January 25, 2024 • 46 mins
Lisa Buffo, Founder & CEO of Cannabis Marketing Association sat down with Max Juhasz, CEO of DopeSEO and Co-Founder of Bud Plug, to discuss predatory website development practices, uncover concerns for dispensaries, and gain valuable insights into SEO strategies for cannabis businesses. Discover the impact of Google's algorithm changes on marketing strategies in the cannabis industry and explore the importance of owning and controlling your data.
Learn more and connect with the Cannabis Marketing Association:
- Cannabis Marketing Association: https://thecannabismarketingassociation.com/
- Contact us: info@marketingcannabis.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cannamarketing/
- Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/CannaMarketingAssociation
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/cannamarketing
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cannabis-marketing-association/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:11):
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the first episode of 2024.
I'm your host, Lisa Buffo, the founder and CEO of the Cannabis Marketing Association.
We have got an amazing lineup of guests for you this year, and it's going to
be another interesting and very exciting year in cannabis marketing.
(00:32):
There's been a lot of changes in the cannabis industry and a lot of changes
in the marketing space and industry as well that are really changing the landscape.
We've got news of possible rescheduling of cannabis going from Schedule 1 to
Schedule 3 after the recommendation of Health and Human Services,
the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the DEA that came out in winter 2023,
(00:58):
as well as early 2024. So that's exciting.
And we are responding accordingly. And we've got a really awesome new lineup
of benefits and content for our members this year.
So we're rolling out new and additional member benefits for you all,
including a series that we're doing called War Room Wednesdays.
(01:19):
So on the last Wednesday of the month, it's a quick 30-minute webinar.
But I'm going to be doing similar reporting like I did for our end-of-year State
of Cannabis Marketing series, where we're We're going to be talking about current
events in cannabis marketing.
We're going to be talking about the changes that are happening politically and
legally and how that is important for marketers and how to prepare.
(01:40):
We're going to be doing some education on different topics.
And then just like most marketers do, right, when we strategize,
we get into a war room with our team and we come up with ideas and we solve problems.
So we're going to leave space for our members to talk about what problems they
are going through and what they need help with and give time for people to respond
(02:00):
and come up with solutions.
That being said, you can always check out our website, thecannabismarketingassociation.com
or reach out to us membership at marketingcannabis.org for more information.
Okay. So today's episode, we're going to be talking about SEO a little bit.
We're going to be talking about the space for marketing agencies as well as
what we see happening for cannabis this year.
(02:23):
So today's guest is Max Juhasz.
Max is the owner of Dope SEO and the co-founder of Bud Plug.
His company focuses on helping small businesses in the cannabis space compete
evenly with larger entities.
And for the last eight years, he's helped cannabis and and hunt companies generate
millions in extra revenue through digital marketing and SEO.
(02:45):
Okay. Welcome, everybody, to today's episode of Party Like a Marketer,
the podcast dedicated to cannabis marketing, public relations,
and authentic storytelling.
Today's guest is Max Juhasz, the CEO of Dope SEO and the co-founder of Budplug.
Max, welcome to the show, and thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. This is great.
(03:06):
I'm super excited for this. I love doing interviews and podcasts with you and
just chatting with you offline. We've had so many good conversations.
Can you let our audience know a little bit about Max, who you are?
Tell us about Dope SEO and Budplug and how you got started in cannabis.
Sure. So, hey, everybody watching. This is Max Juhasz, the founder of Dope SEO
(03:29):
and the co-founder of Budplug.
I have a weird history with cannabis.
I have a weird story with cannabis. I grew up on the East Coast in New Jersey
in the 80s and 90s in the early 2000s.
Basically, I left the East Coast in 2001, 2003, but I was there during the whole,
(03:51):
way before legacy was legacy, and it was just normal.
I got into direct sales.
Sales i ran a door-to-door sales company
for about 15 years and what
ended up happening was the internet was killing us because
when we started it was great you could just do door-to-door sales and any story
(04:15):
that you told people they would believe and then the internet happened and people
wanted to research your company and you had to have a website you had to have
a maps listing you had to have all this and the guys that i worked with were
absolute dinosaurs and i decided I decided to in my part time when I wasn't running my company,
I learned digital marketing and I basically, you know, and me just just being,
you know, having like decades of sales,
(04:39):
Before all this, I was doing club promotions in New York. We ran some of the
biggest hip-hop parties in New York. I partied with Wu-Tang.
There's a whole M&M and all these other guys. That's a whole lifetime before
a lifetime before a lifetime.
Then I got into sales because I was like, I got to do something because I'm
going to end up going to jail just because of all the people that I'm around.
I got into direct sales and I moved across the country.
(05:00):
Basically, I taught myself digital marketing.
I invested money into digital marketing. I invested money in how to rank websites
on YouTube, how to do this, how to do that.
A lot of my videos are still up just because I'm kind of curious to see how they aggregate still.
But I mean, I made my first $10,000 online through YouTube videos back in 2016,
(05:22):
2017, just from creating content that I thought was helpful for people.
And because I could do it for myself, then I could sell it as a service.
So that's when we started creating the agency. I built my first,
you know, cannabis website in 2016 for a buddy of mine who was running a cannabis
delivery service out in Arizona.
I was hired on by Plain Jane or Tri Plain Jane, Plain Jane CBD,
(05:46):
like, you know, which back when 2018, the farm bill and everybody was going
crazy about CBD and hemp and the whole world thought that, you know,
CBD was cannabis and we had to educate a ton of people.
People, but through organic SEO, just from e-commerce, we help them go from
600,000 a year in online sales to 4.2 million in online sales.
(06:10):
And I've actually got this, it's funny, it was the back and forth, literally.
Within a month, we help them gain an extra $1,000 to $2,000 a day in online sales.
And that's huge for a small business. I'm talking like basically three partners, a couple employees.
And then I worked with them for a while. They sold the company to another company.
(06:35):
And I got a wonderful, thank you very much for all your help.
You know and that happened about two or three
more times with different with different with different companies and i was
like all right this is kind of crappy i hate looking for a new client more or
less or a new job so we we basically after covid i had a had an epiphany about
(06:57):
like who do i like working with the best and i was like oh like cannabis companies
are honestly the the most fun companies to work with.
So I made a really tough decision to fire about half of my clients that we were
servicing from the agency.
And I took literally, we, we, we killed close to a quarter million dollars in
recurring revenue just to free up space for us to focus on working with cannabis
(07:23):
clients and like, get back into like free up time into like,
Hey, let's go set up demos let's so let's set up pitches let's go
travel let's go to events let's go this let's go that let's join
organizations and start you know talking to
people and since then you know we've helped
launch a number of brands we've helped launch a number of companies we've helped
you know people make millions and billions and billions of dollars in online
(07:45):
sales both for cb hemp other gray area stuff as well as dispensaries cultivators
edibles companies companies, manufacturers,
and other ancillaries, like we work with some cannabis CPA groups and whatever.
And then just the evolution of that was from, because my background is in e-comm and in sales.
(08:13):
You know, we won the runner-up award for Weed Mart last year,
which was awesome because I was like, holy crap, like we actually won something
for this. I think we have something.
But we built a platform that allowed us to legitimately take e-commerce,
you know, traditional e-commerce like any other online store and build it for a dispensary.
(08:35):
And for the last, you know, there's
a whole other story about that that we can get into if you want to.
Too but we we we've had a couple companies come
after us a couple companies try to shut us down a couple bigger
players try to buy us out and that's when
we knew we actually had something that kind
of scared the crap out of some of the bigger guys so we're like all right
(08:57):
we're turning them all down and we're keeping it going and this
is bud plug yeah this is bud like blood plug evolved
from bud plug evolved from a from a
from a delivery app to a online kind of
thing to just like a just like
a menu platform to you know integrating
with with different with different with different features
(09:19):
and like what we actually figured out was like we're not
really we're not really a point of sale
company we're not really you know we're not we're not all these
other things what we are is actually we've we're more of a sass
like tech company you know to where like we just built really good functional
back-end plugins to help dispensaries just kind of operate rate and work versus
(09:42):
having multiple third-party companies come in and just like,
hey, you pay extra for actual analytics. You pay extra for actual reporting.
It's not like abstract blobs. It's not iframes. It's not menus that are hosted on another website.
This is all built into your website live. It connects with metric,
(10:06):
connects with biotrack, live reporting back and forth.
Like all of your inventory is synced has delivery
options has everything else has all the other stuff and it's
and like i was telling you but before we we went
live like we've literally the the first store that
we had running 100 on our platform uh we actually met at the canada's marketing
(10:28):
summit last year it was a social equity license holder that was just planning
on opening we met at the after party on the rooftop and we just got to talking
and he He signed up with us and he literally opened up.
We literally have the first 30 days, 45 days of data from a store that opened
up running 100% on us. Yeah.
(10:52):
It's really exciting to say the least. So
it sounds like your SEO experience and agency experience allows you to build
this new solution that will help cannabis marketers in a similar vein because
they are cannabis business owners and marketers because they get to own their
website and the data in the e-commerce that comes within it.
(11:14):
So that was it. Yeah. Yeah. So how does this like, could you articulate exactly what that problem is?
