End-of-Year Marketing Checklist for Cannabis Brands
As the year winds down, now is the perfect time to pause, reflect and reset your biz strategy. This cannabis marketing checklist outlines our most proven strategies to implement before the new year, so you can start Q1 off with a bang!
Audit Your Website
If you don’t have a team handling your website maintenance, make sure you spend time at the end of the year reviewing both performance and user experience. Are your pages loading quickly? Are forms, buttons and checkout flows working properly? Do any of your plugins need to be updated?
Spending a few hours every month on website maintenance can help catch broken links, outdated pages or missed conversion opportunities before they impact traffic or sales, making this a must-have step in any end-of-year marketing plan.
Clean Up Your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile is often the first thing people see when searching for your brand. Before the new year hits, spend some time reviewing your business bio, categories, quick links and service areas.
Make sure you’re using descriptive keywords, targeting the correct locations and displaying accurate hours of operation. Keeping your Google Business Profile up to date improves local visibility and builds trust with potential customers who haven’t visited your store or website yet.
Review Google Search Console
Google Search Console is one of the most valuable free tools available. Use it to identify broken pages, search engine visibility, indexing issues and keyword performance.
Take note of which pages performed best this year and which ones lost traction. Also, keep an eye on pages that had high impressions and low clicks, as this could signal a gap in messaging, titles or meta descriptions.
Update Your Copywriting
Brands evolve, and your website copy should too! Far too often, we see brands launching a site and then leaving it to collect dust. The truth is, if your services, products or positioning have changed, your website needs to reflect that.
Refreshing your website copy ensures your messaging stays aligned with who you are now, not 12 months ago. Plus, it helps customers (and search engines) see that you’re active on the site and consistently refining your brand to deliver a better experience.
Create a Content Calendar for Q1
This is going to be your year, right?! Everyone enters the new year with ambitious marketing goals, but without a plan, those goals quickly fall apart. Creating a Q1 calendar now will give you a clear roadmap for blogs, emails, social posts and campaigns. Plus, planning ahead removes pressure and makes it much easier to stay consistent when things get busy.
Clean Up Your SEO
Search Engine Optimization is rarely ever a “set it and forget it” deal. Between Google’s algorithm tweaks and core updates, even strong brands will see peaks and valleys in their SEO metrics.
Use the end of the year to refresh outdated content, improve internal linking, update metadata and identify pages that could benefit from a quick optimization. Small SEO updates now can lead to big wins in the new year.
Refresh Your Website Design
We may be biased, but website design is one of the best ways to head into the new year feeling refreshed and confident. We’re not saying you need to rebuild your site every year — that would be crazy. But there are a handful of minor updates you can implement that will go a long way.
For example, you might consider updating your photos, adding current testimonials or building some new pages to your site to keep things fresh.
Create a New Lead Magnet
Lead magnets are a great way to collect emails and show your audience that you know your stuff. If you’ve had the same lead magnet up for a while, it’s worth asking yourself how it’s performing.
Is it bringing in consistent leads for your business? If so, are they high-quality leads that want to buy from you? If not, let’s make some adjustments. You can experiment with different pop-ups or lead magnets across different sections of your site to target different audiences.
Update Your Welcome Series
If you’re not familiar with a welcome series, it’s essentially a set of emails that goes out to new subscribers. Ideally, it introduces your brand, sets expectations, explains how you help, and, depending on your business, gives them some incentive to stick around.
If your welcome series hasn’t been updated since 2020, it’s probably time. Go through and make sure your links are active and the messaging still feels relevant, and look for gaps or missed opportunities. Another recommendation is to compare open rates across emails to identify which ones are resonating and which aren’t.
Segment Your Email List
Ideally, email segmentation is ongoing…but if it’s fallen through the cracks, that’s okay. Better late than never! Take some time to clean out unresponsive or bounced emails and add new segments that align with your current goals. The more intentional you are with segmentation, the more relevant and effective your emails will be.
Need help with cannabis marketing before the new year?
Wrapping up the new year with a thoughtful end-of-year marketing review sets your cannabis brand up for a stronger, more focused Q1. If you want help getting the ball rolling, we’re here to help! Leave us a message on our contact form, and we’ll make sure your brand is as fiery as you are.