CBD Insights: The Rise of CBD and What to Know About Consumers

CBD has already built a $2 billion dollar industry.

You may have noticed the influx of CBD stores on virtually every street corner. Someone may have sent you an article about how it’s the new way to treat almost every condition.

But what is its impact on your market? If you’re working for a CBD maker, which audiences does this on-the-rise supplement appeal to and why? How are people using CBD and what products do they love?

With complete custom-built audience segments, consumer personas and analysis of top use cases and reasons for treatment, this report reveals need-to-know insights about consumers using advanced social listening data you won’t find anywhere else.

Social Conversations about CBD have Increased Nearly 400%

The sudden, rapid rise of CBD is not your imagination.

You’re seeing CBD stores everywhere because CBD is a booming business.

Online conversations from global consumers confirms that the topic of CBD is red hot. Social listening analysis of CBD and related terms show a 400% increase in the number in conversations in the last year. Wow!

This is a monumental development in the space of alternative medicines and treatments.

CBD brands looking to gain market share for this use case could use social listening to learn more about why consumers are considering, or making, the switch to CBD.

As a CBD marketer or a growing CBD business, it’s vital to know what use cases and who these consumers are for CBD products on the web.

Additionally, healthcare, medical and pharmaceutical groups should be aware of the types of treatments specific audiences are turning to. CBD is clearly on-the-rise and doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

Now, let’s look at which audience segments turn to CBD and why:

Custom Audience Segments Show CBD Resonates with Arthritis Patients

As a CBD brand, marketer or maker, you need to know which consumers are behind the growth of the CBD market. Insights from social listening analysis can provide the answers.

When we look at specific audience segments for trends in online conversation topics, we can learn about how products resonate with those audiences.

Using custom-built audience segmentation technology within social listening analysis, you can hone in on a specific group of audiences. For this case, we chose arthritis patients, cancer patients, anxiety sufferers, moms and pet owners.

When analyzed for the topic of CBD, CBD products and CBD use cases, you see the arthritis patients rose to the top in those discussions.

Over the past 2 years, arthritis patients discussed CBD the most, while moms are a fast-growing segment as well (we’ll touch more on that below).

If you look closely, another trend can be spotted: moms are a fast-growing audience segment for CBD use (It’s that second highest line, showing an increase in online posts from June 2018 on).

CBD makers and other interested businesses need to understand who their top buyers are and consider consumers in growing segments like moms.

3. Moms and Caregivers are a Key Opportunity for CBD

As one of the fastest growing CBD audience segments, moms should absolutely be on your radar as making a splash in the market.

As members of the household who are responsible not only for their own health, but for the health of others, CBD could be key to helping them manage pain, anxiety, stress, insomnia and other health-related issues.

This is a major opportunity for CBD makers and a must-know insight for all companies and brands to be aware of, as moms and caregivers remain important buyers in all markets.

Moms and caregivers are the “floor-runners” of the household when it comes to important areas that need to be managed, like medical and health needs. One recent study called women the “Chief Medical Officers” of their households, finding that 59% of women manage healthcare for someone other than themselves.

The moms and caregivers audience segment are in charge of healthcare and medicine, taking care of loved ones, especially the elderly, managing the family pets, organizing schedules, meals and diets, children and those with special needs. They even manage kids’ bedtimes.

All of these areas can be impacted by CBD in some form or fashion.

This means that women, moms and caregivers of the household are the golden opportunity as influencers.

Companies can't pay to advertise CBD on social channels. This is a route to get around that. By using influencer marketing companies can market to their target audiences and they can get around the FDA restrictions on advertising the benefits.