How to Create Value for Your Cannabis Brand

When it comes to building a brand, the first thing you should be thinking about is how you are going to create value for your brand. Value is the foundation of any business transaction. So, the more value you have, the greater your profits will be.

This is especially important in the cannabis industry because there is more and more competition on a daily basis. And without great value, your brand will likely end up drowning in the sea of dispensaries that are quickly taking over the nation.

In this article, we will clarify everything you need to know about value and how to create it for your brand. The main thing to keep in mind is that value is the most vital part of your business venture.

Value can directly impact your brand, which is the perception that people have of your company. And as we all know, perception is everything. The value your company has needs to be perceived in a positive light by anyone who comes into contact with your brand.

This means you need to take care of the relationships you are forming with employees, investors, customers, and stakeholders. In broad terms, creating value is all about cultivating relationships that will help your business soar to new heights!

So, how do you create value for your cannabis brand that you can take to the bank?

Keep reading to find out.

What is Value?

It is vital for your business’s success that you understand your company’s value. And achieving good value for your brand can depend on multiple factors. So let’s break it down. What is its value?

In financial terms, the value of a business is the worth of its projections. Meaning, how much could your company be worth in a few years given the current rate it is growing at?

But, value is much more than just the economical worth of your company.

Value also has to do with what you are offering as a company compared to your competitors. Are your customers getting their money's worth? Are they getting better treatment from employees at a local competitor? Is my delivery service up to par with the rest of the dispensaries in the area?

All of these things can have a direct impact on the value of your company. Let’s take McDonald's, for example. They don’t have the best burgers on the market, but their fast service and convenient locations have put their brand value in the top 10 list of most expensive brands.

McDonald’s brand value is actually worth 10 times more than their net worth. So, it’s really important that you give creating value for your brand the time it deserves.

Value creation should be the mission of every cannabis business that wants to succeed and become an authority in their industry. If your brand has value, your customer base will grow, which means more money for you.

In today’s world, we can define value creation as a better management tool so that you can grow your business. But, keep in mind that it has to be measurable.

To measure the success of your brand value, set up evaluation strategies and put metrics in place that will clarify if you're going down the right path or not.

Real, measurable value occurs when companies are consistently developing an endless stream of new products and services that offer something unique to the customer.

The companies that achieve value are the ones that are constantly thinking of the client’s benefits and their well-being and satisfaction.

Don’t be afraid to get creative and keep reading to find out how to create great value for your cannabis brand and why this is so vital for your business.

Importance of building value for your cannabis brand

So why is it so important to build great value for your company? Well, Simon Hunt, Regional Partner of Business Partnership for Oxford and The Chilterns, says that it will help you increase your business’s value to a buyer.

This means that if you ever want to throw in the towel and travel around the world, you might have more of a budget than you thought. So, for the long term, creating value is setting yourself up for success when retiring.

A recent research done by Macquarie Management, Accounting and Financial Services Benchmarking Report, actually shows that the notion of adding value to a company is taking off among accounting and financial planners. and is quickly becoming a must-do on any checklist for success.

According to that same report, 79% of companies that make above-average profits said that adding value to their companies was the key to their profitability. It is also vital if you ever need investors or loans.

To sustain a business and grow, you will likely need external income to support the costs that growth entails. Investors and lenders are most impressed with companies that have great value. So, adding value to your weed emporium might help you get some serious cash for the next chapter of your company!

It is also important to remember the times we are living in. In the past, business owners created products or services that were "pushed on" to their clients. It just doesn't work like that anymore.

Nowadays, users have heightened expectations of their wants and needs. And thanks to the internet, it isn’t hard for them to search for options until they find the one they are most happy with.

So why not strive for you to be the cannabis company that makes them the happiest and get ahead of your competition?

At the end of the day, without customer satisfaction, your value will be worth nothing. But, creating great value entails a lot of things. Keep reading to find out the keys to great value for a cannabis brand.

How to Build Value for Your Cannabis Brand

Understand Your Brand's Value

The first step to creating amazing value for your cannabis brand is thinking about what makes you stand out as a company. What do you want to highlight?

Another great question to ask yourself is, what problem or need are you solving and why? For people in the cannabis industry, we are providing well-being and a care-free lifestyle.

What do you love about weed? Why do you sell it? Those questions may also be great starting points. Think about why your brand was born in the first place.

We all know that cannabis can solve a plethora of situations for our customers. But, which are you best at understanding? Go with what makes you passionate about cannabis, and remember, you got into the business of happiness and well-being. Your company should reflect that.

The UNITE Business Capability Map is a great summary of things you need to be thinking about when highlighting your company’s strengths and assets.

We also recommend you do a SWOT report on your company. The SWOT report basically analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that your company has.

The strengths and weaknesses are analyzed internally. They are the good and bad parts of your company. This will help you understand what you want to highlight and what you need to work on.

The opportunities and threats come from the outside world. Opportunities are possible alliances, strategies, or partnerships that will help your business grow. Threats are situations to look out for that might harm your company’s brand.

There are two very obvious threats in the cannabis industry to look out for. The perception that the general public has about weed and its consumption, and the pending regulation by federal laws

Knowing this will help you form preemptive strategies, so you can tackle the obstacles your company will face in the future with a clear and decided mindset. It will also help you trace out a clear course of action towards creating amazing value.

Put Yourself in Your Customer's Shoes

One of the main factors that will determine your company’s success is your customers' satisfaction. Nowadays, satisfying customers has become a Troyan-sized obstacle, given their heightened expectations. But there are a few things you can do to make your customers extremely satisfied with your service.

• Put yourself in their shoes. Go to your retail locations as a customer, get on your social media and websites, and get an understanding of how they are interacting with your business. Ask yourself what you love and what you think could be better about your experience.
• The more thorough you are in getting to know your customers, the more successful your brand value will be. Ask them directly through dynamics on social media what they would like to see, or what you could be better at.
• Align your company with the value you want to give clients. This includes reframing staff, innovating and diversifying products, and creating incentives for them to go to you for their cannabis needs.
• Once you’ve gotten to know your customers, look for external partnerships that share the same target audience and make your customer’s experience a one-stop-shop situation.
• Do some customer journey mapping. This will help you create a checklist that is accessible to all of your staff and team members and will ensure that your entire company will be on the same page.

There are three factors that give great value to a customer: customer intimacy, product leadership, and operational excellence. These are the key ingredients to achieving a life-long customer base.

Customer Intimacy

Customer intimacy is about being the best at responding to your customers' needs. Great ideas to achieve good customer intimacy are personalizing their weed journey, having expert staff that can help them find what they need, or setting them up with incentives like discounts and reward programs.

If you want to take your customer intimacy skills to the next level, set up a customizable subscription box plan, and tier-level memberships that give them exclusive benefits or send them a birthday present to their house. That will guarantee that your customers will love you.

Product Leadership

Product leadership is about having the best product on the market. Growing your own strains, innovative and unique products, or prize-winning weed, are all great examples of what you could do to qualify your product as "the best".

The more creative you are with product innovation, the better off you will be. Having exotic-shaped joints displayed in your dispensary, artisanal bongs, or unique products like transdermal THC patches, will ensure you get some traffic in your store.

Along those lines, don’t be afraid to get creative with your websites or retail locations as well. A good instagramable-moment, or highly shareable content on your site, will also position you as the best in the market.

Operational Experience

Operational experience is about having the best price in the market. This doesn't necessarily mean the cheapest. It just means that to achieve good value in the eyes of your customers, you need to have a good quality-price ratio.

Another great idea to get operational experience is setting up dynamics, discounts, reward systems, etc. That will guarantee that your customer gets their money’s worth.

Lastly, remember that proof is everything! Display your processes, prizes, awards, and testimonials to prove that your product is successful and make the new client’s decision easier.

Hire a Skilled and Experienced Team

Your staff and stakeholders all represent your company. Make sure they are aligned with the value you want to provide to investors and customers. This is actually necessary if you want to provide good customer service to newbies.

