Dispensary Marketing: Seven Channels and Their Limits

Every channel below is open to a licensed dispensary in some form. What differs is the ceiling, meaning the rule that caps how far the channel can go. Each row names that rule and the page it comes from, so any row can be checked on its own.

The order of the rows is the order of the work. Channels near the top have the most room under the rules. Channels near the bottom are capped by someone else's policy or by an audience test the dispensary has to prove.

From July to September 2026, across 31 active Bud Authority clients weighted equally, the median client took 77.5% of its Google clicks on its home page and 10.5% on its menu pages, per Sentinel, Bud Authority's internal search intelligence platform.

A median is the middle client, not a forecast for any one store. Still, the split says where to start. The home page has to answer what a searcher came for in its first screen: what the store is, where it is and how to order.

Menu pages earned the smaller share, and they are also the pages a dispensary controls least, because many menus are built by a third-party platform. That is a reason to make them readable to search engines, not a reason to skip them.

The federal and carrier rules for marketing texts need more room than a hub page has, so they sit on the SMS and loyalty compliance guide linked in the table.

State advertising rules reach the inbox too. Missouri's rule defines an advertisement to include email, texting, websites and mobile applications, so a marketing email or text is an advertisement under the same rule that covers billboards.

Missouri's own online advertising guidance gives an example of a violation: a digital flyer emailed to a licensee's mailing list that shows a marijuana product beside a caricature of an animal.

Before the first send in any other state, check whether its definition of advertising names email or texting.

Colorado's rule shows the split most plainly. A retail marijuana business may sponsor a charitable, sports or similar event, but it may not advertise at or in connection with that event without reliable evidence that 71.6 percent of the audience is reasonably expected to be at least 21. New Jersey frames its event test as the under-age share instead, as the table shows.

Earned press connects back to search. Google's local ranking page defines prominence as how well-known a business is, and says it draws on how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. A news story that links to the store's site is one of those links.

Yes, within two sets of limits. The first is the ad platforms, and each writes its own rules. Microsoft Advertising prohibits marijuana ads, including medicinal marijuana. Meta's ad standards do not allow ads that promote or offer the sale of THC products. Google Ads names cannabis coffee shops among its disallowed examples.

The second is the state audience test. The table gives the Massachusetts and New York versions. New Jersey's requires reliable evidence that at least 71.6 percent of the audience is reasonably expected to be 21 or older.