The CBD market is exploding.
In a newly released report from Brightfield, they predicted year-over-year CBD product sales growth in the United States of 706% in 2019 to around $5 billion — not a typo – and sales of $23.7 billion by 2023.
The growth potential is staggering, and while CBD itself won’t give you a buzz the market is buzzing with the potential to cash in on CBD’s explosive growth.
However, many are learning that their typical playbook for marketing a B2C product doesn’t work for CBD.
While enthusiasts will claim CBD is nothing like ephedra, anabolic steroids or the latest slim-tea fad, advertising giant Google has other ideas.
Google has lumped CBD products under a large umbrella of unapproved pharmaceuticals and supplements that come with heavy restrictions on how you market these products.
In short, you can’t.
Google has banned all products on that list from using Google Ads, with severe penalties for violations. Including going so far as banning the user & their payment method from all future ads…regardless of what product you’re selling.
This is rough news for holistic health practitioners looking to promote CBD wellness products and services without jeopardizing the rest of their product line.
The only way to market CBD
This doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for entrepreneurs in the CBD space, but there is one foolproof method to get eyes on your product.
While Google won’t let you use Adwords or other Google advertising suite tools, they do allow websites affiliated with CBD to be indexed and displayed in organic search.
This means your best gameplan is to optimize your SEO strategy.
SEO best practices and white hat SEO techniques ensure you’re getting the most clicks on CBD related searches.
Most SEO strategies won’t cut it when all of your marketing hinges on organic search.
The typical SEO firm tracks only a handful of keywords and phrases.
We’re talking small numbers, 1-10 phrases, maybe 15 or 20 if you’re lucky. They get their phrases locked in and keep tracking the same ones the entire time, sometimes for years.
This is a great way to end up at the bottom of the search results and lose a TON of clicks.
A better way to optimize SEO for CBD companies
We’ve found here at The Branding Agency that with SEO keywords and phrases, more is more.
We suggest you track up to 150 keywords and phrases and never get comfortable with that list.
Each month you should revise your list of targeted keywords based on the data & results of the previous month. This keeps your brand presence agile, so you can respond to fluctuations in search trends and traffic.
Don’t forget to watch your competitors
An agile, regularly updated list of keywords and phrases is a great start, but since you don’t sell in a vacuum you should add competitor tracking as the next best step in optimizing your organic search position.
For this, you’re watching your competitors’ websites to see what they’re up to and ensure your website is outperforming them.
If your biggest competitor starts to allocate a bunch of time and resources towards SEO and you start creeping higher in search results, you’ll need to do the same to keep up with (or outperform) them.
The last thing you want is to spend time and money optimizing keywords and phrases only to have a competitor just barely edge past you.
Being mindful of what other players in the market are up to will keep you ahead of the curve.
Put these lessons to work
Even if you aren’t in the CBD market, these suggestions are solid ways to boost your organic search results.
They’re foundational strategies for the SEO work we do here at The Branding Agency.
If your organic search results could be better, or if you’re working with regulated products like CBD, we’re here to help. We have affordable SEO packages that can quickly start to improve your SEO and search results, like many of our clients you might even find the additional traffic pays for the service itself.
Contact us and learn more about how we can help you achieve an effective SEO strategy and campaign.
