Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Kaya Cast the podcast for cannabis businesses looking to launch, grow, and scale their operations.
Tommy Truong: For those who have just stumbled upon you, how did you get into the industry in the marketing side?
John Shute: Yeah, for sure. You and I chatted before we started recording, but it really comes all the way back to like my childhood. I grew up in the service industry. My parents were restaurant and nightclub entrepreneurs who were successful and adaptable and they ingrained that entrepreneur type of mentality into me and my mom also.
She. Specifically had childhood cancer and later in life started her own nonprofit and wrote a book, multiple books. And you leveraged her businesses always to fuel her nonprofit, but also give directly back to families and our community. And i've always approached like any type of role I've had whether it be [00:01:00] bartending or managing a nightclub or now, like running a cannabis marketing agency for 10 years in that type of way.
Like community focused and yeah. So I grew up in the service industry. I got a master's in project management. And then right after I got the master's degree I had to fill a gap at one of my dad's businesses in Florida. One of his managers was actually stealing from him, and so that really led me into threw me into a marketing and operations role.
And so I applied a lot of what I learned in my project management, like masters to that. But it also is where I got very exploratory with. Like creative side and disruptive marketing and creative tactics. we're talking 12, 13 years ago. so be before the Instagram story, before a lot of, before TikTok.
Before reels. And so you really had to, I would say, get, become innovative with what you're working with on the social media side. And yeah, I saw a lot of [00:02:00] success being the marketing operations manager, this nightclub, aligning the marketing with the operation, getting the staff involved, creating this kind of community.
Per se between my staff and our actual communities, which is really cool. Right around that time I, I lost some people close to me, the opiate epidemic. And that's really what kind of accelerated my path into the cannabis industry. I've had folks in my life use cannabis and other forms of like alternative wellness to get off of.
Hard drugs, specifically opiates. And yeah, I wanted to leverage my unique background into an industry like cannabis to change people's lives essentially. And so what better way to do that than influencing people through branding and marketing? And I had the role as a mark, a marketing director for a cannabis contract manufacturer outta California.
And that's my first role in cannabis. That essentially taught me everything about what happens from seed to sale. And I made those folks a lot of money. And then classic [00:03:00] cannabis, 11 or so years ago, got screwed over. And that's really what led to the formation of Puff Creative just about nine years ago now.
So yeah, it's been a wild ride, but like super grateful for the journey and all the lessons I've learned and all the contributions we've made. Over the
Tommy Truong: Yeah. How have you found what was the impact of being in operations? While being in marketing has that, how has that helped you in your career?
John Shute: Yeah, I would say that's a really, the alignment between marketing and operation I think is like one of the most critical things that impacts a business. If you're. Spending money on an operation and you're spending money on marketing, but those spends don't actually make sense.
Your business is gonna fail. So you can look at it from an ancillary side, like something that I do, if I bring on too many clients and sell services or performance that I actually can achieve or [00:04:00] keep up with, that's essentially gonna hurt my business and my operation at the end of the day.
If my operation isn't prepared for that additional, inbound that we're getting that with cannabis retail specifically. We will see a great performance on the marketing side, customer acquisition, like winning new customers, retaining those customers. But somehow our clients will still be losing money.
Nine outta 10 times is because they're not aligned with like their operation when it comes to like inventory management or making a calculation of if you're doing a special and someone cashes that special and in store maintaining a margin on that special. Like people don't even realize that a lot of times they're losing money on every transaction ' cause they didn't calculate and align that transaction with the rest of the operation.
And same thing on the brand side paying for real estate on shelves or maybe launching with too many SKUs. We see that being an issue a lot. So I think no matter how you look at it, like you should have your marketing aligned with your operation and everyone who's involved with both [00:05:00] of those responsibilities aligned on what's getting pushed out there.
Tommy Truong: Yeah, I see that. I see that problem a lot on the tech side of things where mar marketing can be often on their own island, and the companies that are really successful have integrated marketing with ops and with sales and that's the only way that you can move as one unit. So to
John Shute: Yeah. We sit it a lot on the, there was this really big cannabis, like technology boom right around COVID, I would say, when cannabis got deemed essential here in the States specifically. And we originally were very heavily focused on social media and events and community engagement, and then we pivoted because one, we needed to two, there really wasn't, a great, we weren't really taking over projects and they had great branding and great websites and great performance marketing. And now we actually had tools where we could track the performance of what people were paying us for. And so that [00:06:00] technological boom is just impacted over compounded over time where each company now.
