Driving Millions Of Site Visitors In New York City’s Fiercely Competitive Cannabis Market
How CannaContent built an award-winning, search-optimized content library for The Travel Agency that keeps the dispensary top of mind — and at the top of search results — for NYC cannabis shoppers
About The Travel Agency
The Travel Agency is a BIPOC-founded company based in New York City. Its mission is grounded in the belief that legal cannabis has the power to repair the damage caused by the War on Drugs. They were among the first licensed cannabis stores to open in New York City, in February 2023. Two of their three dispensaries are owned by people who have experienced cannabis-related injustices.
The dispensary operates three locations: its original store in Union Square, one in Downtown Brooklyn next to Barclays Center, and on the famed Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. More than half of profits generated at the Union Square dispensary are directed to The Doe Fund, which provides transitional and permanent housing, employment and support services to people who have experienced homelessness and incarceration.
The Goal
Dispensary leadership understood the importance of bolstering online traffic and focusing on website conversions, particularly against the backdrop of a challenging retail marketplace. Tight marketing restrictions on cannabis businesses, unlicensed dispensaries on nearly every corner, and the general difficulty of marketing in a big city all compounded. This meant that The Travel Agency needed to invest in their brand, build community, and be a caring steward of the plant from its very first days.
From Day One, The Travel Agency set out to be a leader in New York City cannabis, both in education and culture. Their marketing plan weaved the dispensary deep into uniquely New York experiences, from a 7/10 party at the Museum of Sex to sponsoring New York Fashion Week to 4/20 picnics at Grand Army Plaza.
The Travel Agency set out to be the resource for all things cannabis in New York City. Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing were key to that: building a hub of compliant, compelling content that helps customers find the dispensary and make the journey to step foot inside.
The Results
%
increase in click-through rates attributed to the blog
%
click-through rates on top-performing articles
position on Google for traffic-generating terms
The blog ranked in position 1 for significant, competitive, and lead-converting commercial and transactional terminology around products like edibles, pre-rolls, and vapes.
The reviews strategy secured the site’s page 1 and first-place rankings for several of New York’s best-selling products, including Ayrloom (9.5% CTR), Jaunty (8.4% CTR), and 1906 New Highs (7.6% CTR) brands. These blogs continue to be among the best performing.
The Process
The first few months of content development involved tackling several categories of content, monitoring its performance, and adjusting the calendar accordingly. This project began with content that clustered around these general topics:
✔︎ Basic information about cannabis
✔︎ Product reviews, with a focus on New York-based brands
✔︎ Topics that aligned with the dispensary’s brand values
✔︎ Highlighting the dispensary experience
✔︎ Community-building
It was vital to The Travel Agency that the blog content did not sacrifice tone and style for the sake of clicks. To that end, CannaContent worked closely with The Travel Agency to translate their brand voice, which lent itself to short snippets of text over long-form content, into a tone that worked for the necessary blog length. Each entry reads like a friendly travel guide effortlessly guiding readers through their journey.
Similarly, prioritizing New York City was essential to all produced content, as the city is the beating heart of The Travel Agency. CannaContent kept this in mind with all content produced, ensuring that everything published under the dispensary’s name reinforced its connection to its home city.
Working with the CannaContent team has been an absolute delight. They are not just incredibly approachable and receptive, but their intelligence shines through their insightful strategies and solutions. Their consistently fantastic work reflects their dedication and expertise, making our collaboration a true pleasure.
Jill Conforti,
Marketing Manager, The Travel Agency
The Strategy
1.
Write what people want to read
While there’s strategic importance to certain basics in a content library, the true traffic drivers are pieces that focus on the questions driving curiosity and conversation offline. To tap into this, we leveraged a combination of in-person surveying and online monitoring.
Reports from budtenders, the marketing team, and from online discussions about the state of the industry formed some of the best-performing pieces on the website. “How To Spot A Fake Cart” was one such piece, which highlighted the differences between a licensed and unlicensed dispensary while answering a common question posed online in New York cannabis forums. It’s one of the best-performing pieces to date in the catalog, with more than 200,000 impressions alone.
2.
Focusing on experience and expectations
The science that drives cannabis is, of course, important. However, the science is much less relatable than how the product makes someone feel. Our content, therefore, focused on the experiences that customers sought out. Conversations on the blog centered on the role cannabis plays in relaxation, sleep, energy, creativity, and more aspects of a shopper’s everyday life, and drove them to products that may help them achieve that experience.
3.
Connecting with community
Interviewing community figures brings content to life while providing expert attribution to the topic at hand. From extraction professionals to community figureheads to brand founders, conversations with other New York City cannabis industry players adds color and intrigue to the articles. Plus, interviewing someone gives them incentive to share the finished product with their own networks, increasing organic reach.
4.
Consistent and continuous updating and fine-tuning
The content library was relatively unaffected by — and in many cases, benefited from — two Google Helpful Content Updates, speaking to the overall quality, relevance, and authority of the content library. Despite this successful metric, content on a dispensary website cannot stay stagnant. New information, stock turnover, and dispensary news is constant.
To ensure The Travel Agency stays relevant, CannaContent incorporates a quarterly review process into all SEO content, reviewing each piece line by line and identifying ways to keep it fresh. SEO metrics drastically improved with each update, while ensuring readers had the latest information about cannabis, the dispensary, and the products available to buy at The Travel Agency.
This continual review and refinement process resulted in a content strategy that focused on:
- Product reviews, including best-sellers
- Highlighting the dispensary experience
- Local SEO content focused on neighborhoods
- Gift guides and lifestyle guides to inspire creative product use
- Responding to community questions posed in online forums
Turn your dispensary into a powerhouse with CannaContent
Our partnership with The Travel Agency illustrates the power of the intersection between consumer education, search engine optimization, and a strong sense of self. This guiding light shaped content that empowers New York City shoppers while letting visitors get to know the dispensary as an integral part of the city’s cannabis community and culture.
Whether you’re in a huge metro area like New York City or the only dispensary in your small town, good SEO is a foolproof way to bring newcomers and returning shoppers to your door. Learn how we can make it happen for you.