Cannabis Gift Baskets & Holiday Promotions

The holiday season provides a wonderful opportunity to devise special promotions for a wide range of holiday gifts.

More than any other time of the year, the holiday season allows you to get creative with unique ideas and learn more about your customers’ preferences and shopping trends.

There’s absolutely no doubt that dispensary shoppers are looking for thoughtful gifts that will delight their cannabis-loving friends and loved ones—which provides you with the perfect opportunity to maximize your profits as consumer spending is at a yearly high.

Your inventory should reflect this spending boom, with dispensary shelves fully stocked with all items sold during other seasons and some special holiday-themed affordable gifts for Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanza included as well.

This is not a time to run out of products. Depleted inventory and unsatisfied customers can kill your bottom line at a time of the year with so many opportunities for record sales and increased brand loyalty among your customer base. Be certain to stock plenty of your best-selling items and favorite strains.

Competitive, Varied Price Points

Cover all of your bases when it comes to gift price points. Highlight inexpensive items as well as those with loftier price tags. There’s quite a price differential between a small glass pipe and an elaborate multi-chambered glass bong.

Your customers will appreciate choices at this time of the year when many of them have long lists of gifts to buy and budgets to manage.

Festive Environment

Remember that your customers have choices when it comes to cannabis and related products. Promote the holiday spirit with store decorations and music. Consider setting up displays that reflect the holiday spirit—including Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanza. Customers will naturally gravitate to them at this time of the year.

Any holiday displays and signage should be clear, concise, and easy for customers to evaluate the products and make quick decisions. Special email and text promotions should reflect the offer(s) the dispensary is promoting that week.

Gift Baskets

Be sure to bundle items that go together at this time of year and create special promotions. Gift baskets are the perfect vehicle for this type of special promotion.

For instance, a gift basket containing a specially priced eighth- or quarter-ounce of flower, a glass pipe or bong, a green or red lighter, a pack of rolling papers, and a colorful rolling tray—all gathered together in a festive basket—makes a fantastic gift that any cannabis lover would enjoy and be thrilled to receive.

Another type of gift basket could combine various infused beverages and edibles (usually dessert items, which are perfect around the holidays), add a colorful mug or pint glass—especially one embossed with your business’s brand—and you have a perfect holiday gift that any cannabis edibles enthusiast will appreciate.

Yet another gift basket idea—one that should particularly appeal to millennials, who are known to have an affinity for concentrates—is a “Dab Basket.” Loading up a holiday gift basket with a dab rig; a dab tool; a gram of shatter, wax, crumble, or small quantity of oil; and a torch will make any concentrates connoisseur smile like the Cheshire Cat.

Priced competitively and loaded with high-quality products, one or all of these gift baskets should appeal to just about any cannabis enthusiast. These three ideas cover all the bases when it comes to cannabis consumption. Regardless of who steps onto the dispensary floor to shop, there will be a gift basket appropriate for them.

Assorted Pre-Rolls

When it comes to appropriate, pre-packaged cannabis holiday gifts, pre-rolls are a perfect fit for the holidays. With an affordable price point and out-of-the-box functionality, they should be a product line that receives plenty of promotion this holiday season.

They also make a great New Year’s gift or party accoutrement, since the late-night partying that occurs the week following Christmas is the perfect time to break out a fat pre-roll to share with friends.

Have an assortment of pre-rolls available, and be sure to include strain-specific indica and sativa choices. Regardless of whether your customers or friends have a preference for sativa or indica, a joint or blunt of Bubba Kush, Granddaddy Purple, Golden Goat, or Durban Poison is sure to be a hit (pun intended) at their big year-end bash.

The extra-large “party pre-rolls” are a good fit for this time of year, when friends gather in large groups. Passing around a big party pre-roll as everyone sips eggnog will keep the party rolling and attendees in fine spirits.

Topicals

Topicals are an emerging and increasingly popular segment of the cannabis market. Women are the target demographic for consumers who shop for these products and use them on a regular basis. However, men have a use for these products as well, particularly when it comes to lotions and salves created for the relief of sore muscles and joints.

Products that will appeal particularly to women include bath balms, and moisturizing lotions and creams. Various cannabis topicals have a wide range of uses. Modern cannabis topicals even include sexual lubricants bound to appeal to men and women alike.

Cannabis topicals are available in both THC- and CBD-infused products, so they make good gift choices for those who are regular cannabis consumers and those who have an aversion to THC products. Also, except for cannabinoid patches, cannabis topicals don’t enter your bloodstream, so even those who use THC-infused products won’t get high from them or test positive for cannabis on drug tests.

Stocking Stuffers

Affordable stocking stuffers should have prominent positioning on the dispensary floor. Spontaneous purchasing is bound to occur during pre-holiday shopping when customers suddenly remember a person who didn’t make it on their gift-buying list but deserve a present. These impulse buys can quickly add up, so make things easy for shoppers and provide a convenient location close to check-out for the impulse-buy products you wish to promote.

The list of goodies that can serve as single-item stocking stuffers can extend to nearly every product segment. Think of products that are small in size when it comes to stocking stuffers, because although they may not literally go into Christmas stockings, a compact size makes “stocking stuffers” convenient to distribute to family and friends.

As well as the previously mentioned pre-rolls, the list can include assorted grams of concentrates and flower, containers of edibles, glass pipes, packs of cannabis seeds, dab nails, dabbers, joint rollers, and many other items. Size is the main consideration here. Price point can vary widely, but many items are on the inexpensive side.

Holiday Promotions and Gift Cards

As the holiday shopping crunch hits a fever pitch, dispensary owners and operators would be wise to allocate extra revenue on strategic advertising geared specifically for holiday promotions and offers. Every legal cannabis city has specific local publications and vehicles for advertising marijuana and related products. Getting the word out early—as soon as Thanksgiving—is the best practice. Store signage should reflect special holiday offers and promotions.

And don’t forget the gift cards! They’re extremely popular this time of year, as the rapidly depleting kiosks at your local supermarket prove. There are very good reasons for their popularity. Gift cards take a lot of the guesswork out of holiday shopping experience for people who are unsure of the preferences of their gift recipients and have limited time to browse store inventory.

Unlike giving cash as a gift, they add a personal touch to gift-giving. Gift cards should be available in denominations ranging from $20 to $100. They should be promoted and sold near checkout, because that’s the best place for impulse buying and card activation.

The holiday season is a prime opportunity to maximize a dispensary’s bottom line prior to year’s end. Never forget that dispensaries equate to retail sales, pure and simple. Any dispensary that loses sight of that important fact and fails to make creative offers and promotions during the holiday season is missing out on the opportunity to guarantee huge profits. Here’s to a prosperous holiday season!

To learn more about marketing you cannabis business, enroll at Cannabis Training University today!