Tag Archives: hottest

The Brand Marketing Byte

Spotlight on Aster Farms

By Cannabis Industry Journal Staff
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The Brand Marketing Byte showcases highlights from Pioneer Intelligence’s Cannabis Brand Marketing Snapshots, featuring data-led case studies covering marketing and business development activities of U.S. licensed cannabis companies.

Here is a data-led, shallow dive on Aster Farms:

Aster Farms is based in Lake County, California and operates with an ethos of environmental sustainability. They call themselves the “cleanest, meanest and greenest around” and produce sungrown cannabis with “good genetics, clean cultivation and the power of nature.”

According to Pioneer Intelligence, Aster Farms is showing increased strength in each of the pillars they track: social media, earned media and web-related activities. The reason for such an improvement in performance? It starts with a number of earned media placements driving greater awareness for the brand, like this piece in SFWeekly or this one on Benzinga.

Engagement rates for Aster’s Instagram account have been growing for about two months and received a recent boost in the form of a sweepstakes giveaway. Their web activity performance improved as a result of keyword growth on their site.

All of these factors helped Aster Farms get on Pioneer’s list of Top 100 hottest U.S. cannabis brands for October, coming in at Number 60.

The Brand Marketing Byte

The Hottest U.S. Cannabis Retail Brands Right Now

By Cannabis Industry Journal Staff
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The Brand Marketing Byte showcases highlights from Pioneer Intelligence’s Cannabis Brand Marketing Snapshots, featuring data-led case studies covering marketing and business development activities of U.S. licensed cannabis companies.

In this week’s Byte, we’re taking a look at the hottest retail U.S. cannabis brands right now. Using a scoring methodology that factors in a wide variety of data sets, Pioneer’s algorithm tracks brand awareness, audience growth and engagement. Using more than 80,000 relevant data points per week, they analyze business activity across social media, earned media and web-related activities.

The brands listed below have the strongest marketing performance indicators, according to Pioneer Intelligence, which includes web activity. Here are a few insights that explain why some of these companies made the cut:

  1. Cookies comes in at the eighth spot on July’s list. The brand does a lot of promotional content on their business development activity, which helps them make the news almost every week. This time around, they announced the debut of a new chain of Sativa-focused dispensaries under the brand name Lemonnade.
  2. Terrapin Care Station took the fifteenth spot in July’s list. Terrapin made headlines this month with their expansion in Michigan. Their newest brick-and-mortar location is the first medical cultivation facility to open in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
  3. Surterra Wellness had a podium finish in July, becoming the third hottest U.S. cannabis retail brand. Back in early July, they received a lot of press for launching its line of tinctures in Texas.

Here are the top 15 hottest U.S. cannabis retail brands for July 2020:

  1. Viola
  2. Stiiizy
  3. Surterra Wellness
  4. Dosist
  5. Grassroots
  6. GrowHealthy
  7. Liberty
  8. Cookies
  9. Serra
  10. gLeaf
  11. Caliva
  12. Sunday Goods
  13. Harvest
  14. Connected Cannabis Co.
  15. Terrapin Care Station
The Brand Marketing Byte

The Hottest U.S. Cannabis Brands Right Now

By Cannabis Industry Journal Staff
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The Brand Marketing Byte showcases highlights from Pioneer Intelligence’s Cannabis Brand Marketing Snapshots, featuring data-led case studies covering marketing and business development activities of U.S. licensed cannabis companies.

In this week’s Byte, we’re taking a look at the hottest non-retail U.S. cannabis brands right now. Using a scoring methodology that factors in a wide variety of data sets, Pioneer’s algorithm tracks brand awareness, audience growth and engagement. Using more than 80,000 relevant data points per week, they analyze business activity across social media, earned media and web-related activities.

Keep in mind though, these brands are not the best in class or the strongest selling. The brands listed below have the strongest marketing performance and web activity, for better or worse. Here are a few insights that explain why some of these companies appear on the list:

  1. Curaleaf closed their acquisition of Grassroots. They also own Select, which is one of the largest wholesale brands in the United States. The official completion of Curaleaf acquiring Grassroots makes them the world’s largest cannabis company by revenue.
  2. Ignite Brands, founded by Instagram playboy and controversial figure Dan Bilzerian, made headlines for all the wrong reasons in early July. The company lost $50 million last year and is still hemorrhaging money. News stories in early July detail his lavish lifestyle funded by the company, including paying $2.4 million in rent per year and paying for dozens of models to travel with him, among other absurd expenses.
  3. Tyson Ranch: The cannabis brand owned by Mike Tyson, generated considerable web activity due to some press the boxer received recently. Tyson announced that he is coming back to boxing, stepping back in the ring to fight Roy Jones Jr. in September.
  4. Baked Bros, an edibles company based in Arizona, grew its social media outreach considerably in the month of July. Through a giveaway contest on Instagram, the company generated 3,584 comments on one post alone. That kind of activity directly increases their audience reach, thus boosting their marketing performance.