And again, like how cannabis marketers can take the lesson learned or like what's
the most important takeaway for them with this?
Like being able to, we know that most like your clients, cannabis marketers don't have much budget.
(11:36):
And a lot comes down to their online presence and making sure that looks as
good as possible because that's really what you got.
So can you kind of like articulate that problem?
And also a little more about what the solve is as far as how you see that in
the day-to-day business side, but also in context of the broader industry that
was not the case with the companies you worked with before?
(11:59):
Well, think about it this way. I mean, like there's when...
Because we have to move at the speed of technology, you know,
and since the internet, you know, the sharing of information has just become incredible.
You know, it's not like, Oh, have you heard? Or like, Hey, such and such just
published this, like people pump content nonstop all day long.
(12:22):
Like you're any app that you're on is, is, is newsworthy is,
you know, whether it's, it's real news or quote unquote fake news or,
or, or whatever, but like information is shared at lightning speed compared
to where it was 20, 30 years ago.
And there are still a lot of agencies and digital marketing companies that operate like,
(12:43):
like we don't know how to build a
website anymore you know in that sense and like there
is a let's just put it this way one of
the things that's really that's always irked me as a as
an agency owner as a digital marketing agency owner
as a business owner was what i consider to be incredibly predatory terms of
(13:04):
services when it came to who you hired to build your website you know we've
had I've had four or five dozen conversations with people who run a dispensary,
run a grove, run a brand, run this, that hired an agency, and the agency went
and bought their website domain, does their hosting,
(13:26):
quote-unquote, owns all of their content.
And the actual business owner who went and incorporated all this,
paid all this money, built this brand, did all this stuff, doesn't own any of
their digital presence.
And I've seen things to where the agency that built their website starts eventually holding them hostage,
(13:47):
to where it's like, hey, if you don't pay us the money, like,
yeah, you've paid us thousands of dollars to build your website,
to do all this stuff, to set everything up, but we're going to shut your website
down if you don't pay us. Thank you.
You know, and I just feel like if, you know, because generally speaking,
unless you're a giant MSO, I mean, even if you are a giant MSO,
like it's still like your quote unquote business baby.
(14:08):
Like you care about building your brand, you care about doing anything else,
but more so for a small, let's just say a social equity license holder,
a small business owner, you know, like, Hey, this is like, I'm a one woman shop
or I'm a two person shop or I'm a three person shop.
And like, this is what we've been working on now for the last year or two years,
whatever we've invested tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars
(14:31):
and who knows how many man hours into opening and building our brand or a business.
But we're still forced to pay this company that doesn't really do anything for
us other than, you know, they're, they're slow to respond.
They don't, you know, it takes three weeks to make updates. The website's broken.
We've seen stuff to where we had a client who was paying a marketing company
(14:55):
$5,000 a month to build them a new website, and nine months later,
they didn't have a website.
They paid $45,000 to this company that they didn't have a website built.
We've seen it to where the hosting company owns the business,
and it's just like, hey, if you don't pay me, literally shut down their entire
business, shut down their entire website, where the agency owns their social media handles.
(15:18):
Handles and if you know and won't release them
you know i've seen stuff to where the the the
company that built your website for some
reason pushes out a live demo version of your website you know like you know
like staging dot or whatever that they're collecting sales orders on but and
(15:39):
you see this commonly in cannabis oh you have no idea look we get calls once
a week about about this stuff.
And we've seen everything. And I'm like, this is this is outrageous.
And then, you know, it's a couple that just now it's like there are there are
a ton of point of sale companies,
not a ton, but there's there's a few large players that are like,
hey, we're giving out a free point of sale platform to dispensary owners.
(16:00):
But with that three point of sale comes.
A bunch of upsells that they don't tell you about when you sign up,
you know, but you're locked in a contract,
you're paying for the, you're paying for the hardware, you're paying for this,
but Hey, like your website or your actual, your actual sales menu,
your menu of your inventory is hosted on our domain.
(16:21):
You know, so you're either iframing it into your website or you're using their
website as your menu, you know, which does nothing for you, for your product searches for your SEO,
but what they don't tell you is that they're also gathering all of your customer
data and sharing it with whoever.
But on the flip side of that though, too, it's like, oh, if you want us to integrate
(16:44):
with your website, here's one of our preferred agency partners,
that we recommend that's going to charge you $2,500 or $3,000 or $1,500 for
the setup fee, And then, you know, two, $3,000 a month to host your store,
you know, or integrate your web, integrate your online store,
(17:06):
your, your menu into your website that you don't own if you stop paying us.
So it's essentially a hostage situation for a lot of the spend.
So, okay. So two follow-up questions to that. One, now tell us more about Budplug
in terms of like the solve for that, but also just to tackle like the problem you've brought up.
(17:30):
What are the questions that business owners need to ask agencies when they are
interviewing them and they do need to find a website provider? provider?
Like how do I own my data? Yeah. I mean, I mean, there's, there's a bunch of
questions you should own. It's like, do I own my website? Do I own my URL? Do I own my content?
Who are you sharing this information with?
You know, if I choose to leave you, am I able to take what I've paid for and move it somewhere else?
(17:55):
You know, where, where is my, where does my data go? And,
If I choose to change point of sale companies or my menu company,
am I able to keep all of the work that I've paid for?
There's that. I mean, there's just so much.
Most people are just like, oh, yeah. I had a talk with a guy in New York a couple
(18:20):
weeks ago, social equity guy.
He's like, I need – this guy called me on Christmas Day.
Yeah. You know what I mean? And I was just like, this has to be important.
You're actually calling me on, like, I was like, I don't know this number.
He's like, Hey, you know, I'm hoping to talk, you know, whatever.
And like, literally he's like, I'm opening in 30 days. I'm using this platform,
(18:42):
you know, because it's, because it's the free one that everybody recommends.
And I had a talk with their, with, you know, and I was like, so here's, it's funny.
Like you sign up with this company for your free point of sale platform and
you instantaneously go into their hot leads list
he's like yeah i started getting phone calls from from this
other from like two or three other agencies that integrate
with them through their api and they're going to build me a website you know
(19:07):
for xyz amount of money per month and i was like he's like yeah but i don't
own it and i was like well that's a bad decision to start with but he's like
he's like yeah they're showing me all these examples of these big brands that
they've worked with and he's like listen here's the deal i need to make i was
like do you have a website he's no he's like do you have a maps So I was like,
no, I was like, do you have a phone number or an email set up?
He's like, no, he's like, you don't have anything set up. No social media,
(19:27):
no branding, no sort of like any sort of buildup or press or any sort of like
you have no following, but you're opening up in midtown Manhattan in 30 days
and you're still under construction.
But you're telling me that you need a website built. You need a social media
marketing campaign built. You need everything set up.
(19:52):
Your rent is $50,000 a month. Your payroll is $25,000 a month.
And you need to do at least 300 transactions a day to break even on day one.
You know what I mean? And I was like, I was like, we can help you.
He's like, he's like, yeah, but to be honest, like my marketing budget's only
(20:12):
probably about three, 4,000 and that's to build the website,
to get everything else set up, to do this, to do that.
And I was, you know, and then I was like, I was like, we can pull some miracles
out, but not for that budget.
You know what I mean? He's like, well, I guess, you know, I guess maybe I'll
just go with, he's like, I don't care about really, but he's like,
I don't have the time to like,
you know, build a website, manage a website so i guess it's worth
(20:33):
paying those guys two three thousand a month to build
my website i was like but you don't own it he's like
yeah we'll figure that out later i was like but this is all
but this is what comes into play when it comes to starting
a dispensary or starting a business it's like it's you have all the upfront
costs of getting the license getting the inspections doing the construction
doing the branding doing buying your inventory you know and then you have this
(20:55):
whole digital world that's basically like how do people find you you know they
find you you through maps.
They find you through location.
They find you through this.
But if you're already opening up saying, hey, I need to do 300 sales a day with
zero buildup, zero brand following, zero brand awareness, can you guarantee me that?
(21:20):
And my response was, no.
There's no way I can honestly tell you, you can pay me five grand today,
but there's no way I can guarantee you 300 sales
a day starting off in 30 days starting
from zero so how do you so so
it's important for business owners to make sure before they start
(21:41):
they own their website they own their data yeah yeah own your data own your
hosting own your domain name own your social media urls own all of your digital
presence you know it's only yeah it's kind of like you know you're like imagine
Imagine Cannabis Marketing Association being owned by an agency.
Yeah, that's not the case. But we, yeah, that is definitely not the case here.
(22:07):
No, but that's scary though. It's almost like, hey, Lisa, if you don't pay this,
we're going to shut down your website before your event happens.
Yeah, no, those are the things that can put people out of business and ruin
your financial and mental health.
Absolutely. But I'm curious. So assuming all of this, they've got it owned,
they've done their due diligence and they've set up the right foundation.
(22:29):
I do want to understand a bit more about, you mentioned earlier,
using digital marketing and SEO strategy,
you can scale effectively and be able to get more traffic, get more transactions,
and really increase your revenue.
So a lot of our listeners here are marketers. They are fairly digitally savvy.
