Integrity Intelligence: How To Maximize Your Cannabis Brand's Influencer Strategy

By Kevin Moran and Matt Lombardi, co-founders of beam.

With social platforms increasingly saturated by the #sponsored hashtag and inauthenticity, research shows that two out of three millennials block traditional ads.

In an even-more saturated CBD category, there is no luxury to broadcasting one-way messages to our brand fans. This challenging category creates many questions for an overregulated category for CBD brands: how can you tell if your social strategy is working? Is the investment really worth it?

In 2019 alone, according to MediaKix, brands spent nearly $8.5 billion on influencers.... and we, at beam, are a small and scrappy startup.

As professional athletes for nearly our entire adult lives, you can imagine the hours of training and number of injuries we’ve accumulated throughout careers. We understand why recovery and taking care of your body is important.

Building beam, a THC-free CBD brand, is a result of personally realizing the profound benefits of CBD and uncovering an opportunity for bringing this to athletes and people living healthy, active lifestyles. In a space that was already crowded and largely misunderstood, we needed a strategy to break through the noise.

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One thing we knew was, people trust people they look up to. This became the approach for launching our influencer program. How do we architect a group of people that are so good at what they do, people will trust them?

From Mat Fraser and Tia Claire-Toomey (the fittest male and female on earth), to Danica Patrick (the most successful woman in Racing), to Billy Horschel (a top golfer on the PGA Tour), we built trust with them, which then allowed us to build trust with their communities.

We knew that the rise of social media signaled the supercharging of the influencer economy, fundamentally fixing how ambassadors, athletes like Danica and ourselves, fit into the marketing machine. Receiving constant DMs on how to tweak our formulations to fit the unique cases of CrossFitters, race car drivers, golfers, and beyond, we knew that Danica’s voice, and the voice of others, could coach and course correct not only our marketing mix, but our company’s trajectory.

To answer these questions of how to build a program that amplifies the right voices, here are our actionable insights to cut through and maximize your influencer strategy.

Start at homebase

Brands should really know who they are, what they want, and who their customers are.

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Ask yourself the following questions: 

• What are your blind spots? For example, Danica, as a woman, has a perspective we don’t (as two white males). Lean into these blind spots, and find individuals who can help fill that gap.
• What do you want to be known for? If you want to be a go-to resource for athletes, partner with athletes - if you want to be a resource for the everyday consumer, partner with someone who can reach those everyday consumers. 
• What do you want your customers to know? Refine your messaging so you can share what’s most important, right now. 

Two-way communication is crucial

Don’t be a jerk…listen!

Communicate with your customers and influencers by taking your time, starting slow, and asking for their feedback to find out their why, and how you can harness that feedback for the future. Take their feedback -- seriously -- let it be a guiding hand for future innovations, distribution partners etc.  Pick your partners wisely, and listen to them, and it will pay off -- our influencer program drives 35% of our annual revenue, and we expect that number to grow as we continue to listen to our partners.

Surviving a shakeout in COVID times

We are in the middle of a global pandemic and experiencing tremendous economic turbulence, and as a brand, you should act swiftly and monitor success selectively in times of trouble. Consider the pros and cons of standing on the sidelines -- to engage or not to engage -- and participate where it makes sense, considering the right balance of hard quantitative-driven stats and qualitative measures. Sometimes, as you manage an influencer program, you have to consider the uncontrollable forces and make shifts along the way, re-evaluating your strategy and efforts on a bi-weekly basis.

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For example, as the pandemic worsened, we shifted our multi-prong ambassador program to prioritize our A-level elite athletes (aptly titled “Beacons”) versus our micro influencers (titled our “Tribe”) as they may not generate as many sales, though their name, likeness and halo effect far supersede our markers on a bi-weeky basis, time and time again.

Give up control (to an extent)

As a consumer, as you’re scrolling through Instagram, there is nothing more off-putting than seeing an overtly-branded or pushy promotion. As a brand owner or leader, giving up control can be just as off-putting. As you build your ambassador network, consider the influencers and ambassadors  you tap and the levels of creative control you can exhibit in trusting them to create content that resonates with their own audience.

The preceding article is from one of our external contributors. It does not represent the opinion of Benzinga and has not been edited.

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash