Cannibis Industry Ads

Hello Everyone.

I have a cannibis client who just wants more foot-traffic to the shop. His specifications is that the CTA button is “Get Directions”. I was reading the FB policies, Facebook - I was thinking we may be ‘violating’ 2, 5, 11, 14, 17 or 22… so I was just wondering if the cannibis industry was able to run ads?? I was thinking for images maybe a pic of the shop because the accessories / eletronics can’t be depicted.

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Hey, took a look at the rules. My word and thoughts are not foolproof by any means. Could always reach out to support and see what they say?

#2

Summary #2

Doesn’t say anything about Cannabis. While we think of many things when it comes to Adult products, I think this one may be explicitly what they say here.

#5

Summary #5

Same thing, this one is about more hacking type devices. No difference in #11

I think #14 is where you get into gray areas… specially the wording " Products, including food or drinks, that make health or medical claims " - but you could make an argument that its neither food or drink depending on what the client is selling.

Summary #14

#17 is where you run into the issue of breaking FB policy if you sell the product. It specifically states marijuana. But my understanding on the wording “Products sold on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp must comply with our Commerce Policies” is that you have to sell it on FB. You’re not selling it on FB, you’re just using FB as basically a map to your shop. But I think you may still run into issues with doing cannabis ads.

Summary #17

This seems like a really good article on how to market Cannabis on facebook: Can You Advertise Your Cannabis Business on Facebook? What You Need to Know About Cannabis Marketing

as well as this one I found:

Although what it all seems to boil down to is basically, you can’t promote anything relating to cannabis unless its educational. so you’re not direct selling to people, but educating them and based on that content they reach out to you in person.

Overall, I think based on the two linked articles above, you can’t run CTA buttons on “get directions”, but potentially run ads on educational content that gets you impressions on your name.

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Kaz, thank you so much for those articles. I appreciate the links to those informative articles.
This is going to be a challenging case since I am playing the middle man here.

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Hey @terassahel - you might want to take a look at this, too. Maybe think about a different platform (Twitter) - Enabling more brands to connect with the cannabis conversation

and this https://business.twitter.com/en/help/ads-policies/ads-content-policies/drugs-and-drug-paraphernalia.html – where it clearly lays out what exactly to do.

@terassahel Reach out to Kendra – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendralosee/ … she has run a cannibis based agency for awhile and is always open to helping people out.

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Exactly who I was going to recommend @terassahel connect with!

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@Facebook_Ads_Experts tagging you to see if you’ve got any cannibis industry experience you can share?? ps thanks!

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@deb I have some extensive experience with several CBD companies running ads on Facebook - although the latest one was several years ago.

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I am now being retargeted :slight_smile:

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That was actually a helpful article, Peter - thanks for sharing (sorry about the tracking cookies🤷‍♀️)

That’s a great idea, Phyllis!
This shop is actually trying to differentiate itself from its sister company that’s about 8 miles away, so Twitter could work out for them!

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I will link up with her now, thanks for the reference, Peter.

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Thank you for the mention @ChiefCoffeeDrinker! I’m late to this party, but I’ll jump in with my experience in the main thread.

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There’s a lot of great information in these articles and basically, for reference, the short answer to advertising cannabis on Facebook is - don’t bother trying it.

Too many people have had their ad accounts shut down completely for even trying to run cannabis-related ads on Facebook. As mentioned above, the only ads they’ll even consider are educational - and most of those won’t be approved either.

The best options are to focus on other platforms (LinkedIn is the most cannabis-friendly, and Twitter keeps changing their rules, so maybe now it’s allowed, and some are doing well on Reddit). Also, for digital, they want to primarily focus on organic (social) efforts, and local SEO marketing efforts are also useful.
Lastly, programmatic advertising platforms like TrafficRoots offer paid ads on cannabis-friendly sites. This can be a great option since it includes many of the same targeting options (geotargeting, behavioral targeting, etc) that non-cannabis programmatic advertising includes.

There’s a lot to consider when it comes to digital marketing and social media for cannabis companies, so hopefully this helps!
Hope this helps!

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@kendra YES!!! thanks for joining the conversation! Appreciate it!

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Thanks for the great information and joining the community here!

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Thank you so much, Kendra, for sharing your knowledge. I appreciate your guidance on this matter.

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It took me long enough to get over there to respond, but I made it! :smiley:

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Absolutely, thanks for the welcome! :slight_smile:

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