcase motion of something. And you could do that in a very, very quick and efficient way with very little space taken up with a gif. You guys could find great examples of that on curlymermaidhair.com, which is one of Kevin's companies.
Keven: (25:04) I would say consider the fact that everyone right now is constantly engaging in content. Think TikTok and Instagram reels, right? If that's the most of their life outside of what they interacted on a physical basis, is something that's either entertaining them, informing them, but it's moving.
Michelle: (26:17) Even even Instagram and YouTube are now pushing more short-form content like YouTube shorts and Instagram reels. They, they're like, please post more videos.
Keven: (26:35) Because I know the performance marketers that are listening, so there's gonna be like, wait, I have a lot of winning ads with static images. We're talking about organic.
Alex: (27:08) So, and so we're on a podcast right now. There's health and wellness podcasts, there's different podcasts where you could place CBD ads on. You could do giveaways on the podcast. And that's a really, really great way to get people to engage. And if you actually send the products out and people actually try the products out, it becomes a real thing.
Alex: (27:35) Before we move on to the next one, let's talk about how it could potentially be done. Because if somebody's like, all right, podcast, how would I do it? Well, there, there's a few ways that you could do this. You could compile a list on Apple Music, on Spotify, or on any other platform.
Alex: (28:35) Email marketing is a great tool. I hate hearing people that don't want to use it or neglect it. Email marketing works great for many reasons. One, if somebody opts into an email marketing list, it's because they're actually interested. They want to know, they're choosing to be part of that communication.
Alex: (29:04) Second reason why email marketing works and many other industries as well is because of the data. Okay? You could upload that data to other platforms, find lookalike audiences or you know, you guys know, know the deal on how that works. So email marketing is a great tool.
Michelle: (29:33) I mean in regards to email marketing, I think your, the most important part, so your email marketing actually works, is for you to have a good lead magnet. If your email marketing doesn't work, it's most likely because your lead magnet is and lead magnet meaning like the reason people are gonna sign up for your newsletter.
Michelle: (29:53) So if it's for a CBD brand, you could have a popup or any type of other type of thing that's like, oh, sign up now and get 15% off. Or you can be even more creative and you can be like, sign up now and get a free sample.
Kelven: (30:39) Yeah. I think the only thing I can honestly say that I've seen specifically work on email campaigns that we ran on, on with my agency was subject line and the top header of the email. And what I mean by that is a subject line that worked the best was an a subject line that began describing an experience or was something that was already like leading you into something.
Keven: (31:23) Most of the time people are already reactively in a no mode when they're in emails cuz they're, they're tired of seeing emails, right? Yeah. So they're already like, no, no, I don't want it, I don't want it, I don't care. But if it's like, are you ready to experience being on an island on Friday? You know, something random like that that you're like, huh, you know what I mean?
Keven: (32:31) the point is the better quality, the e looking, the emails look design-wise, the more per people take it even more seriously cuz they're like, wow, okay, this looks different.
Alex: (33:15) And then when you collect that email on the website or wherever it is that you collect the email, that email should then trigger a nurture or welcome sequence, however you call it, which is a series of emails laid out over a series of days or weeks. Introducing the person to your brand and not asking for things.
Keven: (33:30) A good rule, I've heard many times marketing is for every three pieces of value you bring, you could ask for something, right? Teach them, give them, introduce them, give them a peek behind the curtain, be of value and then have a type of pitch, right?
Michelle: (33:46) Speaking of sequence, we can't forget about abandoned cart sequences also, which is like probably one of the most successful email marketing strategies that we have.
Michelle: (34:53) Don't just have like 10,000 emails. Like great, you have 10,000 but only you're only getting a hundred opens. Like yes. Like clean it out. Like if someone hasn't opened your email in three months, there's a very high chance they're not gonna open it tomorrow.
Alex: (35:08) A lot of people are like, oh, but I don't wanna my list to get smaller. I don't wanna like shrink the list. Shrink a list. Okay. For many reasons, for many reasons. For spam filters, for many other reasons.
