Which questions about call tracking, local ROI, and Google Business Profile do dispensary marketers need answered — and why they matter
Dispensary marketing gets messy fast. Advertising rules vary by state and province. Phones still drive most in-store sales, but phone data is tricky to tie back to campaigns. Google Business Profile (GBP) gives useful signals, but those numbers are opaque and incomplete. Below are the practical questions I’d expect every dispensary owner or marketer to ask — the questions that change whether you get paid for the work or just burn budget.
- What is call tracking for dispensaries and why should we even use it? Can call tracking alone prove local marketing ROI? How do you set up call tracking while staying compliant with state or provincial rules? When should we pay for advanced attribution tools versus keeping it simple? What platform and regulatory changes are coming that will affect phone attribution and GBP insights?
Answering those keeps you focused on revenue and risk, not vanity metrics.
What exactly is call tracking for dispensaries and why does it matter?
Short answer: call tracking replaces or tags phone numbers to tell you which ad, search, or page produced a call. For dispensaries most sales start on a phone call or walk-in, so assigning a value to each call lets you calculate real ROI instead of guessing.
Long answer: Call tracking comes in several flavors. The simplest is static mapping — use a different number on a flyer vs. your website. The more sophisticated method is dynamic number insertion (DNI) — which swaps the phone number shown based on the visitor's source and stores that session data with the call. When the caller dials, a call-tracking platform captures metadata: source, landing page, UTM tags, time, duration, and sometimes the conversation recording or transcript.
Why it matters for dispensaries:
- Most online cannabis queries convert offline. A call often equals a sale or an appointment. Digital channels like organic search and GBP drive visits that can’t be fully measured by purchases alone. