David Scott - The New Rules of Marketing and PR

“We realized we had to go the old-fashioned route,” Schwartz says. “In the marijuana business, believe it or not, print magazines are huge. I think there are about 20 magazines in this space, titles like Cannabis Business Times , Marijuana Business Magazine , and Marijuana Venture . So for us, our marketing strategy quickly became trade shows, getting out our own email list, and bartering with these magazines and trade show providers. We’ve got deals with all the big guys now where we trade them our database for free ads and trade show booth space. This was the way everyone marketed 15 or 20 years ago!”

Most of the online action happens on more specialized marijuana search engines and review sites. “Dispensaries are the ones who need to advertise to consumers,” Schwartz told me. “And each state has different laws regulating marketing. For instance, in Connecticut and Massachusetts if you put a website up, the state has to approve it. It gets complicated and there are a lot of really strange laws. Now people are bypassing Google and the other traditional search engines and they’re using weed search engines like Leafly and Weed Map to find dispensaries, strains, news, all sorts of information. These are big marijuana search engines, and that’s where consumers are going.”

Schwartz’s business is booming. Whenever companies want to enter the cannabis business in a new state, there is a whole new set of laws to deal with. And those laws are constantly changing. Schwartz’s business tracks all of those new and changing laws and regulations.

“This business is going to go through a gold-rush mentality,” Schwartz says. “It’s like the dot-com boom starting in 1995. When California legalizes marijuana it will double the size of the market. And then we’re going to have a big bust. Then we’ll come back again, just like the Internet business over the past 20 years.”

As new states permit medical marijuana or legalize cannabis for recreational use, there are more and more people who want to grow the plant as a business. And with that an entire industry has grown to service cannabis entrepreneurs. As a marketer, I am fascinated by the business-to-business marketing strategies these companies must use.

“We are witnessing a dramatic shift within the USA. Cannabis can now be grown out in the open and with commercial greenhouse methods,” says Tom Springer, founder and president of NurserySource. Springer’s company has been selling RediRoot root development containers and GroPro root development fabric bags since 2010. The products help growers’ profitability by increasing their yield due to root health.

“The changing state laws have certainly encouraged us,” Springer says. “But since we manufacture an agricultural product, we have needed a few years of field testing to make sure our products worked as well in developing cannabis roots as they do developing shade tree and conifer roots.”

Springer faced a number of marketing challenges. “Suppliers who service cannabis growers are quickly learning how to service full-scale and open commercial enterprises who are paying hefty tax rates,” Springer says. “This is entirely different than servicing a more clandestine, black market group of growers utilizing cash for all their supplies. Cannabis farming is maturing at a rapid rate, and grow equipment suppliers are watching margins shrink and sales channels constrict. The market is hyperdynamic, and numerous people will be getting rich over the next few years. And a ton of people will go broke. Companies wishing to stay in this market long-term must utilize good business principles to survive.”

It’s rare that a market emerges from nothing and grows into a multibillion-dollar industry in a few short years. And just as we saw in those early Internet days, the rules of marketing in this industry are still being written. I expect that over time the cannabis business will be marketing via social media like so many other industries, but for now marketers like Schwartz and Springer must use more traditional marketing strategies.

Company lost its funding. Outsourced. Caught in a merger. Downsized. Fired. It seems like every day I learn of another person who is in the job market. Usually that’s because when they need a job, all of a sudden people jump into networking mode, and I hear from them after years of silence. Hey, I’m okay with that; it’s always good to hear from old friends. And I’ve been fired three times, so I certainly know what it’s like to be in the job market.

Since looking for a job is all about marketing a product (you), I wanted to include a section in the book for those of you who are currently in the job market, soon to graduate from college or university, or otherwise looking for a career opportunity.

If you’re like the vast majority of job seekers, you’d do what everyone knows is the way to find a job: You prepare a resume, obsessing over every entry to make sure it paints your background in the best possible light. You also begin a networking campaign, emailing and phoning your contacts and using networking tools like LinkedIn, hoping that someone in your extended network knows of a suitable job opportunity.

While many people find jobs the traditional way, social media allows a new way to interact and meet potential employers. The old rules of job searches required advertising a product (you) with direct mail (your resume that you sent to potential employers). The old rules of job searches required you to interrupt people (friends and colleagues) to tell them that you were in the job market and to ask them to help you.

As people engage with each other on social media sites, there are plenty of opportunities to network. Just like at a physical cocktail party, if you are unemployed and looking for work, the people you meet may be in a position to introduce you to that perfect employer. The converse is also true: Smart employers look to social networking sites to find the sort of plugged-in people who would fit in at their company or in a certain job. In fact, on the day that I wrote this, a friend asked me to tweet a job opportunity. Had you been watching my Twitter feed that day, perhaps you’d have a new job now.

To find a job via social networks, you have to stop thinking like an advertiser of a product and start thinking like a publisher of information.

So you want to find a new job via social media? Offer information that people want. Create an online presence that people are eager to consume. Establish a virtual front door that people will happily link to—one that employers will find. The new rules of finding a job require you to share your knowledge and expertise with a world that is looking for what you have to offer.

It’s not just travel destinations, cosmetics, and air travel that can be promoted via social networks like Twitter. It’s also you and your career. Let’s look at how people use social networks in the job market. David Murray (@DaveMurr) says that after being laid off, he immediately did the traditional things, updating his resume and calling a bunch of contacts. But he eventually realized that he would also have to change gears and pay attention to blogs, social networks, and online communities. Murray already had a Twitter account, so he reached out to his Twitter followers and publicly announced that he was looking for work.

“I guess you could say I used a new tool for old-school networking,” Murray says. “The response was overwhelming, and I received several leads and opportunities that were far more fruitful than my previous attempts.”

Murray then hit on a creative way to use Twitter Search 1in his job hunt. “I came across a comment from Chris Brogan [@ChrisBrogan] on how he used Twitter Search to keep track of his tens of thousands of followers using RSS feeds,” Murray says. “So I simply began entering keywords in Twitter Search like ‘Hiring Social Media,’ ‘Social Media Jobs,’ ‘Online Community Manager,’ ‘Blogging Jobs,’ and so on. I then pulled the RSS feeds of these keyword conversations and made it a habit to check these first thing in the morning every day.”