Is at a certain level where we can almost market like normal marketers, which is really crazy to say, but they each have their own nuances and they all want to launch different tools. And that happening day to day, week to week with a lot of these tech technology companies. But you'll know this the narrative they tell folks in one market is different from the other because the sales isn't aligned with the actual what's going on behind the scenes. And then it gets confusing for the customer, and then they put themselves at risk of losing that customer because they're making something the customer isn't really properly educated on.
More confusing than it needs to be. And that comes back to, like, when I say people launching with too many SKUs or launching too early, that a lot with like technology companies like. Launching a new platform that maybe, wasn't really thought through fully, but they're just launching it 'cause they had to hit some type of deadline for their board or, investors or something.
For, with us like creative marketing is one, like creative, [00:07:00] branding and marketing is one thing because. It's setting people up, but when you talk about technology when you integrate that creative into the technology, it performs well. But what's the impact of someone launching a techno, a technological piece of their business too early and not thinking about the impact it can have on the performance side.
And so it puts someone like us in a unique situation because. Clients make decisions without really thinking these things through, because technology company didn't really communicate. They just sold their tech. They didn't say, oh, this actually could impact the results that you're getting on these other things you're spending money on.
It's a really big balancing act. I think a lot of business owners and industries like the cannabis industry are playing day to day that isn't really talked about as much as it should.
Tommy Truong: Yeah, that's, it's so true too when somebody comes to you and they, I'm guessing the majority of people that come to Puff are people that want more awareness, brand awareness. [00:08:00] I want. Please. We need help. At the end of the day. We need more people coming in.
John Shute: Yeah.
Tommy Truong: Oftentimes, I find the first start, and I could be wrong in this and I would love your insights on this, is a true definition of who your tribe is, who you're trying to target.
What, who does that person look like? What is the starting point when somebody comes to you that you guys need to have? Your ducks in line before anything can happen.
John Shute: That's a really good question. It's very situational to be honest with you. It, there's one of two situations up front. One is like the company hasn't started yet and they reach out 'cause they need to create their brand. And so I love those projects because it's really cool to pull that story of like why they're doing it and like how alternative wellness has shaped their life to build that trust with the target demographic they're going after.
How you approach [00:09:00] that depending on someone's a retail or a brand or ancillary or just B2B, that's when you once you formulate the brand and get into the nuances of the messaging and the target demo and the go-to market, that's where that kinda. Branches off depending on the vertical.
So you know, someone who's just starting is a situation. And then depending on the vertical is how you approach it. Once you take them through a formal branding process. And then when you get day to day work, that's also how you differentiate where you spend that money, like what's really gonna move the needle.
There's other situations where people are already existing and they're already maybe in a very competitive market, and they come to us because they're like. Hey you guys have been around for a million cannabis years. Like, how the hell do I move the needle and, have someone choose me over the five other stores down the street or, choose my product on the shelf that's next to cookies or, seven 10 labs or someone who has like a ton of real estate everywhere, and that's a whole nother approach, right? You competitive analysis. What's their budget? Where are they actually, where are they actually at? What's really [00:10:00] gonna move the needle? Where should they initially invest? Do they need to be rebranded? Do they need a new website? Our big thing, my biggest favor I try to do, I would say for the industry and people who reach out is making it so their spends.
Their day-to-day recurring spends are maximized. And the only way to do that is if you establish some type of foundation.
Tommy Truong: What do you mean by that day-to-day
John Shute: So day-to-day recurring spends. So as a retailer, people like on the retail, the things that are gonna move the needle are SEO. A majority of your traffic is gonna come from SEO as a brick and mortar retailer.
So search engine optimization, optimizing for LLMs like AI search. Another great customer acquisition tool is like direct advertising. There's a lot of snake oil, SDO and advertising agencies out there, so that's something they consider. And then the biggest thing is customer retention, is getting people to come back through the door.
'cause what's [00:11:00] the point of spending all this money in the acquisition if they're in 70% of the time? People come in and then they don't come back again. And so we extend, we actually turn that customer into a lifecycle and a lifetime customer for these dispensaries or brands. But it's all nuanced, depending on, again, the vertical that they're in.
So if you have, again, the, when we talk about establishing a foundation. this is just regular marketing and branding 1 0 1, but the stronger the foundation with the brand itself, the look, the feel, the narrative, the story, how is that brand showing up for their customers? Building trust, showing up for community, having a great website where the conversion takes place, where the email is captured, making that experience seamless.
That's, and then having automated email flows. That's when you spend money on SEO and ads and retention, that's maximizing that spend because you did everything you could to establish a strong foundation. There's definitely brands and companies out there [00:12:00] who have created, maybe they didn't go through a formal branding process and maybe their logo sucks, right?
But they were first to market and they spent all their resources and time being first to market, which is great. But if they would've spent a little bit more money and a little bit more time. On establishing a stronger foundation, how much more of an ROI would they have had over the next five to 10 years.
And that's the way that I think, and the way that we try to approach projects. But everyone in cannabis is in their own unique. Everyone in cannabis has their own unique story, which is a beautiful thing. Everyone who can, cannabis has their own unique business situation, which is a very difficult thing to navigate.
Really trying to help people with the path of least resistance to find out those answers and that roadmap that's gonna make them successful.
Tommy Truong: That makes so much sense though, because what is the point of spending money on SEL on ads if your conversion is. Not there. [00:13:00] IE your website's not optimized. What's the point? And then I really love what you said about retention too. Maybe that draws into your ops operations background.
John Shute: Yeah.
Tommy Truong: your cost of acquisition maybe more than what your revenues or even your profits are in the first transaction.
You really make money on future transactions. So what does retention look like? Because you're essentially losing money with customers coming in and only buying once, I would imagine.
John Shute: Oh yeah. Oh my God. Totally. Yeah. You, it's so much more expensive to acquire someone than retain them. So if you have. Retention strategy in place, then you're maximizing that acquisition spend. And then again, you're gonna, you're creating a repeat customer, which really impacts your bottom line. And that's the biggest gap that we see with most folks in the industry.
Tommy Truong: Today is there, I guess it depends on the market, but what does the unit economics look like? [00:14:00] What is the typical, if you're doing this as your cost per acquisition, you're doing really well and do retailers or brands, are they measuring or can they measure lifetime value?
John Shute: Yeah. Yeah, they can. It really comes down to the tech stack that they have though. So the most granular that you can get with tracking, your marketing spend through digital channels in Google Analytics floor and SEO tools and AI tools is when you have some type of native e-commerce or refers proxy.
Unfortunately a lot of people in cannabis work with iframes or third party. Third party vendors like, Leafly or weed maps e-comm, where you can't link that up. To a transaction or to revenue tracking. And then there's also CRM tools like Alpine IQ or like a spring big that allow you to track all of that customer lifecycle average basket size, the value the what it, like the customer acquisition cost.
And yeah the main tools [00:15:00] we calculate lifetime value, average basket sizes, new customer acquisition. The amount of ROI and retention is really through SEO direct advertising that we can link up to GA four and SEO tools and then through Alpine IQ and spring Big and like a Klaviyo 'cause you can, that's all transac, you can tie it all back to a transactional ID and so you can valid, you can validate all that spend.
Nuanced expenditures in my mind are, social media pr really deep photo video and animation, creative. Those things work really well and they're tools you should use. But the amount of money and time you spend on them, I think is, should be dependent on how strong the foundation is set up and how good you're tracking your data.
'cause you can make those spends more trackable if you're tracking all these other things that I'm mentioning.
Tommy Truong: that's what I was gonna ask you. 'cause it's really hard to track, say PR for example. That's [00:16:00] hard. And I would imagine that if you are a retailer, PR is a long time. It's a long play, so you wanna be in the position where you can commit. That is a 20 mile march, so it's gonna cost you, it's gonna take long.
You'll see it back. But you need to be in that position to commit.
John Shute: Yeah. Yeah. The thing with PR is that a lot of people think they need like a very aggressive PR strategy, but don't necessarily have a story or like a reason for it. So I think that people need to. Consider them as more of like media strategies and depending on your vertical, like when is the right time to approach pr.
And so for example, like we just had a a retailer. They were the biggest brand in Rhode Island, and then they just bought a retail location and they wanted to make a huge splash. We're doing their SEO, we have all their revenue tracking set up, so we did a PR campaign for them, but it mainly. Was focused on local pr because what we [00:17:00] see with the search algorithms and with AI specifically is all, it's all relevance.
Are you relevant to the person who is asking to solve the problem that they're on this search tool for? And so if you can be what's being chirped about at their local level? And have all these other things in place, it could, it can work really well for you. So if you're just getting started and you have a budget for PR, for a launch, and you are trying to make impact in the community, and you do have a story where you we're a big brand and now we're taking that to retail, it makes sense.
But again, if you don't have these other things in place, then there's no point in the PR campaign, right? 'cause it's like you just spent. 10, $15,000 in a PR campaign, but you didn't have any email automation flows set up on your site. So no one signed up for your loyalty, no one converted it into a new customer.
You didn't retain any of that traffic you just acquired. So PR can be, is very smart and a very useful tool. It is trackable, [00:18:00] but it's not trackable if you don't have this other stuff set up properly. And it's not where you need to spend your budget immediately if you if these other things aren't set up.
Tommy Truong: Do I, if I were to summarize first make sure that you have a good story, a brand that's like number one. Where's your tribe? Who they or who are they? Then. Make sure that you have the right foundation, so your website, your conversion, your tech stack, it's all trackable. And then when you're in that point, you can start start testing and validating different mediums.
John Shute: Yeah, exactly. And then it will really, after you get that foundation set up, it's about where do you spend your dollars, depending on what vertical you're in. And there's specific things that as a retailer that you have to do and as a brand you really have to do and as, excuse me, a B2B company, you really have to do.
So it's identifying like what's the realistic budget? And then what's the path of least resistance with that budget to maximize that spend? And then once you start [00:19:00] seeing an ROI and tracking those trends and segmenting those audiences and seeing. A revenue machine taking place, that's when you can justify other ex expenses based off that data.
If we segment an audience in like a CRM tool and a ton of people are, 67% of the revenue is people who are buying flour, then damn we should be doing a campaign about people who like flower and getting them through the door and maximizing those searches, so you start to see these trends through the data collection and analyzing these things month to month where it makes these campaigns and these ideas like just a no brainer. And if you have a tight operation, then you can start leaning into those margins more. So if someone is fully integrated, they have three brands in-house and they're a retailer, and that's your biggest margin.
Totally lean into those margins, right? You might as well, anyone who's coming to your site or going to your store let's have them buy our highest margin products. Sometimes retailers don't have their own in-house products, but there's brands that [00:20:00] people are demanding and brands that have the biggest margin that because of your wholesale negotiations lean into that, and, make sure that when you do specials on those types of.
Products that it actually makes sense. And if people are stacking deals or like implementing coupon codes or on your deals page and selecting that deal, that automatically applies. Make sure when they transact that you still have a margin there. 'cause again, you wouldn't believe how many people do specials and stuff like that and lose money.
And then you train your customers to get into that mentality where they only shop at your store when you have. That crazy deal going on. So it's a downward spiral in a lot of these situations that you see.
Tommy Truong: I love how you mentioned that because it's, when I talk to retailers, some of them have a misconception of a magic pill. I gotta do this. But in business it's all, it's, what did you learn? How are you gonna react to what you've learned? And you march forward and over a period of time result. I, yeah, and I [00:21:00] That is clever.
Obviously you have a history of sales. Why not use that information?
John Shute: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the answers are, you see this with politics and society and a lot of other larger issues, I think with humanity where a lot of the answers are like right in front of you. It's just about like being realistic about your situation, I think a lot of folks make decisions that are more ego driven than what's actually practical and gonna move the needle and yeah.
Ego driven marketing spend is like a big pitfall for people. I bring up cookies in a lot of situations because they come up in a lot of like our discovery forms and they always pop up in the market that you're in. If they're not there yet, they're gonna be there. And so like a lot of the people they're like, we want our social media to be like cookie social media.
We want our, marketing and our, we wouldn't have, we wouldn't have a swag store like cookies, right? It costs a lot of money to to make, to look like cookies and actually make money off like a clothing store. And you tell people that and they don't [00:22:00] care, they'll still really push to spend that dollar despite you being, Hey, this isn't really trackable.