(22:51):
But again, this is cannabis. So not everyone has a budget.
And people are at different levels of that. that. So can you talk about a little
bit about the SEO strategies that
folks can implement that are somewhat accessible or maybe not so obvious?
What are some takeaways for our audience as far as how to approach SEO,
(23:13):
what they can do, what is important and how to hone in on that?
And yeah, so let's start there.
Yeah, I can absolutely. I mean, you put a
hot button so I can talk about this all day so so essentially with
this it's like from an seo standpoint you know you
want to start off with the good foundation blocks you want to make sure that
your site is not only well for
(23:34):
one the first thing you should obviously try to rank for is your brand name
i mean that actually goes into some thought process for like what you're going
to call your brand because we've seen some incredibly great brands and then
we've seen some other people try to call their brand name the gas station and
you know while i think that's a cool name it's like if you type in gas station.
(23:55):
You know, your Google's going to automatically think you're a gas station.
So, you know, gas station dispensary, you know, and I'm not going to knock the
people that called her, you know, like, Hey, like that was a very bold maneuver
and you don't have to cut.
So the, uh, so, but essentially it's, it's your brand name, your brand name
first, you want to have a location up, you want to have a maps listing,
you want to have an Apple maps listing.
(24:15):
You even want to have a Bing location and, and all the other stuff that need to go into that.
Even if you work from home. Yes. Like he's so safe, you're not a dispensary, but you're service.
Yes, you want to locate. Even if you're a service, have a maps listing and just
set an area, you know, or at least have a ping.
So, you know, one of the things that I can start talking about search box optimization
too, but one of the things that essentially it's like when somebody is looking for your brand,
(24:40):
the worst thing you can actually have, worse than bad reviews is no presence,
you know, no presence, no, or, or you've picked a name very similar to 50%.
15 other companies and they're showing up before you, you know?
And, and, and cause then it's like, there's going to be the misconception of that.
So, and it's weird, but like, you know, I chose dope SEO as,
(25:04):
as the URL for the company.
Cause for one, it was like really simple to spell, really simple to,
to, you know, it's, you don't have to type much.
It's really hard to, it's not impossible to screw up when you're typing it,
but you know, it's a brand name that you remember.
But beyond that, it's like, have a URL that's friendly, have,
you know, Think about this.
Don't buy the best cannabis dispensary in your city.com.
(25:27):
That's way too many words to type into something. Have your brand name, own that.
When it comes to this and it's like there's a bajillion builders out there.
You know what i mean like you i had an interesting conversation with
a dispensary that was opening up new jersey and the
guy it's another social equity group whatever this these
guys built their entire website on wix and while wix is a really you know it's
(25:50):
like oh you can build a website using you know we've all seen the commercials
on youtube wix is probably and and like wix spent millions of dollars on this
whole like wix seo like wix is good for seo like they put this whole campaign
on on like why Wix is good for SEO.
When you type in the name of this dispensary, their website doesn't show up for their brand name.
You know, their press shows up and it's, it's, it's incredibly unique. It's, it's,
(26:16):
It's incredibly unique. You know what I mean? Like their press releases show
up. They do have a maps listing.
Their maps listing shows up for the name of the dispensary.
But you have to go to the maps listing to click website to actually go to their website.
And because it's built on Wix, like when you go to shop their menu,
it opens up another company's, it opens up the menu platform's URL.
(26:40):
Because it was built on Wix and it doesn't integrate and do all this other stuff.
They're like, but we really love the way it looks. I'm like,
that's great. but it sucks for SEO.
So what, you know, and the other thing with, anyway, like what we did was basically
from an e-commerce standpoint, because there's gotta be hot strains.
There's gotta be brands that you work with that are, that are statewide,
you know, that are, that are really popular brands to work with.
(27:03):
So let's just hypothetically say I'm looking for cookies, you know,
strain, you know, cookies, banana, cush, OG near me, you know what I mean?
Or like, or dispensaries that sell, you know, you know, cookies, banana, kush, OG.
When you have all that embedded into your website, when you have a real store, like with all of your.
All of your, all of your product information synced in there and properly schema
(27:28):
tagged and properly like metadata and, you know, with good photos and reviews
on the website, you'll rank for those.
You'll rank, you'll rank for your brand name. You'll rank for
the brands that you carry you'll rank for your brand
name plus reviews you'll rank for strain reviews on
the products that that you that you carry if
(27:48):
you're doing any sort of event or whatever like you
can rank for that what we've seen is is you know because most people years ago
when you know let's just say colorado a couple years ago like colorado colorado
is like a great thing a lot of people just use their website as like as a menu
you know what i mean like they basically it was It was almost like a digital flyer where it's like,
(28:10):
hey, we're just going to post a picture of our menu on our website.
Nothing clickable. You know what I mean? We're going to update the PDF photo,
but you can't actually see anything.
But hey, we're going to integrate with this thing that's going to take you away from our site.
And what we did was actually, it's like, hey, that PDF picture that you're putting
(28:30):
up on your website is now clickable and searchable.
You know, and that's, but it's also like from, from this, it's like,
depending on how many locations you have, depending on whatever,
like Google has changed its algorithm,
you know, within the last couple of years to go location based,
you know, it's, everything is mobile first now.
So it's, it's like your reviews, your search reviews, whether you're searching
(28:53):
from a desktop or your phone or a tablet are going to be based on your location.
So this, this manipulates a lot of like how you show up.
So even if you show up for the best dispensary in XYZ city, the first thing
that's going to show up are maps above anything.
You know, if you type in restaurant near me, sneakers near me,
food near me, car repair, auto repair, oil change.
(29:16):
You are typing with location intent.
With no no even if you're just in general okay you
know you could go you could anybody that's watching this you could just go in and
be like you know just type in chinese food or type in
dispensary or type in you know oil change it's going to show you the results
based on your location so a lot of the things with this and i know everybody
(29:39):
wants it we want to be the best dispensary in the state let's be honest about
how people shop though most people aren't going to drive 30 miles for anything
unless they live in nowhere, you know? Yeah.
But for most people, there's a hyperlocal focus on it. There's a,
there's a very hyperlocal focus.
So with this, it's like, if you can, if you can, if you have a shop.
In an area with enough population and you can show up in maps above everybody
(30:03):
else, you're going to get those clicks.
Because what are they doing for? It's a buyer intent search.
The buyer intent search is if I'm searching for a dispensary,
I'm not doing research on dispensaries because I want to go shopping at dispensary.
So you have to think about the user experience on this.
If I click on this and I go there and the hours are correct,
and one of the craziest updates dates now that Google did when Google maps did
(30:26):
is that your open hours are going to reflect how you show up during different periods of the day.
So if I'm searching dispensary near me and it's like at 10 o'clock when you're
closed, it's less likely to come up.
Okay. You're not going to show up compared to the people that are open,
you know, versus noon, you know, cause you know, the guys that are open,
(30:47):
the shops that are open are the ones that are going to get, you know, and they're there.
So it's a really interesting, it's a really interesting twist.
Like Google's always, Google's goal is to get you to use their platform,
you know, because, you know, and essentially it's like, they want to deliver
the best user experience for the person that's using their search engine.
So as long as they can get you to stay on their platform and continue to stay on their platform.
(31:11):
So they're constantly updating how their algorithm thinks.
And basically with, you know, since COVID or whatever, and since the,
the, the 800,000% increase in online sales, you know, how people shop, they've realized, no.
It's, it's, it's way more, but I, but I know it was like, it was like an 8,000
(31:32):
or like it was, it was at least like 8,000% increase in online ordering during COVID.
And here's the thing. It never went away. Yeah.
You know, it never went away like the whole like grocery delivery
thing the whole food delivery thing the whole wine delivery
thing weed delivery thing all of that stuck stayed
(31:52):
you know it normalized for everyone you know what i mean so even so it's it's
like oh i don't have to i don't have to go to the grocery store i could just
order my groceries i mean like that's a job that's a job that wasn't around
five six years ago like delivery driver for groceries you know you know what i'm saying,
Whereas Uber was a new thing, but then it was like Uber Eats and whatever.
(32:18):
We as consumers, you got to think about how they shop, how they do this.
It's like, hey, if you're within a thing and let's just say you're in a state
that allows delivery, if you're a dispensary that can show up,
hey, you're within it, and we can almost guarantee you that it's like,
hey, your order will be delivered within 30 minutes.
Wow, that's amazing. You know what I mean? If I'm searching for cannabis dispensary
with delivery or cannabis delivery. You know, we were working with some guys
(32:41):
on the East coast that, that ran a, that ran a delivery service.
And I mean, these guys were doing 150, 200 orders a day just,
just for, just for weed delivery.
And it blew my mind. I was like, and they had all the data.
I was like, look at this. And it's just, they had maps of like,
where are your drivers, your drivers, like you've got six different drivers
covering six different areas doing pickup. up. And I was like, this is amazing.
(33:04):
So this is the thing. It's like you have, especially whether it's medical,
whether it's rec, the age group, whatever, sometimes you have senior citizens
that don't want to go to the dispensary and they'll pay for this.
