Help Your Smoke Shop With Community Outreach

It’s one for all and all for one at Got Vape Wholesale today (and everyday), because we are cracking the door open to our bunkers, peeking out into the real world, and reaching out to our surrounding communities to boost our public images for increased sales!

While of course this is ultimately going to be about raising your profits, you can also do some genuine good at the same time, so why not kill two birds with one stone, or as they say in Saskatchewan get two birds stoned at once.

Keep reading to learn a little bit about how to project a positive image of your smoke shop to the surrounding community and add that extra bit of je ne sais quoi that it needs to differentiate you as the wheat amongst the chaff.

Table of Contents:

What Is Business Community Outreach?
What Are the Goals of Community Outreach?
What Are The Benefits Of Community Outreach?
What Community Outreach Can I Do For My Smoke Shop?
Be A Do-Good-er For Better-er Sales
Take Part In Local CharitiesUsing Local Events For Outreach
Proper Messaging At Public Events
Sponsor A Local Event
A Community Minded Conclusion

What Is Business Community Outreach?

The idea of community outreach has been around for quite a long time, in the past this ranged from Roman emperors arranging gladiator fights all the way to French aristocrats offering their angry masses the option to eat cake.

Well maybe those aren’t the best examples… but the point is that whether it's a business, royal family, or any other conglomerate - you are going to have to figure out effective ways to reach out to the areas around you and positively impact them.

Your customers aren’t dropped off by a stork looking for rolling papers, instead they are all red blooded breathing people just like you and me (well not me I’m an A.I.) and that means they are all living in the neighborhoods, apartments, and homes around you.

The idea here is to positively impact the lives of these people, without any publicly perceived monetary incentive in order to plant the seeds for more people to come into your shop.

What Are the Goals of Community Outreach?

When it comes to your goals obviously the ulterior one is to make more money, but in the immediate many experts recommend to focus on two categories: education and outreach.

Essentially you are trying to educate people about your shop and your benevolent team player attitude in order to act as a hybrid outreach program for your shop.

The effects are going to vary depending on the person, but you should aim to have people who either had no idea or a less than stellar idea of your smoke shop walk away thinking better of you and that you're a business owner who does it right.

Having a positive word of mouth about your shop and not just coming off as another cut throat here one day gone the next smoke shop that doesn’t have the communities best interests in mind.

What Are The Benefits Of Community Outreach?

Aside from the okay captain obvious answer of more sales, there’s a whole boat load of potential benefits that may arise from boosting your public image as a retail shop.

While times have evolved, it’s no secret that smoke shops have a stigma attached to them when it comes to our benefits to the community.

While the personal opinions of most people are immaterial, there are people who control decisions like city / town zoning laws, where new construction is placed, and what nearby developments arise.

In this superficially machiavellian take on public image, it doesn’t hurt to have people in charge of the levers to hear that your shop is a positive benefit to the community and not a black sheep most are wishing would disappear.

While this is ultimately just conjecture, it goes without saying that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar - so whether it pays off immediately or 5 years down the line you are still putting out the good karma needed to help your store when it needs it most.

What Community Outreach Can I Do For My Smoke Shop?

The truth is there is more than one way to skin a couch (sorry our cat objected), so don’t be discouraged about anything you try as if your intentions are right it will all eventually add up as a net positive…well that is unless your community outreach is dressing up like Michael Myers and chasing people around with a kitchen knife. In that case, just stick to our tips below!

Be A Do-Good-er For Better-er Sales

The easiest and most cost effective way for you to employ some community outreach is to take the Ned Flanders approach of being a good neighborino and doing some good old fashioned community service.

If the street outside your shop is dirty, try taking a broom and cleaning up the fallen leaves, dust, and anything else that is less than helpful to pedestrians walking by.

This will not only make your street appear friendlier, but people will take notice that you are cleaning up the surrounding area and appreciate your efforts. While none of this is explicitly your job to do, taking the onus upon yourself to do these things will really boost your image with the average person and the shops surrounding you.