Making money off clothing is really tough unless you put a lot of time and like community engagement in activations and athletes or influencers and that adds up. And if we can't track it and we can't prove an ROI or you're not, what's gonna happen in three months when we say we told you and so that's, I spend a lot of my time having those conversations. It's pretty interesting.
Tommy Truong: If I was a retailer or a brand and I'm, I have my story, I have my audience I have all that stuff ready and that, and now I'm. Really diving into what tech stack should I have in place? What are the things that I should be tracking? What are the must-haves that I need to track in order to be successful?
John Shute: Yeah, so as a retailer, the, I would say the biggest thing is making sure. That your POS system is something that you truly understand and [00:23:00] aligns with whoever's managing it behind the scenes. Like we see issues where people are operating technology that they don't necessarily understand they're familiar with.
And the big angle of tech stacks now for retailers is like an all in one solution. Where I personally believe, like maybe that works for certain people, but leaning into things like native e-commerce, which is gonna rank higher for SEO and allows you to customize the design of a website is something to lean into.
It's gonna move the needle, it's gonna differentiate you. 'Cause you can really lean into your branding and your story and tie that into a whole strategy. and then retention capabilities. So like how good can your tech stack segment the audience? How deep does the data go? How does it tie back into the POS system?
And so a lot of these all in one solutions are great 'cause it's easier for retailers from a financial perspective and just operational to deal with one vendor. Whereas if you have the capability to understand the value of potentially piecing together a tech stack and [00:24:00] it's realistic for your budget.
I would recommend doing that because you're gonna maximize each vertical for each technological tool As a brand, cannabis brand we're speaking, right? No, so not speaking of a hemp brand, we're not talking about like a psychedelics brand, a cannabis brand. Technically right now, there's no POS system, so there's not like really transaction that happens on the site.
But the technology for brands that's really innovative right now is a store locator technology. And being able to track when someone clicks in the store located to shop at that store, to track that to the transaction so you can start monetizing your site as a brand. And that technology now partners hoodie analytics or live alerts they're coming out with technologies that pull the products into a cannabis brand site from the POS systems of all these retailers.
And they're gonna, the future of brand, you'll be able to transact and track it on sites here over the next year. We come in with those companies and layer our APIs over them [00:25:00] so we can customize the design of that technology more to increase the conversions. So that's where our heads are at.
The other side with the brands are we have a really good app partner. Called digital awesome. They do mobile apps for brands where you can do co-marketing campaigns with retailers that have similar tech stack as you as a brand. Also push notifications for drops of products. Hey, we just dropped at this store.
Come get it while it's hot. That only works if you're in a ton of stores and have a loyal following. Don't invest in an app without the real estate. 'cause with a brand, it's all about getting into stores then to monetize. How do you get into those stores? The foundation, it's a little bit different than approach retailer and brand, and there's different tech stacks to take advantage of, but the technology, in my opinion, it gets wonky again with tech companies getting greedy.
But it's, at the end of the day, it's all heading in the right direction to make things trackable and monetize platforms better.
Tommy Truong: Yeah it's, I'm a big, I'm a big believer [00:26:00] too, in best of breed versus all in one. It depends, but.
John Shute: Yeah.
Tommy Truong: if you're looking for a POS platform, then it really depends on their API capabilities and what peripheral platforms are essential to, to integrate with a POS.
What do you, what are you looking for?
John Shute: Yeah, like again, like the retailer, I would say if you can find like a native e-commerce solution, that's the best route to take. It can be a little bit pricey. Like with the tech company and then with the agency that's helping you with the native e-commerce, but we see better conversion rates, we see better SEO performance, we see better return on investment with advertising spend with native e-commerce.
It just what we've seen in the data. So I would say on the e-comm side, native, and then on the the retention side it's really CRM capabilities. How deep can you segment the audience? All these segmentation is the make or break. With [00:27:00] communication, because think about it this way. If you're communicating the wrong deals and the wrong products to a audience who doesn't care about edibles, now you turn that person off.
Now they're unsubscribing, and now you just lost that customer you acquired. So segmentation's key, and then data analyzation on the CRM, being able to see open rates, deliverability, actual conversions, tying that right into the POS transactional data properly. So those are the two biggest things. Once you get momentum and monetize those platforms, maximize your native e-com and maximize your CRM capabilities, then you can potentially justify, I would say, like a mobile app that you can start sending push notifications out to.