Some people can't drive. Some people are too busy. Some people,
hey, just meet me after work.
I'm getting off in 30 minutes. Come meet me.
We're supposed to meet me to give me what I need.
(33:25):
It's very consumer-based. So with this, essentially, it's like the more data
you can control as a business owner, or the more data you can keep for yourself
and not have to give away to other platforms,
the more powerful it is.
And when you actually have a full understanding of the products that are selling,
(33:45):
the categories that are selling, the time of day that people are shopping,
you can gauge your inventory ordering.
You can gauge the sales promos that you do.
You can actually get the feedback from your customers to say,
hey, what did you think about about this, you want to leave a review because
this is what the thing with online shopping is most people don't buy anything
(34:08):
without reading reviews first.
You know, it's like, Hey, is this string good? Is this string bad?
Is this, this, is this, that, you know, how does this vape hit?
How, you know, do these dabs?
So the more user generated content you could get as a business owner,
it's only going to help you more, you know, and when you have all of that built
into your website that you own,
(34:29):
you know, because that's, that takes, you know, whether it's automation or whether
it's, you know, whether it's manual, you going going out, like,
Hey, leave us a review on this product.
It's going to help you get the results that you want and help you rank up for other terms.
So I don't think I take a breath at all.
(34:50):
Well, and I do have a few, we're getting close to time, but I do have a few more questions.
So first really quickly, Google has made some changes to their algorithm and
cookie tracking in 2024.
Can you give us the like quick rundown on what that is and what marketers need
to know? It looks like they're kind of ixnaying the little cookie thing,
you know, and they're keeping their cookies, but third party cookies.
(35:12):
They're not really a big fan of anymore.
So this is, once again, this is one more reason why you should own your data
and not give it away to third party tracking companies,
you know, and I think this is probably going on a higher level between Google
and the other larger social media, like Meta and whatever.
(35:35):
Because like just for ads delivery just for
other stuff like i know that like this is going to really screw up
a lot of ads agencies in regards to retargeting remarketing yeah
user audiences yeah user audiences or whatever but
this is one more reason that seo and like
controlling your data is that much more important because
if google's not allowing if google's essentially
(35:57):
because they started they rolled it out into this month and i
think by the third quarter of this year they're going to x-nay it all
together so if your facebook pixel
or your retargeting pixel or your cookie tracker or
your whatever that you're using from your third-party software
doesn't work anymore guess what the only thing you have is your email list your
phone number list your customer user database that should be held within your
(36:21):
website or within your store that you hopefully don't share with anybody else
in regards to keeping in touch with the customer you know Because it's going to be really hard to,
I mean, it's really hard to run retargeting ads for cash dispensaries to begin with.
But from a user-generated thing, it's like, this is going to really kill a lot of ads companies.
(36:44):
Or they're scrambling right now to get everything together to figure out how to make it work.
Which, you know, honestly, as an SEO, I'm not mad about, you know,
because it's one more reason, you know, it's the same thing.
It's like, I've been preaching this for years.
It's like, listen, you should, don't get me wrong. Social media is very crucial
for cannabis dispensaries, but you're at the mercy of the platform.
(37:08):
You know, you don't own meta, you don't own Instagram, you don't own TikTok, you don't own anything.
You know, I've seen, I've seen people get, get pushed out on LinkedIn,
you know, like, Like, hey, LinkedIn took down my post recently because it seemed
like I was selling something.
Facebook is very anti-cannabis. Instagram is very anti-cannabis if you're trying to sell.
(37:29):
And you can have your account shut down overnight.
I've seen companies just lose their account instantaneously because I'm shadow banned.
My Instagram is shadow banned. It's like you're talking about things that you're
not supposed to talk about and we've restricted your reach. Oh yeah.
They're not, they're not friendly at all too.
(37:50):
Right. So, so here's the thing. It's like getting people to follow you on a
platform that you have no control over.
To me, it just seems like a really bad investment. And if, and if your entire
strategy is social media,
I don't think that's, that's a really good thing because once again,
it's like people use search engines, people search from their mobile phones,
you know, from a buyer intent standpoint, when I look for reviews on something,
(38:12):
when I look to go shop, I don't go on Instagram or Facebook.
Hey, where do I want to eat? Let's go on Facebook. Where do I want to eat?
Let's go on Facebook. I go on Google.
And the thing with this is that Google, nine times out of 10,
if you do proper optimization, you'll outrank the Weedmaps.
You'll outrank Leafly. You'll outrank the third-party menu services that you pay for.
(38:36):
It's good to have them. I'm not saying that they're not beneficial.
But what I'm saying is is you don't need to run your entire business.
I've seen people use Weedmaps as their website.
Yeah, so not only owning your tech and your data and your website is important,
but owning your content and creating it and having a system for that is going
(38:59):
to be more of a primary strategy in marketing than some folks have relied on in the past,
which is really ads-based and retargeting-based as opposed to focusing more
on ads and focusing more on what content can we create and Google's update and
algorithm is now or their tech changes are now really putting that to the forefront
(39:20):
of marketers' problems. So basically if...
People and businesses who are more ad-reliant or third-party reliant for the
top of funnel are going to struggle more if they don't switch.
Yeah, because your top-of-funnel awareness is going to get crushed.
With these cookies going away, your cross-channel impression-based ad campaign
(39:48):
that goes on different online publications,
your marketing is going to get completely jacked, you know,
to where it's like, you don't have a target demographic anymore.
Your, your quote unquote audience is going to disappear eventually.
And you're not going to have that anything.
I'm sure that there are going to be some, some really inventive agencies that
(40:09):
hide their cookies somewhere, or that are going to start buying email lists
and are going to start retargeting based on email lists or, you know,
or, or potentially even geo-fencing.
It's like how many people, you know, they, they may start But I think like even
with that, because you can geofence, it gets really scary when you actually
start looking at geofence targeting and cookies on phones and what you can do.
(40:32):
But I think a lot of that has to do with that, too. It's like they don't want
people, you know, being able to geofence target people based on where they shop
or where they live or where they frequent.
This is just one more reason why SEO is just going to be way more crucial.
Because like for you, it's like you can run ads.
I think this is, it's almost like it could potentially be a grand reset for
(40:52):
marketing again, you know, to where it's like, you don't have that data.
You're not going to be able to retarget.
You're not going to be able to re, you know, rerun impressions on publications for your stuff.
So it's one more reason to own all your data. And that's why we went ahead and
built out the whole BudBlog plugin platform form because it allows you to run
(41:13):
your entire dispensary 100% on your own website.
You can run point of sale registers from your website.
You can run, you know, and you don't need hardware.
That's the whole thing. We built this so that you can run it on tablets.
That's awesome. It's just crazy, you know? So, so it's, it's,
we're pretty proud of it, but yeah, this is, this is essentially like,
(41:35):
I'm actually really excited that goes to killing the pixels and and killing
the cookies because it's.
You know, it's going to leave a scramble. It's going to leave whatever,
but I'm a big fan of like supporting small businesses versus like the big mega companies.
Like I've always been a bigger fan of the underdog. I've always been.
And I think this may be why I love cannabis. Cause like cannabis seems to be
(41:55):
like, like you've got your big, you know, players to do like your big money
players, but there's, it's, it can be a great equalizer in the sense of like,
it can even the playing field for a lot of small companies,
as long as they're doing everything the right way,
you know, and no, it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt some brands.
It's going to hurt some manufacturers it's going to hurt some other stuff but
it also you know it's like we're all entrepreneurs we all
(42:17):
learn to pivot and dance and you know come up with crazy marketing ideas to
to grow our brains however we have to essentially so you know it may it may
kill some people it may kill some ad agencies but we've always been seo first
before anything else so i'm actually looking looking forward to it.
Well, thank you, Max. I really appreciate your time and your insight.
(42:42):
My pleasure. Can you share any contact information? Where can our listeners
find you? How can they get ahold of you? Yeah.
So I'm one of two Max U.S.s on the planet right now.
The other guy lives in Europe and he's a photographer, but if you type in my name, you'll find me.
Best way to get in touch with us though is actually let's go to dopedopseo.com or
(43:05):
if you're interested in checking out the plugins like go to get bud plugged.com
yes we know what it sounds like and yeah you won't
forget it so you know but it's bud b-u-d plugged.com
getbudplugged.com or dopeseo.com and you know i'm always around you'll see me
at the events you'll see me at the thing you'll see me doing stuff and you know
(43:25):
i love talking this stuff i don't talk sports i don't talk politics i do talk
marketing all day long so so
do we so that's a great match we are the same type of people Absolutely.
Well, thank you, Max. Appreciate it. No, listen, thank you so much.
All of your insights with everybody.
Again, if you guys want to reach out to Max, you can also find him on LinkedIn.
(43:46):
And we will see you on next week's episode. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you, everybody, for listening to this week's episode.
You can learn more about the Cannabis Marketing Association at our website,
thecannabismarketingassociation.com.
If you're interested in joining, you can check out our member benefits there
or email us at membership at marketingcannabis.org and connect with us on social media.