The first thing you need to do is train your entire staff on the products you have, their effects, and their benefits. So, anyone that is wearing the company uniform can help customers that might be overwhelmed with the number of options.

We have all been new to the cannabis world, and know just how daunting it can get. There are thousands of products to choose from! So, the better trained and knowledgeable your staff is, the more likely your customers will be satisfied with the service.

Make sure that your staff are friendly, kind, and attentive. This will make your customers feel right at home. Set up incentives for your employees. Commision-based rewards might be a good motivator for your employees to do their best.

The better taken care of your employees are, the happier they will be at work. You always want your employees to smile. Why? Well, you're selling happiness in a jar.

Buying weed from a disgruntled employee is the same as getting a diet from an overweight nutritionist; you just don’t trust them. So, keep your employees happy and comfortable; that speaks volumes about your value.

Another great tip is to involve them in the decisions. They might be of much more help than you expect because they are on the front-line of your business. No one knows your customers better than they do. Do not take that lightly.

Get Your Clients to Refer You

Another essential tip when building value for your brand is to get referrals from your clients. The Macquarie Wealth Management report we mentioned earlier stated that 71% of high-performing companies rely on referrals from their clients.

Set up a reward system for referrals. Get your referrals through a system in your database and offer prizes and special discounts every time a customer refers a friend to your dispensary.

Another great way to get referrals is to give them compensation for their testimonials. We find video testimonials work best. Ask your most frequent customers to talk a little bit about why they love your company, and give them a free-sample product in return.

Analyze Your Competitors

A company’s competitive edge is everything when working in a saturated market. Nowadays, even Aliexpress is selling weed-based products, and it is easier than ever to get access to cannabis.

So what makes you stand out? Why should your customers go to you? What are you offering your clients that no one else does? These are all really great questions to ask yourself.

Even though you should have an idea from the SWOT report you made on your company, this step will require that you do extensive research on your competition and highlight what makes them stand out in comparison to you.

After you have assessed your competitors, think about what you could do that stands out from what they are doing. Again, be creative and don’t shy away from innovation.

Make sure that your strategies are resolving something your clients need or want. Make sure that you have also done your research on whether or not that particular strategy will be of value to your customers.

A great way of getting ahead of the competition is by hosting events or attending events that your target audience might be interested in. Remember, our customers are looking for a better lifestyle, for mental peace, for fun, for happiness, for appetite. Think like a stoner, and the ideas of events you can create will be endless.

You can also create visual and entertaining information for them. Like YouTube videos, tik-toks, etc. That will educate them about cannabis and add value to their individual experiences. The options are endless!

Steps to building a successful value creation plan

There are thousands of ways you can go about building great value for your cannabis brand. But we suggest you follow the steps that are advised by the SMART principle. The SMART principle means that your value will be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Any value creation strategy must consider making their system SMART.So, how is it done?

• Create metrics that you will use to measure your success. For example, a simple 5 star rating from customers will allow you to evaluate your customer success.
• Set realistic and achievable targets. Don’t get too crazy with your expectations; value takes time and a more organic and achievable growth will ensure your company's success.
• Add a time-frame. We find it best to have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals. This will allow you to understand the rate your company is growing at and will help you take the necessary measures to grow or scale back according to your company’s capacity.
• Monitor your metrics and adjust accordingly.
• Share your value creation plan with your customers, employees, and stakeholders. Let everyone know where you are. Transparency is everything.
• Add feedback from your employees, stakeholders, investors, and customers to your value creation plan. Multiple heads are better than one.
• Take action and start making the changes that are needed to achieve the value you want for your company.
• Share your results. When the metrics come out in your favor, let everyone know about your improvement with the proof you’ve gathered.

Conclusion

Creating value for your brand is the single most important thing you can do to set yourself up for success. Remember that without customer satisfaction value is impossible, so always keep your clients in mind when building your value creation plan.

We hope you enjoyed this article and got some great tips on how to scale your business! Feel free to share this article with your team members in your company and discuss with them what you would like to do moving forward on your journey to brand value.

Are there any value tips you want to share? Feel free to comment in the section below.