Without further ado, here are the top 15 hottest U.S. cannabis brands for July 2020:

  1. Kiva Confections
  2. Wyld
  3. Select
  4. Rove
  5. Ignite
  6. Papa & Barkley
  7. Cresco Labs
  8. Old Pal
  9. Lowell Herb Co
  10. Coda Signature
  11. Tyson Ranch
  12. Baked Bros
  13. 1906
  14. Bloom Farms
  15. Kush Queen
The Brand Marketing Byte

Basking in Sunshine: GrowHealthy

By Cannabis Industry Journal Staff
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The Brand Marketing Byte showcases highlights from Pioneer Intelligence’s Cannabis Brand Marketing Snapshots, featuring data-led case studies covering marketing and business development activities of U.S. licensed cannabis companies.

Here is a data-led, shallow dive on GrowHealthy:

GrowHealthy – Basking in Sunshine

Although Florida may only have a medical market and a relatively restrictive regulatory framework, a handful of companies are leading the pack in dominating the new market. Even though the medical cannabis market is fairly young and the state has not adopted adult use yet, the market’s growth trajectory is very encouraging.

GrowHealthy (GH) is one of those companies capitalizing on market growth with a number of expansion plans. They already have 16 dispensaries open for business throughout Florida and have plans to add to that considerably.

In the past few months, GH has taken a number of steps to enhance their web presence. Perhaps as a reaction to the COVID-19 crisis, GH, along with many other companies in the cannabis space, have started aggressively improving their websites.

With the pandemic wreaking havoc on the national economy, cannabis companies are not immune. However, in the early days of the health crisis, Florida deemed the medical cannabis market ‘essential.’ That proved to be a boon for cannabis companies in the state like GH, who pivoted to curbside pickup and delivery quickly.

In order to capitalize on curbside pickup and delivery, a strong web presence is very important. GH saw a solid rise in web traffic in the past few months, thanks in part to their continuing expansion of brick-and-mortar dispensaries. Adding to their boost in web traffic, GH saw increased strength in their backlinks profile, indicating further increases in future web traffic.

In May, GH shot up to the 20th hottest brand in the United States, up from the 38th slot in April, according to the Pioneer Index. We can attribute this jump to the brand’s performance in web-related activities. The trend continued into the first week of June, as GH’s web activities were the 2nd best nationwide, with the company becoming the 4th hottest brand in the Pioneer Index.

The Brand Marketing Byte

Introducing The Brand Marketing Byte

By Cannabis Industry Journal Staff
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Cannabis Industry Journal is pleased to announce our partnership with Pioneer Intelligence on this new series of articles. This is the first installment of The Brand Marketing Byte.

Pioneer Intelligence uses data to benchmark marketing performance of consumer-facing cannabis brands across three areas: social media, earned media and web-related activities. At present, Pioneer takes in over 60,000 data points each week. The company’s team of marketers and data scientists share findings through weekly generated Performance Scorecard reports as well as Brand Marketing Snapshots. Pioneer Intelligence offers reports on more than 500 U.S. cannabis brands. Ben Walters, founder of Pioneer Intelligence, says their mission is “to help cannabis industry stakeholders better understand how marketing strategies & tactics resonate with audiences.”

The Brand Marketing Byte will showcase highlights from Pioneer Intelligence’s Cannabis Brand Marketing Snapshots, featuring data-led case studies covering marketing and business development activities of U.S. licensed cannabis companies. We hope this column can serve as a resource for readers interested in branding and marketing.

In terms of scoring methodology, Pioneer Intelligence’s reporting favors “heat” over “strength” as the company prioritizes “relative change” above “absolute position.” This means that, for example when talking about social media audience size, they don’t just score brands based on the number of followers, but they also score audience growth. In fact, Pioneer’s algorithms put more value in growth figures than actual number of followers. For more insight on their methodology, along with a weekly updated index of the hottest brands, visit their website here.

Without further ado, here is a data-led, shallow dive on the California brand, Legion of Bloom:

Legion of Bloom – Content Strategy

Legion of Bloom (LOB) was founded in Northern California in 2015 when five independent growers joined forces. As one of the more widely recognizable brands in the region, they produce craft, high-quality cannabis products and are well known for their vape cartridges. The company has superior genetics and sustainable practices, which they capitalize on in their marketing efforts.

LOB has invested heavily in generating content, which appears to be fruitful. Their website has an in-depth introduction to terpenes for consumers and they utilize their blog section well with a high volume of quality content throughout the second half of 2019. It’s worth mentioning their website features full laboratory test results for all of their products, highlighting their commitment to transparency, consumer trust and brand recognition. Through looking at a few key metrics like indexed keywords, site strength and visit duration, it is apparent that LOB has increased their audience engagement significantly.

All of those factors combined, LOB has used a variety of content tools to grow their website consistently and sustainably, earning them #38 spot on last week’s Pioneer Index, a ranking of the hottest U.S. cannabis brands.