But there's only a small, from what we see, like with SMS and even push notifications, it's only a per small percentage of the total transactions. Most of the recurring transactions happen through email.
Tommy Truong: Oh really? Still.
John Shute: yeah. Email is still king in my opinion. I think an email and like having someone opted in via email, it's like way higher deliver [00:28:00] deliverability rate.
And if you, again, you have to make sure that the domain's clean and trusted. There's a lot of things that cause a deliverability. So a lot of people may not see that trend because they're not set up properly. But yeah, email if you have things set up properly, yeah. Email is gonna be the king always for any business at this point.
Owning your list. And then the native e-comm is what allows you to own your data. So there's no third party interference with your data. They're not collect. They're not controlling the transaction. So yeah, owning your data and owning your list is like, make or break, in my opinion, for a lot of these cannabis companies and just businesses in general doesn't need to be cannabis, that's how everyone should be approaching their business.
Tommy Truong: Yeah I would, the friction of getting somebody to download an app on their phone has gotta be like a level 10, unless you're a Starbucks,
John Shute: yeah, it's tough. It, you can do it and it again, it works well when it's done right. I really see a lot of success with the custom apps that like, really you can control the [00:29:00] gamification of those apps. And again, you do have a percentage of your base that is used to using app mobile applications.
Some people are just like mobile app people, like cater. That's great. Cater to them if you can, but if you can't afford it, it's not make or break. Like again, owning your email is gonna be way higher. Percentages of performance and transactions.
Tommy Truong: What should, if I was a retailer and I'm now starting off my campaign, my e-commerce campaign, what are some of the things what are some of the leaning indicators that that I should be mindful of?
John Shute: the biggest thing is new customer acquisition. So what, who's new? And getting them into the retention lifecycle and tracking that click through rates. Is huge that I think that tells you a lot if your UX is on point and its path of least resistance to get someone to add something to cart.
And then just trends in organic data for important flow [00:30:00] pages. So like dispensary near me best flour near me best vapes near me, best edibles near me. Your location with the dispensary name. Products that you have the biggest margins on. Seeing that you either own that search or that you're seeing progressively positive trends in growth with those click through rates and those clicks in general,
Tommy Truong: are there like, are there industry benchmarks that people can just look at to measure themselves against?
John Shute: yeah, I would say so. More so on the like retention side. Like with benchmarks, like when we do audits, like we'll say, like industry standard for someone not returning the first time I think is like 64% or something across the board. So we come in and lower that rate for them within the first 30 days.
and so those are the things that we'll track and benchmark from the beginning. It's different depending on state and type of company. If they're just a single retail location or have multiple. So [00:31:00] we try to communicate like the benchmark of like where someone specifically is, depending on their situation early on, because that's what.
That's what really we're mapping a customized roadmap around our strategy based on benchmarks. And a lot of the times the benchmarks that we use is what's going on with their competition. Like where is their competition at and where are they beating them out at? And you can see that just through SEO tools online, like where people are ranking.
How much traffic they get, what keywords they're beating you out for. And on the retention side, you can't necessarily always see what your competition's doing, but you can see what your open rates are for email, what they are for SMS, what your deliverability is, what, your churn is on first, second, third, and fourth time customers.
Like I think I just delivered the report. To someone, it was like, 75% of their first time customers aren't coming back. And then even after the fourth visit, they're between first, second, third, fourth, the average was 75% between the four. [00:32:00] So it's like crazy to see that number is like, it's a pretty high percentage of new customers that you're just immediately losing.
So
Tommy Truong: that's the leaky. That information would then dictate where the leaky bucket is and where you spend your time essentially.
John Shute: yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And like today I have a call like in an hour or two with a California operator who's been around for a while and like they, two of their loca locations rank really well. 'cause they're in more like rural areas of California and then one of them in San Francisco.
And they aren't ranking that well. How do we fit, fit into that, right? So it's like we wanna maintain that, those rankings for the slow, the stores that don't get as much traffic, but we wanna see progress with the more competitive market, month over month. And you're not gonna rank number one overnight, right?
Setting that expectation and kind of aligning with the client on why we chose that roadmap for them goes a long way.