Kelven: (35:18) Shrink and segment. Shrink and segment meaning create different lists for different audiences of customers that you have. So if you know, for example, certain details about your customers, like for example, if you for whatever reason know between, I mean interests, ages or age.
Alex: (36:15) Let's talk about hemp. Okay. Hemp is kind of like that route a lot of people take when they don't want to be tied to only being able to advertise the things that we just mentioned. They wanna run paid ads, what we call in digital marketing, performance marketing, Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads.
Alex: (36:39) A thing that people have been doing for quite some time now in CBD space is they just create an alternative of that product, but in with hemp, hemp the right product. And that's allowed on Amazon, that's allowed on Facebook, Instagram, pretty much all the platforms, right? Like topicals.
Alex: (36:56) Now when we're talking about CBD here, it's good to keep in mind that there's different ways that CBD B is sold. CBD sometimes is sold as vape cartridges as flour. That's smokable. Sometimes it's tinctures. Gummies.. Okay. For the most part, what we've talked about here covers all of that. But do keep in mind that if you are doing, um, if you are doing hemp products, most of the time they're gonna be topicals. Yeah. Right? Like roll-ons and creams and things like that. You'll see a ton of them on Amazon.
Michelle: (37:27) I believe Amazon, if I'm not mistaken, only accepts topicals, right?
Alex: (37:40) And again, guys, just to, to be extremely clear with you, we are not the buck doesn't stop with us when it comes to CBD marketing. Okay? We've marketed for CBD brands successfully. We have our own; the three of us have our own CBD brand.
Alex: (38:01) But we're open to suggestions. There's maybe new strategies that we're not using. Please let us know if there's anything we're missing out on, please let us know. We're kind of trying to share a little bit of our experience here. Doesn't mean that it's the only way to do it, but it is for sure a way that works. And if you're consistent with it, you'll be able to see some results.
Alex: (41:17) What are we missing in regards to CBD, y'all? I mean, I'm sure there's a lot, but I mean we covered the main topics.
Michelle: (41:22) Yeah, I think we covered it all. If you're interested in starting a CBD brand, we highly recommend it. We have all brands ourselves, and I think it's a great opportunity. Don't be scared to just because it's like a kind of a, a little risky, I guess, niche to jump into doesn't mean that it's not profitable.
Keven: (41:48) And actually, I think there was one thing we missed niche. Make sure you niche yourself. Oh yeah. The problem right now is as you, as anyone might be aware, there is a lot of CBD, and we just said there's options everywhere. Niche yourself. Do not try to sell to everyone.
Alex: (43:24) If you guys have any questions like we said, reach out. This is another episode of the Hustle Inspire Salsa podcast. Today we're tuning in from Miami with Michelle Chiia and Kevin Pimentel. This is Alex Quinn. We'll catch you guys on the next episode. Peace. Bye
Power Quotes:
Michelle: (04:19) "SEO is a marathon and not a sprint."
Alex: (08:26) “We gotta do the best we can with what we have.”
Keven: (10:34) ”There's value in SEO because of what they said of it being a marathon because that value continues to compound. And even in the future, if nothing else was done, that value keeps building for free.”
Keven: (11:17) “We're planting seeds to have a field of food for you so that when the season comes, not only do you get rich, you get fed. And if we disappear, that food is still there for you.”
Alex: (33:29) “A good rule, I've heard many times in marketing, is for every three pieces of value you bring, you could ask for something. Teach them, give them, introduce them, give them a peek behind the curtain, be of value and then have a type of pitch.”
Michelle: (41:32) “Don't be scared to just because it's like a kind of a, a little risky, I guess, niche to jump into doesn't mean that it's not profitable.”
Alex: (41:41) “Everything else is just a matter of hard work and doing your research and being consistent in what you're doing.”
Alex: (42:19) “The riches are in the niches.”
Resources Mentioned:
Neil Patel & Alex Quin Risk Taking in Business
Neil Patel & Alex Quin Episode Summary
Protect Yourself & Business from Being Sued Ft. Robert Freud with Alex Quin
Hustle Inspires Hustle Podcast
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