(44:10):
You can follow us on LinkedIn, sign up for our newsletter on our website,
and you can reach out and connect with me as well, Lisa Buffo,
on LinkedIn and send me a message and let me know that you're one of our podcast listeners. listeners.
And if there's any topics you all want to hear, any guests you want to hear
from, please email us again at membership at marketingcannabis.org.
(44:31):
We'd love to get your feedback.
And don't forget to subscribe to this podcast and we'll see you next time.
Music.
Music.
(00:11):
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the first episode of 2024.
I'm your host, Lisa Buffo, the founder and CEO of the Cannabis Marketing Association.
We have got an amazing lineup of guests for you this year, and it's going to
be another interesting and very exciting year in cannabis marketing.
(00:32):
There's been a lot of changes in the cannabis industry and a lot of changes
in the marketing space and industry as well that are really changing the landscape.
We've got news of possible rescheduling of cannabis going from Schedule 1 to
Schedule 3 after the recommendation of Health and Human Services,
the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the DEA that came out in winter 2023,
(00:58):
as well as early 2024. So that's exciting.
And we are responding accordingly. And we've got a really awesome new lineup
of benefits and content for our members this year.
So we're rolling out new and additional member benefits for you all,
including a series that we're doing called War Room Wednesdays.
(01:19):
So on the last Wednesday of the month, it's a quick 30-minute webinar.
But I'm going to be doing similar reporting like I did for our end-of-year State
of Cannabis Marketing series, where we're We're going to be talking about current
events in cannabis marketing.
We're going to be talking about the changes that are happening politically and
legally and how that is important for marketers and how to prepare.
(01:40):
We're going to be doing some education on different topics.
And then just like most marketers do, right, when we strategize,
we get into a war room with our team and we come up with ideas and we solve problems.
So we're going to leave space for our members to talk about what problems they
are going through and what they need help with and give time for people to respond
(02:00):
and come up with solutions.
That being said, you can always check out our website, thecannabismarketingassociation.com
or reach out to us membership at marketingcannabis.org for more information.
Okay. So today's episode, we're going to be talking about SEO a little bit.
We're going to be talking about the space for marketing agencies as well as
what we see happening for cannabis this year.
(02:23):
So today's guest is Max Juhasz.
Max is the owner of Dope SEO and the co-founder of Bud Plug.
His company focuses on helping small businesses in the cannabis space compete
evenly with larger entities.
And for the last eight years, he's helped cannabis and and hunt companies generate
millions in extra revenue through digital marketing and SEO.
(02:45):
Okay. Welcome, everybody, to today's episode of Party Like a Marketer,
the podcast dedicated to cannabis marketing, public relations,
and authentic storytelling.
Today's guest is Max Juhasz, the CEO of Dope SEO and the co-founder of Budplug.
Max, welcome to the show, and thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. This is great.
(03:06):
I'm super excited for this. I love doing interviews and podcasts with you and
just chatting with you offline. We've had so many good conversations.
Can you let our audience know a little bit about Max, who you are?
Tell us about Dope SEO and Budplug and how you got started in cannabis.
Sure. So, hey, everybody watching. This is Max Juhasz, the founder of Dope SEO
(03:29):
and the co-founder of Budplug.
I have a weird history with cannabis.
I have a weird story with cannabis. I grew up on the East Coast in New Jersey
in the 80s and 90s in the early 2000s.
Basically, I left the East Coast in 2001, 2003, but I was there during the whole,
(03:51):
way before legacy was legacy, and it was just normal.
I got into direct sales.
Sales i ran a door-to-door sales company
for about 15 years and what
ended up happening was the internet was killing us because
when we started it was great you could just do door-to-door sales and any story
(04:15):
that you told people they would believe and then the internet happened and people
wanted to research your company and you had to have a website you had to have
a maps listing you had to have all this and the guys that i worked with were
absolute dinosaurs and i decided I decided to in my part time when I wasn't running my company,
I learned digital marketing and I basically, you know, and me just just being,
you know, having like decades of sales,
(04:39):
Before all this, I was doing club promotions in New York. We ran some of the
biggest hip-hop parties in New York. I partied with Wu-Tang.
There's a whole M&M and all these other guys. That's a whole lifetime before
a lifetime before a lifetime.
Then I got into sales because I was like, I got to do something because I'm
going to end up going to jail just because of all the people that I'm around.
I got into direct sales and I moved across the country.
(05:00):
Basically, I taught myself digital marketing.
I invested money into digital marketing. I invested money in how to rank websites
on YouTube, how to do this, how to do that.
A lot of my videos are still up just because I'm kind of curious to see how they aggregate still.
But I mean, I made my first $10,000 online through YouTube videos back in 2016,
(05:22):
2017, just from creating content that I thought was helpful for people.
And because I could do it for myself, then I could sell it as a service.
So that's when we started creating the agency. I built my first,
you know, cannabis website in 2016 for a buddy of mine who was running a cannabis
delivery service out in Arizona.
I was hired on by Plain Jane or Tri Plain Jane, Plain Jane CBD,
(05:46):
like, you know, which back when 2018, the farm bill and everybody was going
crazy about CBD and hemp and the whole world thought that, you know,
CBD was cannabis and we had to educate a ton of people.
People, but through organic SEO, just from e-commerce, we help them go from
600,000 a year in online sales to 4.2 million in online sales.
(06:10):
And I've actually got this, it's funny, it was the back and forth, literally.
Within a month, we help them gain an extra $1,000 to $2,000 a day in online sales.
And that's huge for a small business. I'm talking like basically three partners, a couple employees.
And then I worked with them for a while. They sold the company to another company.
(06:35):
And I got a wonderful, thank you very much for all your help.
You know and that happened about two or three
more times with different with different with different companies and i was
like all right this is kind of crappy i hate looking for a new client more or
less or a new job so we we basically after covid i had a had an epiphany about
(06:57):
like who do i like working with the best and i was like oh like cannabis companies
are honestly the the most fun companies to work with.
So I made a really tough decision to fire about half of my clients that we were
servicing from the agency.
And I took literally, we, we, we killed close to a quarter million dollars in
recurring revenue just to free up space for us to focus on working with cannabis
(07:23):
clients and like, get back into like free up time into like,
Hey, let's go set up demos let's so let's set up pitches let's go
travel let's go to events let's go this let's go that let's join
organizations and start you know talking to
people and since then you know we've helped
launch a number of brands we've helped launch a number of companies we've helped
you know people make millions and billions and billions of dollars in online
(07:45):
sales both for cb hemp other gray area stuff as well as dispensaries cultivators
edibles companies companies, manufacturers,
and other ancillaries, like we work with some cannabis CPA groups and whatever.
And then just the evolution of that was from, because my background is in e-comm and in sales.
(08:13):
You know, we won the runner-up award for Weed Mart last year,
which was awesome because I was like, holy crap, like we actually won something
for this. I think we have something.
But we built a platform that allowed us to legitimately take e-commerce,
you know, traditional e-commerce like any other online store and build it for a dispensary.
(08:35):
And for the last, you know, there's
a whole other story about that that we can get into if you want to.
Too but we we we've had a couple companies come
after us a couple companies try to shut us down a couple bigger
players try to buy us out and that's when
we knew we actually had something that kind
of scared the crap out of some of the bigger guys so we're like all right
(08:57):
we're turning them all down and we're keeping it going and this
is bud plug yeah this is bud like blood plug evolved
from bud plug evolved from a from a
from a delivery app to a online kind of
thing to just like a just like
a menu platform to you know integrating
with with different with different with different features
(09:19):
and like what we actually figured out was like we're not
really we're not really a point of sale
company we're not really you know we're not we're not all these
other things what we are is actually we've we're more of a sass
like tech company you know to where like we just built really good functional
back-end plugins to help dispensaries just kind of operate rate and work versus
(09:42):
having multiple third-party companies come in and just like,
hey, you pay extra for actual analytics. You pay extra for actual reporting.
It's not like abstract blobs. It's not iframes. It's not menus that are hosted on another website.
This is all built into your website live. It connects with metric,
(10:06):
connects with biotrack, live reporting back and forth.
Like all of your inventory is synced has delivery
options has everything else has all the other stuff and it's
and like i was telling you but before we we went
live like we've literally the the first store that
we had running 100 on our platform uh we actually met at the canada's marketing
(10:28):
summit last year it was a social equity license holder that was just planning
on opening we met at the after party on the rooftop and we just got to talking
and he He signed up with us and he literally opened up.
We literally have the first 30 days, 45 days of data from a store that opened
up running 100% on us. Yeah.
(10:52):
It's really exciting to say the least. So
it sounds like your SEO experience and agency experience allows you to build
this new solution that will help cannabis marketers in a similar vein because
they are cannabis business owners and marketers because they get to own their
website and the data in the e-commerce that comes within it.
(11:14):
So that was it. Yeah. Yeah. So how does this like, could you articulate exactly what that problem is?
And again, like how cannabis marketers can take the lesson learned or like what's
the most important takeaway for them with this?
Like being able to, we know that most like your clients, cannabis marketers don't have much budget.
(11:36):
And a lot comes down to their online presence and making sure that looks as
good as possible because that's really what you got.
So can you kind of like articulate that problem?