Tommy Truong: John, what should somebody, what should a dispensary have in place in terms of re internal resources? [00:33:00] Before or while they reach out to you to ensure that they're maximizing your relationship with them.
John Shute: so I think I understand the question. Like the biggest thing for us is having someone that like we can communicate with who knows what we're talking about. Like a lot of times people like, you can explain to them things in layman's terms, which I feel like I'm doing right now, but it's really just like rocket science to them.
So I would recommend businesses, like when they work with a third party is really putting someone in place who's the guide or the marketing director or like the marketing point of contact who can really do a good job. They understand creative, they understand data, they understand how to work the tech stack.
That's when you can really maximize your spend on someone like us. We offer that as a service, but there, for a retailer specifically, there's no, there's nothing like boots on the ground and someone keeping us up to date because again, relevancy is key. If we know how to pull the right levers at the right time in the right way.
[00:34:00] If we know that evergreen situation, that event that's going on, that issue in the community that happened that problem that we're solving. That's how you're gonna achieve success. It's how you're gonna show up in AI search. It's how you're gonna show up on search engines. That's, you're gonna, your blog's gonna come to the top because that content that's going out is relevant to that person in that local market that you're catering to.
And so we, it's really hard for us to do that, even though. I think we do it pretty well without normally having a point of contact like that. But the most intriguing results I would say we see is when we're working with someone who's like very comprehensive, like in that knowledge, or at least keeps us updated timely on the right information that's going down.
I.
Tommy Truong: do you, I know that you guys carry out pretty much the entire stack and your, you carry out the campaigns, et cetera. Is there a relationship in place where the owner or the dispensary, they do half the work? What is the workload look like? What are they responsible for, and what is an external firm like yours responsible [00:35:00] for?
John Shute: Yeah, so I think that's why we're pretty attractive to folks is that we just fit in how they need us to. Sometimes we're doing everything like all the creative. All the performance, all the data. Other times, like we might just be doing SEO for someone because like their team can't execute technical SEO or understands how to analyze that data.
Sometimes we're just doing retention for someone. So we're pretty adaptable and work well with other, with like internal teams. 'cause most of the time we are working with an internal team, but not always. Some people I would say. Do waste spends on folks who maybe, are decent at their job and not great at it.
And so they could potentially save money on someone like us who has the experience and like the deep capabilities. But it's always different. Like I said everyone's situation is different. You can be a retailer, two retailers, right next to each other, same town, same block. Both of those retailers, if you talk to the owners and the operators, they're gonna tell you completely different [00:36:00] stories about the situation they're in, what they're working with, where their margins are.
And it, that's what's so intriguing about the industry is that again, not only is the business situation different for everyone, but the story of how they got there and what they're working with is also just super unique.
Tommy Truong: What are some red flags? If I was working with a, an agency, what are some red flags that I should look for? On me just vetting that I have the right person in place.
John Shute: with cannabis, I think experience is like a big thing. Folks will sometimes choose like a non-cannabis agency and then they make like very critical mistakes with compliance or branding or advertising strategies that are just like no-brainers not to do. So now you wasted money, but also put your business at risk for breaking rules.
So that's some, that's a big red flag, I think is experience. Another big red flag would be if someone is. reporting data that doesn't necessarily tie back to actual, like revenue tracking. [00:37:00] If someone can't tie something you're spending they're spending money on you all back to revenue and like real ROI, then you really need to reconsider that relationship.
There's definitely nuances to that with owning your search and rankings on SEO social media being an important tool, but. That kind of goes back to what I said is we really to get the revenue tracking and the retention, revenue tracking set up. So when you spend money on not as much trackable stuff it, it makes sense and you can make the best sense of it.
So another red flag would be someone like really trying to sell you on an aggressive social media strategy. And they're not trying to sell you on these other things. I'm talking about the foundation. That should be the first thing they ask is. Hey, are you guys tracking revenue in GA four? And like, how do you track metrics and retention?
But hey, pay us 10 grand for this social package that we might get deleted. But we don't know, so just ramp thoughts or someone, maybe someone this pitch you in a social strategy and it makes sense. Your [00:38:00] competitors are heavy on social. You can tell they see a lot of success from there.
But if they don't have the experience of dealing with cannabis on social, you're gonna waste your money. You're gonna get shut down, you're gonna hit shadow ban. And if they're not focusing on driving traffic to the email list and to directly to the shop and tracking some type of conversion there, then what's the point?
