While managing a dispensary, it's important to stay on top of customer purchasing trends, especially considering how frequently the product catalog can change. This information can help you make decisions about promotions, discounts, and other marketing initiatives. But how do you identify customer purchasing trends? One way is to analyze your data and look for patterns. This can be done using Meadow’s robust, available reporting and customer insights tools. The most successful dispensaries create detailed and accurate customer profiles by recording demographics, preferences, buying habits, birthdays and more.
By analyzing customer data and purchasing trends, you can take steps to adjust your cannabis marketing strategy to better meet their needs and grow your business.
Collecting accurate data begins at check-in!
Cannabis retailers should collect customer data at the very beginning of each transaction.
When a new customer enters your dispensary, there are several options within Meadow’s customer intake feature that can help you understand who the customer is, where they’re from, and what their product preferences are. If you do not take the time to record this data accurately, you are missing the opportunity to build a targeted marketing strategy.
Customize your operations with required settings
You can set up the Meadow system so that key data points are required to be entered in order for your front of house team to create a new customer profile to help your team better understand your customer demographics. While recording as much data as possible is great, sometimes requiring so many steps for a customer to shop from your dispensary can hinder customer satisfaction and experience. You can require the collection of your most important data points, then train your staff to ask for additional details. Building robust customer profiles and keeping them updated over time will help your business grow while offering superior customer service.
Analyze Customer Data Using Meadow’s All-in-one Cannabis POS System:
Review Customer Insights:
Easily navigate through graphics and statistics to quickly analyze customer data. Here, you have access to readily available data that you can sort using various filters, toggles and timeframes. Quickly format the graphs to create strategic marketing plans and purchasing decisions based on what your customer data tells you.
Dive into Meadow’s Reporting Suite:
Within Meadow’s dispensary POS, you have access to over 20 unique, in-depth reports.You can dive into finite details after generating a report and navigating Excel. If Excel is not your specialty, the Insights feature might be a better fit for you.
Build Rich Customer Profiles:
As you record customer data, you are building a robust customer profile that helps your dispensary staff understand who you’re helping. If you’re on the phone taking an order for an existing customer, you can open their customer profile to view how they heard about your dispensary, how much they typically shop, what their favorite products are, and how much they typically spend. Within a few seconds you can provide an incredibly personalized experience to guide them towards new cannabis products they might enjoy. If you’re helping a customer in-store or face-to-face, the same data is presented within Meadow’s user-friendly interface. Personalize the customer interaction by diligently recording then analyzing customer information to provide a curated experience.
Own your hard work and your data
The best part is your customer data is private to your store. Whereas other POS software providers make money from sharing your data with other cannabis dispensaries, with Meadow, you own 100% of your data.
How do we identify dispensary customer purchasing trends within Meadow?
Where did your new customers hear about you?
This can be recorded inside a customer profile at any time. You can create unique entries, or encourage your team to use only the entries that you’ve approved. Consolidate the options to make it easier to analyze the data (ie. Weedmaps, Leafly, Google, Walking by, Social Media, Yelp or from that new billboard you invested in building); these are all common ways that Meadow partners record how partners heard about them. You can also allow this field to be fully customizable.
Now that you understand where your dispensary customers came from, what are they buying?
To do this we will combine two Meadow Reports and use the =xlookup function. The Customer Export report records where a customer was ‘referred to from’ while the orders report will show you what a customer purchased. By using this function, you will be able to find out where a customer was referred to from, what they're buying, and how much their spending. From there, you will be able to market those products towards that demographic.
Employee Feedback: Ask your staff about what they're hearing!
Another great way to identify customer purchasing trends is to ask your employees for feedback. Front of house employees like budtenders are especially likely to have a good pulse on what's selling well and what's not moving off the shelves. Additionally, they may be able to provide insights into why certain products are popular. This information can be invaluable as you develop cannabis marketing strategies designed to boost sales.
Actively Collect Customer Feedback
Finally, don't forget to talk to your cannabis customers directly. Ask them what they like and don't like about your store, and see if they have any suggestions for improvements. Customer feedback can be incredibly helpful for fine-tuning your business strategy. By taking these steps, you can stay ahead of the curve and keep your finger on the pulse of customer purchasing trends. By taking these steps, you can gain a better understanding of who shops with you and how to best meet their needs to continue to build lifetime customer value and encourage loyalty.
Now that we have the data, what are your next steps?
- Purchase more of what customers want and make sure those products are always in stock; use Meadow’s low-inventory notifications to make sure you never run out!
- Base advertising strategies on real customer and sales data and take the guesswork out.
- Prioritize your retail floor merchandising strategy by featuring top-selling items as well as offering discounts on slow-moving products to encourage sales before they expire.
- Engage with customers via text or email campaigns, promoting deals or products they genuinely care about.
- Discontinue slow moving products by putting them on sale then adjusting your purchasing strategies.
- Compare your menu to nearby dispensaries to see if your pricing is competitive to capture more local customers.
