What a Dispensary Campaign Should Report Back

Every agency will send you a report. The question is whether it tells you anything you can use to run your stores.

A lot of cannabis marketing reports are built to look busy: big impression counts, colorful charts, and no clear answer to the only question you care about, which is whether people came in.

Numbers that matter

• Store visits: how many people who saw an ad later walked into your location
• Visits by location: so you can see which stores are gaining and which aren't
• Website conversions: reservations, directions, calls, menu views
• Where the ads ran: the actual sites and apps, so you know your brand isn't next to junk

Numbers that need context

Impressions and clicks aren't useless, but they're inputs, not results. A campaign can have a low click rate and still drive store visits, because most people who see a display ad don't click it. They remember it.

Ask how impressions connect to visits. If the answer is vague, the reporting probably doesn't go that far.

Questions to ask before you sign

• Can I see reporting any time, or only once a month?
• Do you measure store visits, and how?
• Can I see results by location?
• Will you show me where my ads actually ran?
• What happens if a campaign isn't working in month two?

What good looks like

In one full-funnel dispensary campaign we ran, reporting showed 1.9 million impressions, 980 website conversions, and 1,200 store visits captured through foot traffic attribution. Those are three different numbers, and each one answers a different question.

That's the standard. Not a single vanity number, but a clear line from ad to action to visit.