One of the biggest challenges for any unique business vertical when advertising is being in compliance while maximizing ROI. Having personal experience with a multitude of industries and working on their behalf to market their products with regulations from government, vendors, networks, or even internally, my objective is to give some guidance and prevent some headache.
With respect to government regulations you should simply follow them, end of story. But with internal, vendor or network compliance, do your due diligence and be creative when forming a strategy. For example, use clever copy-writing placement, and creative to overcome some minor obstacles. Think about social media platforms such as Facebook or Google. The first thing to remember is, “don’t poke the bear”. If you don’t take time to review their policies or decide to “throw it out there and trust it”, you will be will frustrated with the result. It’s not worth the damage that occurs when an account is shut down even temporarily.
Let me put this into context for the cannabis industry, since it is one the most restricted as well as explosive industries today. In addition to avoiding making poor decisions, as mentioned in the last paragraph, you must present the business in a professional manner. I maintained Google and Social Media accounts during a hectic time in the industry where businesses were making these mistakes and having accounts shut down, whereas my accounts stayed live. How do you pull this off? There are multiple ways to accomplish this. One way is having a strategy of main stream organic content which played to my advantage when developing my social media strategy.
For instance, Facebook has advertising policies prohibit certain content. Item number five on this list prohibits advertising drugs or drug related products....read the policy here. So, in essence, if you are selling hemp or CBD products - don’t portray images of illicit cannabis use or that promote it. For example, when marketing hemp/CBD don’t hashtag, or use copy and images that could likely lead someone to infer that the business has been using cannabis unlawfully or terminology in line with marijuana usage. Your content needs to be comfortable for everyone to easily digest and be within the rules of the policy. If it’s not, that may get the attention of these companies and they could shut your down as they have done before simply for your organic content.
Want to know more on how to market a business in an industry with compliance challenges?