Dos and donts of marketing a vape business

If you’re an entrepreneur looking to get into a new niche, the vaping sector is definitely worth a second look. Americans are taking up the activity in their droves. The number of US vapers has doubled over the past five years and the global industry is growing at a CAGR exceeding 25 percent. Even better, the fastest growing consumer demographic is adults under 30, so that growth is unlikely to tail off any time soon.    

That’s the good news. But before we all rush off to launch an affiliate site or dropshipping business to serve the needs of America’s vapers, keep in mind that this is one of the more tightly regulated industries. It’s also relatively new – 20 years ago, nobody had even heard of vaping – so laws are also subject to change and refinement in different US states.  

FDA regulations regarding Vaping products 

The role of the FDA in regulating vape products is, in itself, a gray area. The question of whether a vape, vape oil or other related vaping product needs to go through FDA approval depends on the type of substance being vaped.  

Not all vaping products on the market are FDA approved, and not all need to be. However, it would be reasonable to say that most vaping products are subject to FDA approval. This is an important point, because it imposes specific rules and restrictions. These include the following: 

• No ads on Google 
• No promotion on social media such as Facebook, X or Instagram 
• The above does not prevent discussion of vaping products (eg in a Facebook group) as long as there is no direct promotion or sales. 

Traditional SEO and the vape industry 

If we take a step back a moment, marketing a business online is mostly about SEO – because most sales come via search engines. Start to look through your trusty SEO handbook and you will see that even if we assume FDA rules apply, there is more that we can do than that we cannot.  

For example, basic on-page SEO is always the first step in getting your page ranking for certain keywords. Hamilton Devices have an exclusive partnership agreement as sole CCELL distributors and their website provides a good example of what can be achieved. The whole website is an object lesson in SEO, from the immaculate site structure to the keyword optimized pages to the alt text and meta tags. 

Content marketing for vape companies 

Officially a subset of SEO, but almost a strategy in its own right, content marketing helps boost search ranking and also contributes to establishing and building reputation. Again, we can refer to Hamilton’s site and take a look at their news page to see this principle in action. They add a new article every week, and it is always keyword-optimized and information-rich on CCELLs and their technology, without being overly sales-driven.  

Content marketing can also extend to social media and to contributing blog posts to other sites, just as long as we keep in mind those restrictions mentioned earlier. The content should inform readers, as opposed to trying to persuade them towards some action, such as taking up vaping or buying a particular product.  

In short, while there are some restrictions, the vaping sector is a growing market that is full of opportunities.