And also a little more about what the solve is as far as how you see that in
the day-to-day business side, but also in context of the broader industry that
was not the case with the companies you worked with before?
(11:59):
Well, think about it this way. I mean, like there's when...
Because we have to move at the speed of technology, you know,
and since the internet, you know, the sharing of information has just become incredible.
You know, it's not like, Oh, have you heard? Or like, Hey, such and such just
published this, like people pump content nonstop all day long.
(12:22):
Like you're any app that you're on is, is, is newsworthy is,
you know, whether it's, it's real news or quote unquote fake news or,
or, or whatever, but like information is shared at lightning speed compared
to where it was 20, 30 years ago.
And there are still a lot of agencies and digital marketing companies that operate like,
(12:43):
like we don't know how to build a
website anymore you know in that sense and like there
is a let's just put it this way one of
the things that's really that's always irked me as a as
an agency owner as a digital marketing agency owner
as a business owner was what i consider to be incredibly predatory terms of
(13:04):
services when it came to who you hired to build your website you know we've
had I've had four or five dozen conversations with people who run a dispensary,
run a grove, run a brand, run this, that hired an agency, and the agency went
and bought their website domain, does their hosting,
(13:26):
quote-unquote, owns all of their content.
And the actual business owner who went and incorporated all this,
paid all this money, built this brand, did all this stuff, doesn't own any of
their digital presence.
And I've seen things to where the agency that built their website starts eventually holding them hostage,
(13:47):
to where it's like, hey, if you don't pay us the money, like,
yeah, you've paid us thousands of dollars to build your website,
to do all this stuff, to set everything up, but we're going to shut your website
down if you don't pay us. Thank you.
You know, and I just feel like if, you know, because generally speaking,
unless you're a giant MSO, I mean, even if you are a giant MSO,
like it's still like your quote unquote business baby.
(14:08):
Like you care about building your brand, you care about doing anything else,
but more so for a small, let's just say a social equity license holder,
a small business owner, you know, like, Hey, this is like, I'm a one woman shop
or I'm a two person shop or I'm a three person shop.
And like, this is what we've been working on now for the last year or two years,
whatever we've invested tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars
(14:31):
and who knows how many man hours into opening and building our brand or a business.
But we're still forced to pay this company that doesn't really do anything for
us other than, you know, they're, they're slow to respond.
They don't, you know, it takes three weeks to make updates. The website's broken.
We've seen stuff to where we had a client who was paying a marketing company
(14:55):
$5,000 a month to build them a new website, and nine months later,
they didn't have a website.
They paid $45,000 to this company that they didn't have a website built.
We've seen it to where the hosting company owns the business,
and it's just like, hey, if you don't pay me, literally shut down their entire
business, shut down their entire website, where the agency owns their social media handles.
(15:18):
Handles and if you know and won't release them
you know i've seen stuff to where the the the
company that built your website for some
reason pushes out a live demo version of your website you know like you know
like staging dot or whatever that they're collecting sales orders on but and
(15:39):
you see this commonly in cannabis oh you have no idea look we get calls once
a week about about this stuff.
And we've seen everything. And I'm like, this is this is outrageous.
And then, you know, it's a couple that just now it's like there are there are
a ton of point of sale companies,
not a ton, but there's there's a few large players that are like,
hey, we're giving out a free point of sale platform to dispensary owners.
(16:00):
But with that three point of sale comes.
A bunch of upsells that they don't tell you about when you sign up,
you know, but you're locked in a contract,
you're paying for the, you're paying for the hardware, you're paying for this,
but Hey, like your website or your actual, your actual sales menu,
your menu of your inventory is hosted on our domain.
(16:21):
You know, so you're either iframing it into your website or you're using their
website as your menu, you know, which does nothing for you, for your product searches for your SEO,
but what they don't tell you is that they're also gathering all of your customer
data and sharing it with whoever.
But on the flip side of that though, too, it's like, oh, if you want us to integrate
(16:44):
with your website, here's one of our preferred agency partners,
that we recommend that's going to charge you $2,500 or $3,000 or $1,500 for
the setup fee, And then, you know, two, $3,000 a month to host your store,
you know, or integrate your web, integrate your online store,
(17:06):
your, your menu into your website that you don't own if you stop paying us.
So it's essentially a hostage situation for a lot of the spend.
So, okay. So two follow-up questions to that. One, now tell us more about Budplug
in terms of like the solve for that, but also just to tackle like the problem you've brought up.
(17:30):
What are the questions that business owners need to ask agencies when they are
interviewing them and they do need to find a website provider? provider?
Like how do I own my data? Yeah. I mean, I mean, there's, there's a bunch of
questions you should own. It's like, do I own my website? Do I own my URL? Do I own my content?
Who are you sharing this information with?
You know, if I choose to leave you, am I able to take what I've paid for and move it somewhere else?
(17:55):
You know, where, where is my, where does my data go? And,
If I choose to change point of sale companies or my menu company,
am I able to keep all of the work that I've paid for?
There's that. I mean, there's just so much.
Most people are just like, oh, yeah. I had a talk with a guy in New York a couple
(18:20):
weeks ago, social equity guy.
He's like, I need – this guy called me on Christmas Day.
Yeah. You know what I mean? And I was just like, this has to be important.
You're actually calling me on, like, I was like, I don't know this number.
He's like, Hey, you know, I'm hoping to talk, you know, whatever.
And like, literally he's like, I'm opening in 30 days. I'm using this platform,
(18:42):
you know, because it's, because it's the free one that everybody recommends.
And I had a talk with their, with, you know, and I was like, so here's, it's funny.
Like you sign up with this company for your free point of sale platform and
you instantaneously go into their hot leads list
he's like yeah i started getting phone calls from from this
other from like two or three other agencies that integrate
with them through their api and they're going to build me a website you know
(19:07):
for xyz amount of money per month and i was like he's like yeah but i don't
own it and i was like well that's a bad decision to start with but he's like
he's like yeah they're showing me all these examples of these big brands that
they've worked with and he's like listen here's the deal i need to make i was
like do you have a website he's no he's like do you have a maps So I was like,
no, I was like, do you have a phone number or an email set up?
He's like, no, he's like, you don't have anything set up. No social media,
(19:27):
no branding, no sort of like any sort of buildup or press or any sort of like
you have no following, but you're opening up in midtown Manhattan in 30 days
and you're still under construction.
But you're telling me that you need a website built. You need a social media
marketing campaign built. You need everything set up.
(19:52):
Your rent is $50,000 a month. Your payroll is $25,000 a month.
And you need to do at least 300 transactions a day to break even on day one.
You know what I mean? And I was like, I was like, we can help you.
He's like, he's like, yeah, but to be honest, like my marketing budget's only
(20:12):
probably about three, 4,000 and that's to build the website,
to get everything else set up, to do this, to do that.
And I was, you know, and then I was like, I was like, we can pull some miracles
out, but not for that budget.
You know what I mean? He's like, well, I guess, you know, I guess maybe I'll
just go with, he's like, I don't care about really, but he's like,
I don't have the time to like,
you know, build a website, manage a website so i guess it's worth
(20:33):
paying those guys two three thousand a month to build
my website i was like but you don't own it he's like
yeah we'll figure that out later i was like but this is all
but this is what comes into play when it comes to starting
a dispensary or starting a business it's like it's you have all the upfront
costs of getting the license getting the inspections doing the construction
doing the branding doing buying your inventory you know and then you have this
(20:55):
whole digital world that's basically like how do people find you you know they
find you you through maps.
They find you through location.
They find you through this.
But if you're already opening up saying, hey, I need to do 300 sales a day with
zero buildup, zero brand following, zero brand awareness, can you guarantee me that?
(21:20):
And my response was, no.
There's no way I can honestly tell you, you can pay me five grand today,
but there's no way I can guarantee you 300 sales
a day starting off in 30 days starting
from zero so how do you so so
it's important for business owners to make sure before they start
(21:41):
they own their website they own their data yeah yeah own your data own your
hosting own your domain name own your social media urls own all of your digital
presence you know it's only yeah it's kind of like you know you're like imagine
Imagine Cannabis Marketing Association being owned by an agency.
Yeah, that's not the case. But we, yeah, that is definitely not the case here.
(22:07):
No, but that's scary though. It's almost like, hey, Lisa, if you don't pay this,
we're going to shut down your website before your event happens.
Yeah, no, those are the things that can put people out of business and ruin
your financial and mental health.
Absolutely. But I'm curious. So assuming all of this, they've got it owned,
they've done their due diligence and they've set up the right foundation.
(22:29):
I do want to understand a bit more about, you mentioned earlier,
using digital marketing and SEO strategy,
you can scale effectively and be able to get more traffic, get more transactions,
and really increase your revenue.
So a lot of our listeners here are marketers. They are fairly digitally savvy.
(22:51):
But again, this is cannabis. So not everyone has a budget.
And people are at different levels of that. that. So can you talk about a little
bit about the SEO strategies that
folks can implement that are somewhat accessible or maybe not so obvious?
What are some takeaways for our audience as far as how to approach SEO,
(23:13):
what they can do, what is important and how to hone in on that?
