Cannabis Marketing Glossary

Plain-English definitions of the terms that come up most often in cannabis-industry marketing. Grouped by area; use your browser’s find to jump to a term.

Compliance & regulatory

Adult-use cannabis

Cannabis legal for recreational purchase and possession by adults (21+) in a given state; 24 states as of 2026. Marketing rules are typically stricter than for medical-only programs.

Medical cannabis

Cannabis legal for use by patients with a qualifying condition and (usually) a state medical card; permitted in 38 states as of 2026. Advertising rules differ from adult-use.

Federal–state disjunction

The gap created by cannabis being federally illegal (Schedule I) while legal under many state regimes — the root cause of most cannabis advertising restrictions.

Age gating

Verifying a visitor's age before showing cannabis content, and directing advertising only to audiences with a required percentage of adults.

Audience-composition rule

A common state requirement that cannabis ads run only where a set minimum share of the audience (often 71.6%+) is of legal age.

FTC disclosure

Federal Trade Commission rules requiring truthful advertising and clear disclosure of material connections with endorsers/influencers.

Truth-in-advertising

The standard that marketing claims be truthful and substantiated — especially important for health or efficacy claims, which are high-risk for cannabis.

CAN-SPAM

The U.S. law governing commercial email; cannabis email marketing must comply with it plus any state-specific consent and age rules.

Plant-touching business

A business that handles cannabis directly (cultivator, manufacturer, dispensary, transporter). Faces the heaviest advertising restrictions.

Ancillary business

A business serving the cannabis industry without touching the plant (testing, packaging, software, insurance, banking). Generally fewer ad restrictions.

SEO & content

SEO

Search engine optimization — improving organic search visibility. Often the highest-ROI channel for cannabis because most paid channels are restricted.

Technical SEO

The crawlability, indexability, speed and structured-data work that lets search engines access and understand a site — including age gates that don't block crawlers.

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness — Google's content-quality framework, weighted heavily for health/legal/financial topics.

Topical authority

The depth and breadth of a site's coverage of a subject; built through clusters of related, high-quality content.

Pillar page

A broad, authoritative page on a core topic that links to and from more specific supporting pages — the hub in a hub-and-spoke model.

Hub-and-spoke

An internal-linking architecture where a pillar (hub) connects to focused supporting pages (spokes) to build topical authority.

Link acquisition

Earning links from other sites through digital PR, useful content and relationships — not paid schemes, which violate search-engine guidelines.

Schema markup

Structured data (JSON-LD) that helps search engines understand a page and can enable rich results like FAQ and breadcrumb snippets.

Local search

Local SEO

Optimizing to rank in local and map results — critical for geographically-bound operators like dispensaries.

Google Business Profile (GBP)

A business's listing in Google Search and Maps; a foundational local-SEO asset that must be accurate and actively managed.

Weedmaps

A leading cannabis directory and discovery platform; an essential listing for most consumer-facing dispensaries.

Leafly

A major cannabis directory and content platform; the other essential dispensary listing alongside Weedmaps.

NAP consistency

Keeping your Name, Address and Phone identical across all directories and listings — a local-ranking and trust signal.

Location page

A page dedicated to a specific store or service area, used to rank in each local market a business operates in.

Channels & metrics

Owned media

Channels you control — your website, blog, email list. The backbone of cannabis marketing given paid restrictions.

Earned media

Coverage and links you earn rather than pay for — PR, mentions, reviews.

Programmatic (cannabis-aware)

Automated ad buying through networks that permit compliant cannabis placements where mainstream platforms don't.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

Improving the share of visitors who take a desired action, such as requesting a consultation.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

The total cost to acquire one customer; central to budgeting in thin-margin verticals like retail.

Lead generation

Generating qualified inbound enquiries — the primary goal for most B2B cannabis-industry businesses.

Customer lifetime value (LTV)

The total revenue expected from a customer relationship; high-LTV verticals (law, real estate) justify patient marketing investment.

Related

See the compliance guide, cannabis SEO guide and our advertising-restrictions reference.