Another idea for flexing your morals is to clean up cigarette butts from the town or a nearby park all the while wearing a shirt with your logo prominently on it. You can even take a group photo with your employees and post it to social media to boost the awareness of your community service.

Take Part In Local Charities

Continuing on the theme of doing good, we wanted to strongly point out that taking part in local charity donation drives is a phenomenal method to boost your standing within the community.

If you have the means, you can simply make donations straight to your local charities or deliver whatever bulk goods are needed to their collection point.

Should you need community outreach for $0, set up something simple like a bin to collect goods for a local clothing or food drive. Try to lean into the seasonal charities as well such as those that provide meals on thanksgiving or toys to children around the winter holiday season.

All that is required of you is to set up the collection site and then bring the goods over to the donation point, overall it costs you nothing and actively helps those in need.

A slightly more involved charity concept, you could offer a discount or special price for those who take part in the charity drives. For example you could have a “donate a can of soup, get a pack of camo wraps half off” type of deal in order to incentivize the community to participate in these charitable donations.

Using Local Events For Outreach

The next piece of advice is to become a sponge for any and all information relating to local events that are going on so you can co-opt their enthusiasm and attempt to piggy back the hype or even attend the event with a booth.

A great way to find out about things happening in your city or the adjacent towns is to look up your city's name and add words after it like “bulletin” or “events schedule”. This way google does the heavy lifting for us and will give us a better idea of everything that is going on.

Local newspapers are another excellent method to check out as they will have announcements and listings talking about the local goings on. These can range from a special event like the rodeo coming to town all the way to an annual celebration like Labor Day.

Another even more direct option is to simply ask your customers what they have going on, see what they themselves are excited for. This is an excellent method to get grass roots info on what’s going on and can be paired with the more official releases you find online or in the paper.

A solid website to search for events is Eventbrite, they let you search by a multitude of categories and can be useful to find random events that may have passed you by. While not perfect, the tool is a decent option to have in your back pocket.

Proper Messaging At Public Events

The whole goal of going to local events like fairs, festivals, or parades is not to make sales to customers there but instead project your shop as a cool place that exists within the community.

This won’t cost you more than a couple of Saturdays and the occasional entry fee, but boosting your visibility is a great way to make your shop seem like the place to go. Instead of most smoke shops that hide away from the public eye, you can be your very own day-walker version that actually embraces the community.

One point to always emphasize when you are appearing in public representing your shop, is to always have prominent messaging that your shop requires strict I.D. verification.

This shows that you are responsible with your duties and aren’t willing to violate the law if it makes you a quick buck. Much like liquor stores, smoke shops have a duty to the community to uphold the laws and regulations surrounding the products we sell and publicly espousing that is a great method to boost your public image.

In addition to this make sure you always apply your happy face before going to any sort of public event, you don’t want to be the grouch amongst a jovial crowd. It would effectively accomplish the opposite of what we are trying to do, so always project a positive attitude.

Sponsor A Local Event

Consider sponsoring one of these local events, this doesn’t mean that you are footing the entire bill but instead can just be a few hundred dollars. Local events operate on incredibly small budgets, so really even a small amount will most likely net you a sponsorship credit.

These are great ways to get your logo or shop name out there in the community mindset. In the mindset of the customer, if you are spending to help make these local events better, then they will notice that you are actively giving back to the community that gives your shop life.

When you are searching for events, look at ones that you think would be a good fit for your smoke shop and then reach out to the organizers if they are taking sponsors. Some events will actively announce they are looking for sponsors, while others may be a bit more cagey.

A Community Minded Conclusion

At the end of the day everything that we have described today is a blueprint for how you can be a model business in the eyes of the community and erase any stigmas that have mistakenly built up by decades of misinformation and bad actors.

While we can’t prove that karma is real, we can tell you that you often get back what you put out there. So no matter what happens, doing the right thing and helping those around you will always be a positive benefit for your shop and yourself.

For more business strategies, industry investigations, and profit strategies from the team, make sure to check out the rest of our Got Vape Wholesale Blog right here.

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