And yeah, so let's start there.
Yeah, I can absolutely. I mean, you put a
hot button so I can talk about this all day so so essentially with
this it's like from an seo standpoint you know you
want to start off with the good foundation blocks you want to make sure that
your site is not only well for
(23:34):
one the first thing you should obviously try to rank for is your brand name
i mean that actually goes into some thought process for like what you're going
to call your brand because we've seen some incredibly great brands and then
we've seen some other people try to call their brand name the gas station and
you know while i think that's a cool name it's like if you type in gas station.
(23:55):
You know, your Google's going to automatically think you're a gas station.
So, you know, gas station dispensary, you know, and I'm not going to knock the
people that called her, you know, like, Hey, like that was a very bold maneuver
and you don't have to cut.
So the, uh, so, but essentially it's, it's your brand name, your brand name
first, you want to have a location up, you want to have a maps listing,
you want to have an Apple maps listing.
(24:15):
You even want to have a Bing location and, and all the other stuff that need to go into that.
Even if you work from home. Yes. Like he's so safe, you're not a dispensary, but you're service.
Yes, you want to locate. Even if you're a service, have a maps listing and just
set an area, you know, or at least have a ping.
So, you know, one of the things that I can start talking about search box optimization
too, but one of the things that essentially it's like when somebody is looking for your brand,
(24:40):
the worst thing you can actually have, worse than bad reviews is no presence,
you know, no presence, no, or, or you've picked a name very similar to 50%.
15 other companies and they're showing up before you, you know?
And, and, and cause then it's like, there's going to be the misconception of that.
So, and it's weird, but like, you know, I chose dope SEO as,
(25:04):
as the URL for the company.
Cause for one, it was like really simple to spell, really simple to,
to, you know, it's, you don't have to type much.
It's really hard to, it's not impossible to screw up when you're typing it,
but you know, it's a brand name that you remember.
But beyond that, it's like, have a URL that's friendly, have,
you know, Think about this.
Don't buy the best cannabis dispensary in your city.com.
(25:27):
That's way too many words to type into something. Have your brand name, own that.
When it comes to this and it's like there's a bajillion builders out there.
You know what i mean like you i had an interesting conversation with
a dispensary that was opening up new jersey and the
guy it's another social equity group whatever this these
guys built their entire website on wix and while wix is a really you know it's
(25:50):
like oh you can build a website using you know we've all seen the commercials
on youtube wix is probably and and like wix spent millions of dollars on this
whole like wix seo like wix is good for seo like they put this whole campaign
on on like why Wix is good for SEO.
When you type in the name of this dispensary, their website doesn't show up for their brand name.
You know, their press shows up and it's, it's, it's incredibly unique. It's, it's,
(26:16):
It's incredibly unique. You know what I mean? Like their press releases show
up. They do have a maps listing.
Their maps listing shows up for the name of the dispensary.
But you have to go to the maps listing to click website to actually go to their website.
And because it's built on Wix, like when you go to shop their menu,
it opens up another company's, it opens up the menu platform's URL.
(26:40):
Because it was built on Wix and it doesn't integrate and do all this other stuff.
They're like, but we really love the way it looks. I'm like,
that's great. but it sucks for SEO.
So what, you know, and the other thing with, anyway, like what we did was basically
from an e-commerce standpoint, because there's gotta be hot strains.
There's gotta be brands that you work with that are, that are statewide,
you know, that are, that are really popular brands to work with.
(27:03):
So let's just hypothetically say I'm looking for cookies, you know,
strain, you know, cookies, banana, cush, OG near me, you know what I mean?
Or like, or dispensaries that sell, you know, you know, cookies, banana, kush, OG.
When you have all that embedded into your website, when you have a real store, like with all of your.
All of your, all of your product information synced in there and properly schema
(27:28):
tagged and properly like metadata and, you know, with good photos and reviews
on the website, you'll rank for those.
You'll rank, you'll rank for your brand name. You'll rank for
the brands that you carry you'll rank for your brand
name plus reviews you'll rank for strain reviews on
the products that that you that you carry if
(27:48):
you're doing any sort of event or whatever like you
can rank for that what we've seen is is you know because most people years ago
when you know let's just say colorado a couple years ago like colorado colorado
is like a great thing a lot of people just use their website as like as a menu
you know what i mean like they basically it was It was almost like a digital flyer where it's like,
(28:10):
hey, we're just going to post a picture of our menu on our website.
Nothing clickable. You know what I mean? We're going to update the PDF photo,
but you can't actually see anything.
But hey, we're going to integrate with this thing that's going to take you away from our site.
And what we did was actually, it's like, hey, that PDF picture that you're putting
(28:30):
up on your website is now clickable and searchable.
You know, and that's, but it's also like from, from this, it's like,
depending on how many locations you have, depending on whatever,
like Google has changed its algorithm,
you know, within the last couple of years to go location based,
you know, it's, everything is mobile first now.
So it's, it's like your reviews, your search reviews, whether you're searching
(28:53):
from a desktop or your phone or a tablet are going to be based on your location.
So this, this manipulates a lot of like how you show up.
So even if you show up for the best dispensary in XYZ city, the first thing
that's going to show up are maps above anything.
You know, if you type in restaurant near me, sneakers near me,
food near me, car repair, auto repair, oil change.
(29:16):
You are typing with location intent.
With no no even if you're just in general okay you
know you could go you could anybody that's watching this you could just go in and
be like you know just type in chinese food or type in
dispensary or type in you know oil change it's going to show you the results
based on your location so a lot of the things with this and i know everybody
(29:39):
wants it we want to be the best dispensary in the state let's be honest about
how people shop though most people aren't going to drive 30 miles for anything
unless they live in nowhere, you know? Yeah.
But for most people, there's a hyperlocal focus on it. There's a,
there's a very hyperlocal focus.
So with this, it's like, if you can, if you can, if you have a shop.
In an area with enough population and you can show up in maps above everybody
(30:03):
else, you're going to get those clicks.
Because what are they doing for? It's a buyer intent search.
The buyer intent search is if I'm searching for a dispensary,
I'm not doing research on dispensaries because I want to go shopping at dispensary.
So you have to think about the user experience on this.
If I click on this and I go there and the hours are correct,
and one of the craziest updates dates now that Google did when Google maps did
(30:26):
is that your open hours are going to reflect how you show up during different periods of the day.
So if I'm searching dispensary near me and it's like at 10 o'clock when you're
closed, it's less likely to come up.
Okay. You're not going to show up compared to the people that are open,
you know, versus noon, you know, cause you know, the guys that are open,
(30:47):
the shops that are open are the ones that are going to get, you know, and they're there.
So it's a really interesting, it's a really interesting twist.
Like Google's always, Google's goal is to get you to use their platform,
you know, because, you know, and essentially it's like, they want to deliver
the best user experience for the person that's using their search engine.
So as long as they can get you to stay on their platform and continue to stay on their platform.
(31:11):
So they're constantly updating how their algorithm thinks.
And basically with, you know, since COVID or whatever, and since the,
the, the 800,000% increase in online sales, you know, how people shop, they've realized, no.
It's, it's, it's way more, but I, but I know it was like, it was like an 8,000
(31:32):
or like it was, it was at least like 8,000% increase in online ordering during COVID.
And here's the thing. It never went away. Yeah.
You know, it never went away like the whole like grocery delivery
thing the whole food delivery thing the whole wine delivery
thing weed delivery thing all of that stuck stayed
(31:52):
you know it normalized for everyone you know what i mean so even so it's it's
like oh i don't have to i don't have to go to the grocery store i could just
order my groceries i mean like that's a job that's a job that wasn't around
five six years ago like delivery driver for groceries you know you know what i'm saying,
Whereas Uber was a new thing, but then it was like Uber Eats and whatever.
(32:18):
We as consumers, you got to think about how they shop, how they do this.
It's like, hey, if you're within a thing and let's just say you're in a state
that allows delivery, if you're a dispensary that can show up,
hey, you're within it, and we can almost guarantee you that it's like,
hey, your order will be delivered within 30 minutes.
Wow, that's amazing. You know what I mean? If I'm searching for cannabis dispensary
with delivery or cannabis delivery. You know, we were working with some guys
(32:41):
on the East coast that, that ran a, that ran a delivery service.
And I mean, these guys were doing 150, 200 orders a day just,
just for, just for weed delivery.
And it blew my mind. I was like, and they had all the data.
I was like, look at this. And it's just, they had maps of like,
where are your drivers, your drivers, like you've got six different drivers
covering six different areas doing pickup. up. And I was like, this is amazing.
(33:04):
So this is the thing. It's like you have, especially whether it's medical,
whether it's rec, the age group, whatever, sometimes you have senior citizens
that don't want to go to the dispensary and they'll pay for this.
Some people can't drive. Some people are too busy. Some people,
hey, just meet me after work.
I'm getting off in 30 minutes. Come meet me.
We're supposed to meet me to give me what I need.
(33:25):
It's very consumer-based. So with this, essentially, it's like the more data
you can control as a business owner, or the more data you can keep for yourself
and not have to give away to other platforms,
the more powerful it is.
