Promotion
How to get the greatest return on your Budtender Club event sponsorship
We want you to get a fabulous profit and goodwill return on your sponsorship of a Budtenders Club event. This webpage will share best practice tips to generate a great return on your investment.
What you’ll get from this webpage:
What Budtender Club members expect from a sponsor at our event
Attendee surveys show budtenders come to a Budtender Club event for three reasons:
- To socialize and network with other dispensary workers
- To learn things that help them become better in their job
- To sample products and get free things
The best action you can take to promote your brand and goodwill within our community is to give away free product samples and free SWAG.
Past sponsors and speakers have given away door prizes to early arriving attendees consisting of free cannabis products.
We hold our events at consumption-friendly venues. Product sampling stations throughout our event venue are common throughout the duration of the event.
SWAG giveaways that support your brand are valued by our members. Keep in mind that our group is composed of budtenders who regularly receive lanyards. SWAG that is creative and unique stands out and is more likely to create favorable results for your brand.
Pre-event promotional best practices
The goal of pre-event promotion is to get as many budtenders as possible to the event you are sponsoring.
Secondary goals include increasing budtender awareness of your brand and promoting goodwill with this audience.
We’ll help in those efforts. We’ll email our mailing list multiple times. We’ll aggressively promote our event and your sponsorship on social media. We’ll promote within the cannabis community.
You should promote your sponsorship too.
The number one thing that drives attendance is budtender awareness of the event and its date.
The best way to get budtenders to actually remember the event and come to it is through offering generous product samples, early attendee door prizes, and unique and exciting giveaways.
We recommend having your sales team present meeting invitations to budtenders when they make sales calls at dispensaries. Onsite vendor events and in-person budtender training sessions are also great times for your team to hand out meeting invites to budtenders.
An effective yet inexpensive way to do this is to print business card size invitations. You can have them printed at Staples and have 1000 printed for under $40. And they’ll be done within a day!
We recommend you post about our event and your sponsorship many times on your social media channels. We also recommend you email your dispensary customers several times about the event and your sponsorship.
At the event promotional best practices
Let’s make your brand shine at your Budtenders Club event. Here’s how to do it:
- Put one of your employees with an outgoing personality with us to check in event guests as they arrive. Although Budtenders Club will have a representative greeting people as they arrive, your brand should have a representative greeting and welcoming guests too. This helps your brand set the proper tone for the event and reinforces your brand as our event sponsor.
- Place signage throughout our event venue. Pop up banner stands are ideal. Temporary signage only, as all signage must be easily moved and removed and may not cause any damage to our event venue.
- Offer free product samples (if allowed in your state). Free product samples are a great way for budtenders to experience your products in a controlled setting with your personnel present. Free product samples are popular amongst our audience and are a great way to drive sales for your brand. We encourage you to offer product samples. Contact Budtenders Club Executive Director Brian Offenbonger for ideas and details.
- Wear clothing to the event that allows others to easily associate you with your brand. Mingle throughout the event so you can talk with others. This is your chance to have discussions about your brand and your products in an intimate, relaxed setting with the people who actual sell your product.
- Keep your formal announcement to the audience direct and to the point. We allow you to address our group prior to the beginning of the educational segment of our event. Brevity goes a long way when addressing this audience.
- SWAG giveaways are always popular. Staff your giveaway area at our venue (Executive Director Brian Offenbonger can assist with set up location inside our venue) with people that can answer questions from budtenders about your brand and its products.
- Mingle and have fun. This is a social event. Our members come to meet new people. They want to interact with and learn from other budtenders. Treat others as you wish to be treated, display a sense of humor, ask questions, and allow others to talk about themselves. Do this and you’ll have a great time along with a profitable experience.
Post event promotional best practices
Build upon the goodwill you establish from sponsoring an event with aggressive post event follow-up with attendees.
Here are some tips:
- Host a social media contest to drive post-event engagement. Offer a social media content with a prize. Have attendees post a photo of your brand from the event. Or perhaps you can post a photo and the audience can create a caption. The entry with the most votes or likes, wins. It’s an effectively simple way to keep the conversation going around your brand.
- Send a post event email to attendees the day after the event. We furnish you a list of event attendees by name, dispensary, and email address in a .CSV file. Send them an email that thanks them for coming. Reiterate any key points or offers you made at the event. Do this the day after the event, while your brand impression from the event is at its peak. Communicate with them at regular intervals so they keep top of mind awareness of your brand.
- Talk about the event on social media. Join the online conversations about the event. Listen and learn. Tag Budtenders Club and others you met at the event. Post about the event on your social media channels.
- Extend event offers. The day after your event sponsorship is a golden window of opportunity to push your goals. If a product was launched at the event, then continue to push the product. If the product was made available for the first time at the event at a discount, then extend that offer for an additional 24 hours and only to the attendees.
- Send them notice of your next event. Let our audience know where your brand will be in the cannabis community.
Our goal is for you to profit from your sponsorship. We’re ready to assist you at any time. Please contact Executive Director Brian Offenbonger for more details.
Your support of budtenders is valued and appreciated. Thank you!