Did you know it costs up to seven times more to attract a new customer than it does to retain one? With that understood, the importance of brand loyalty really comes into focus. A major disruptor to brand loyalty is the lack of continuity between customer touchpoints—whether they are digital or in-store. In some industries, consistent brand messaging is even harder than in others. The cannabis industry just happens to be the perfect example.
In our frequent discussions with cannabis brand marketing teams, we hear of the struggle to keep a consistent brand message across all customer touchpoints.—digital, packaging, retail display. Most cannabis customers have an affinity for certain strains and not so much the brands that provide them. The key is to bring together creative, recognizable attributes from every point of interaction with a customer to solidify and unify a brand's message. Read on for three pointers to keep in mind.
1. Match your digital brand to your in-store brand.
Digital presence has grown to be a core component of modern business. But having a digital presence means you have something big out there representing your brand, perhaps even more so than your presence in a physical storefront. When the two entities don't align, customers can lose:
- Confidence in the brand
- Brand familiarity
- Interest in being a repeat customer
Customers like knowing what to expect. Therefore, the more continuous the brand is across different fronts, the more your customers will grow to know and like the fact that they know who you are and what you offer.
Use rock-solid visuals like logos and colors that are the same online and in-store. Keep your verbiage and mottos the same in brand messages, regardless of whether they're posted in a digital ad or in a store display case or on a shelf. Remember, the two setups may be totally different, but they are both built for the same purpose, so they need to match.
Team IDD worked with Cookies, a retailer and brand in the cannabis space, to develop a display that showcased a vape pen and three Lemonnade cartridges. We designed flexibility into the display so that it could be used on slatwall or under glass to help Cookies stand out in-store. This display is easily recognized in a dispensary—with its clean lines and distinctive use of the Cookies’ logo—and reflects Cookies’ robust digital footprint across their website and social media platforms.
2. Be mindful of product packaging and brand continuity.
What about product packaging? Do packaged products provided by your business look like they came from your brand? If not, you could lose a lot of customer interest in between advertising and the close of sale.
Check out the various products offered by cannabis brand Friendly Farms, which sells in dispensaries that offer other brands as well. From their vape carts to their tincture and concentrates, every product offers visually similar branded packaging. Even further, the packaging is aptly representational of the brand's digital persona. And when it came to developing a display for Friendly Farms that would be housed in a clear display case, their brand showed through.
Loyalty to a brand is built on the recognition of the brand's product. For example, if a customer stops at a dispensary and walks away with a cannabis bud wrapped in generic packaging, the primary thing they will recall is the strain they bought, not your brand.
3. Unify the brand message with retail displays.
Retail displays are just as much a customer touchpoint as digital presence and product packaging, albeit a touchpoint often disregarded. Retail displays portray brand personality within a saturated space, especially in "store within a store" models that are so common today.
Consider the fact that one cannabis dispensary may offer disposable vape pens from dozens of brands. If your brand is delivering inventory without an eye-catching display, you may miss a big opportunity to build that valuable brand loyalty. Your products, regardless of good, branded packaging, can be floating in a sea of competition in a larger store-branded display. The only thing the customer may remember is that they purchased a disposable cannabis vape at a certain dispensary.
If a customer has researched "best cannabis vape pens" online and discovered your product website. Make it easy for them to spot your merchandise when they make it to the dispensary with a recognizable display and aptly branded merchandise packaging. For example, the Kushy Punch display developed by Team IDD below represents the brand from the colors and illuminated logo on the display to the product packaging. Like Kushy Punch’s website, the display pops in a crowded dispensary.
With a little consideration of when and how customers "touch" your brand, you are better equipped to build a good following of loyal customers. While touchpoints like your website and packaging are important, so is the design of your in-store displays. Bringing display design earlier in the process can help bring your brand together to give your brand an edge.
At InStore Design Display, we partner with brands to offer stand-out retail displays to perfectly coincide with the brand. Ready to get started on your own designs? Reach out to us, tell us about your project, and we'll get back in touch with a few ideas.
Ready to elevate your retail experience?