Tommy Truong: That's so true. It's so true. What is, if you're not tracking, then how do you know where you are? How do you learn from it, and how do
John Shute: Yeah, and it's not saying that you need to set up like rocket science tracking like today, but I believe in my opinion, like with the margins and competitive landscape of the industry, like you should have something in place to justify the spend something. Maybe it's not revenue, maybe it's clicks, maybe it's followers, which, I don't think that's a great KPI, but it needs to be something like don't just spend it based off no information.
And again don't spend it to feed your ego. Don't feed into that. Look where your competitors are doing. [00:39:00] Look at what data sets are saying, look at what's actually working for you and lean into it.
Tommy Truong: John, I know you have to run, but before I let you go, is there anything that we didn't talk about that, that you think we should have?
John Shute: yeah, I would say the last thing to end on is that I feel that again, trust and transparency and safety in this industry is not talked about enough. So if you're building a cannabis brand or your retailer making your customers or consumers feel safe. And know why they should feel safe in your store and or consuming your product, I think is a really important factor.
There's folks in prison still for gardening here in the States. I know other countries suffer with prohibition and stigma and people having legal issues over gardening So I feel like that type of give back and helping with social justice and in incarceration for gardening should be infused into any type of cannabis gardening business model.
And then we're here to change people's lives. And there's a lot of stigma around gardening So I [00:40:00] think getting involved from a community standpoint it's as easy as cleaning up trash on the road. It's as easy as feeding the hungry in town. It's as easy as, educating students at colleges.
It's as easy as holding, holding events that are educational about products that you carry that could maybe change. You have a high senior age demographic in your area. Yeah.
Tommy Truong: I know that you guys are, I know that you guys are huge in corporate responsibility. Can you talk a little bit about the stuff that you're doing?
John Shute: yeah, sure. Yeah, we've contributed to like almost 12 and a half million dollars now, raised for different nonprofits and community organizations since we started. We just recently launched our own sector of our business called Puff Creative Cares. Our first campaign in September was for recovery month.
We raised like almost six grand for a local Denver nonprofit who helps folks recover from drug addiction. And so it hits home with me because it's how I got into the industry. It was just, friends struggling with addiction. And then that opened my eyes to social justice, environmental issues, and all these other [00:41:00] ailments that cannabis can solve for not only these people's personal health, but communities and society as a whole.
That's led me to where I'm at. And then we're throwing three events at MJ Biz Con in Las Vegas. All three of those events are gonna be the proceeds from those events will be going back to Freedom Grow which is a volunteer nonprofit organization who helps folks get outta prison who are in there for cannabis charges.
And then in the new year I haven't really announced this yet, but we're gonna be doing a whole. Mental health and L-G-B-T-Q-I-A community campaign. Right in the new year in Q1. Just leading into pride month, but even before pride month and after. We think it's just really important right now with the climate of what's happening in the United States here and the suicide rates are just extreme right now and it's just really sad to see.
A lot of the programs that are ex that, that used to exist, sadly don't exist. More hotlines and mental health resources are being depleted. We're gonna try to do everything we [00:42:00] can to raise awareness for the ones that still exist and raise some money for some organizations that are really putting the right foot forward with mental health.
Yeah,
Tommy Truong: Oh, that's amazing.
John Shute: on currently. Yeah. And then we help clients with a bunch of their community stuff and trying to infuse that into like when we're creating brands, like their perspective as well.
Tommy Truong: No, that's amazing. John. How can their listeners find you?
John Shute: our website, most of the contact forms all lead back to me. Pufcreative.com, PUF C-R-E-A-T-I-V, spell a little weird. And then LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on there, day to day. So just John Shute on LinkedIn and yeah, that's probably the best two places to find us and get in touch with me.
Tommy Truong: Congratulations, by the way, on your award last year at mjs.
John Shute: Oh, thanks. Yeah, I, no, we won back to back years we were nominated this year. I doubt we'll get the trio, fingers
Tommy Truong: Guys, which category are you nominated for?
John Shute: Marketing Agency of the Year.
Tommy Truong: Marketing
agency guys. Vote. Thank you so much for joining me today. [00:43:00] That was awesome. Thank you.
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