2021 Cannabis CFO Survey — Kristofer Matthew Lenz

2021 Cannabis
CFO Survey

In my role as Chief Marketing Officer at GreenGrowth CPAs, one of my primary goals was to elevate brand awareness and establish the firm as a thought leader in the cannabis industry.

To accomplish this, I launched an industry-first 2021 Cannabis CFO Survey. This project’s goals were to:

Directly engage with financial leaders/decision-makers in target audiences
Provide proprietary data and analysis, cementing firm as a thought leader
Earn media coverage with respected industry news outlets
Create a new business funnel for leads gained

Social Outreach

The first phase of the 2021 Cannabis CFO Survey involved initial outreach to boost awareness and garner responses to an online survey form.

This was achieved by an omni-touch social media outreach program that included emails to our mailing list, paid operator lists, and organic outreach and paid ads on all social channels:

Instagram
Facebook
Linkedin
Twitter
LeafWire

The response was excellent, as hundreds visited the landing page and ultimately 77 individuals provided responses to the survey during a three-week period.

Developing the Report

Once I’d received enough responses to the survey I conducted an in-depth analysis of the response to determine key themes and insights. I then developed an initial layout that highlighted important take-aways and interesting quotes provided by respondents.

I then collaborated with the excellent design team at One More Minute Creative to produce the 2021 Cannabis CFO Survey as a 22+ page report.

To distribute the report we followed up on all social channels, included it in our 30k+ strong weekly newsletter, and issued a press release.

Download Report

Distribution & Follow-Up

When the 2021 Cannabis CFO Survey was complete I established a landing page, optimized it for SEO, included a form to gather new business contacts, and created UTMs to track channel performance.

I also issued a Press Release, selecting a key insight that would motivate earned media coverage. As a result, the Cannabis CFO Survey was picked up by 309 news outlets, including targeted industry publications that include: Yahoo! Finance, MarketWatch, Benzinga, and Seeking Alpha.

In addition to the aforementioned pick-ups, the 2021 Cannabis CFO Survey was covered by High Times magazine and I was interviewed for the article. This coverage then trended on Twitter and garnered hundreds more downloads and further media coverage.

As downloads and new contact information for new business prospects rolled in, I collaborated with the sales team to develop automated email sequences introducing our services to prospective clients.

At the time of this writing, the 2021 Cannabis Survey has been downloaded over 300 times by cannabis industry operators, providing a wealth of new sales contacts throughout the cannabis ecosystem.

“So there’s Illinois, Massachusetts, in these sort of newer markets, where the wholesale price is high, demand is really high, and this vision of cannabis capitalism—as people are imagining it—is really thriving,” he said. “But in more states that are older, we’re seeing a valley form. It’s actually happening in Colorado and California, especially where the more and more cultivators come online, the more sophisticated those cultivation opportunities are, the more flower is hitting the market, but the demand is not necessarily catching up.”