And when you actually have a full understanding of the products that are selling,
(33:45):
the categories that are selling, the time of day that people are shopping,
you can gauge your inventory ordering.
You can gauge the sales promos that you do.
You can actually get the feedback from your customers to say,
hey, what did you think about about this, you want to leave a review because
this is what the thing with online shopping is most people don't buy anything
(34:08):
without reading reviews first.
You know, it's like, Hey, is this string good? Is this string bad?
Is this, this, is this, that, you know, how does this vape hit?
How, you know, do these dabs?
So the more user generated content you could get as a business owner,
it's only going to help you more, you know, and when you have all of that built
into your website that you own,
(34:29):
you know, because that's, that takes, you know, whether it's automation or whether
it's, you know, whether it's manual, you going going out, like,
Hey, leave us a review on this product.
It's going to help you get the results that you want and help you rank up for other terms.
So I don't think I take a breath at all.
(34:50):
Well, and I do have a few, we're getting close to time, but I do have a few more questions.
So first really quickly, Google has made some changes to their algorithm and
cookie tracking in 2024.
Can you give us the like quick rundown on what that is and what marketers need
to know? It looks like they're kind of ixnaying the little cookie thing,
you know, and they're keeping their cookies, but third party cookies.
(35:12):
They're not really a big fan of anymore.
So this is, once again, this is one more reason why you should own your data
and not give it away to third party tracking companies,
you know, and I think this is probably going on a higher level between Google
and the other larger social media, like Meta and whatever.
(35:35):
Because like just for ads delivery just for
other stuff like i know that like this is going to really screw up
a lot of ads agencies in regards to retargeting remarketing yeah
user audiences yeah user audiences or whatever but
this is one more reason that seo and like
controlling your data is that much more important because
if google's not allowing if google's essentially
(35:57):
because they started they rolled it out into this month and i
think by the third quarter of this year they're going to x-nay it all
together so if your facebook pixel
or your retargeting pixel or your cookie tracker or
your whatever that you're using from your third-party software
doesn't work anymore guess what the only thing you have is your email list your
phone number list your customer user database that should be held within your
(36:21):
website or within your store that you hopefully don't share with anybody else
in regards to keeping in touch with the customer you know Because it's going to be really hard to,
I mean, it's really hard to run retargeting ads for cash dispensaries to begin with.
But from a user-generated thing, it's like, this is going to really kill a lot of ads companies.
(36:44):
Or they're scrambling right now to get everything together to figure out how to make it work.
Which, you know, honestly, as an SEO, I'm not mad about, you know,
because it's one more reason, you know, it's the same thing.
It's like, I've been preaching this for years.
It's like, listen, you should, don't get me wrong. Social media is very crucial
for cannabis dispensaries, but you're at the mercy of the platform.
(37:08):
You know, you don't own meta, you don't own Instagram, you don't own TikTok, you don't own anything.
You know, I've seen, I've seen people get, get pushed out on LinkedIn,
you know, like, Like, hey, LinkedIn took down my post recently because it seemed
like I was selling something.
Facebook is very anti-cannabis. Instagram is very anti-cannabis if you're trying to sell.
(37:29):
And you can have your account shut down overnight.
I've seen companies just lose their account instantaneously because I'm shadow banned.
My Instagram is shadow banned. It's like you're talking about things that you're
not supposed to talk about and we've restricted your reach. Oh yeah.
They're not, they're not friendly at all too.
(37:50):
Right. So, so here's the thing. It's like getting people to follow you on a
platform that you have no control over.
To me, it just seems like a really bad investment. And if, and if your entire
strategy is social media,
I don't think that's, that's a really good thing because once again,
it's like people use search engines, people search from their mobile phones,
you know, from a buyer intent standpoint, when I look for reviews on something,
(38:12):
when I look to go shop, I don't go on Instagram or Facebook.
Hey, where do I want to eat? Let's go on Facebook. Where do I want to eat?
Let's go on Facebook. I go on Google.
And the thing with this is that Google, nine times out of 10,
if you do proper optimization, you'll outrank the Weedmaps.
You'll outrank Leafly. You'll outrank the third-party menu services that you pay for.
(38:36):
It's good to have them. I'm not saying that they're not beneficial.
But what I'm saying is is you don't need to run your entire business.
I've seen people use Weedmaps as their website.
Yeah, so not only owning your tech and your data and your website is important,
but owning your content and creating it and having a system for that is going
(38:59):
to be more of a primary strategy in marketing than some folks have relied on in the past,
which is really ads-based and retargeting-based as opposed to focusing more
on ads and focusing more on what content can we create and Google's update and
algorithm is now or their tech changes are now really putting that to the forefront
(39:20):
of marketers' problems. So basically if...
People and businesses who are more ad-reliant or third-party reliant for the
top of funnel are going to struggle more if they don't switch.
Yeah, because your top-of-funnel awareness is going to get crushed.
With these cookies going away, your cross-channel impression-based ad campaign
(39:48):
that goes on different online publications,
your marketing is going to get completely jacked, you know,
to where it's like, you don't have a target demographic anymore.
Your, your quote unquote audience is going to disappear eventually.
And you're not going to have that anything.
I'm sure that there are going to be some, some really inventive agencies that
(40:09):
hide their cookies somewhere, or that are going to start buying email lists
and are going to start retargeting based on email lists or, you know,
or, or potentially even geo-fencing.
It's like how many people, you know, they, they may start But I think like even
with that, because you can geofence, it gets really scary when you actually
start looking at geofence targeting and cookies on phones and what you can do.
(40:32):
But I think a lot of that has to do with that, too. It's like they don't want
people, you know, being able to geofence target people based on where they shop
or where they live or where they frequent.
This is just one more reason why SEO is just going to be way more crucial.
Because like for you, it's like you can run ads.
I think this is, it's almost like it could potentially be a grand reset for
(40:52):
marketing again, you know, to where it's like, you don't have that data.
You're not going to be able to retarget.
You're not going to be able to re, you know, rerun impressions on publications for your stuff.
So it's one more reason to own all your data. And that's why we went ahead and
built out the whole BudBlog plugin platform form because it allows you to run
(41:13):
your entire dispensary 100% on your own website.
You can run point of sale registers from your website.
You can run, you know, and you don't need hardware.
That's the whole thing. We built this so that you can run it on tablets.
That's awesome. It's just crazy, you know? So, so it's, it's,
we're pretty proud of it, but yeah, this is, this is essentially like,
(41:35):
I'm actually really excited that goes to killing the pixels and and killing
the cookies because it's.
You know, it's going to leave a scramble. It's going to leave whatever,
but I'm a big fan of like supporting small businesses versus like the big mega companies.
Like I've always been a bigger fan of the underdog. I've always been.
And I think this may be why I love cannabis. Cause like cannabis seems to be
(41:55):
like, like you've got your big, you know, players to do like your big money
players, but there's, it's, it can be a great equalizer in the sense of like,
it can even the playing field for a lot of small companies,
as long as they're doing everything the right way,
you know, and no, it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt some brands.
It's going to hurt some manufacturers it's going to hurt some other stuff but
it also you know it's like we're all entrepreneurs we all
(42:17):
learn to pivot and dance and you know come up with crazy marketing ideas to
to grow our brains however we have to essentially so you know it may it may
kill some people it may kill some ad agencies but we've always been seo first
before anything else so i'm actually looking looking forward to it.
Well, thank you, Max. I really appreciate your time and your insight.
(42:42):
My pleasure. Can you share any contact information? Where can our listeners
find you? How can they get ahold of you? Yeah.
So I'm one of two Max U.S.s on the planet right now.
The other guy lives in Europe and he's a photographer, but if you type in my name, you'll find me.
Best way to get in touch with us though is actually let's go to dopedopseo.com or
(43:05):
if you're interested in checking out the plugins like go to get bud plugged.com
yes we know what it sounds like and yeah you won't
forget it so you know but it's bud b-u-d plugged.com
getbudplugged.com or dopeseo.com and you know i'm always around you'll see me
at the events you'll see me at the thing you'll see me doing stuff and you know
(43:25):
i love talking this stuff i don't talk sports i don't talk politics i do talk
marketing all day long so so
do we so that's a great match we are the same type of people Absolutely.
Well, thank you, Max. Appreciate it. No, listen, thank you so much.
All of your insights with everybody.
Again, if you guys want to reach out to Max, you can also find him on LinkedIn.
(43:46):
And we will see you on next week's episode. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you, everybody, for listening to this week's episode.
You can learn more about the Cannabis Marketing Association at our website,
thecannabismarketingassociation.com.
If you're interested in joining, you can check out our member benefits there
or email us at membership at marketingcannabis.org and connect with us on social media.
(44:10):
You can follow us on LinkedIn, sign up for our newsletter on our website,
and you can reach out and connect with me as well, Lisa Buffo,
on LinkedIn and send me a message and let me know that you're one of our podcast listeners. listeners.
And if there's any topics you all want to hear, any guests you want to hear
from, please email us again at membership at marketingcannabis.org.
(44:31):
We'd love to get your feedback.
And don't forget to subscribe to this podcast and we'll see you next time.
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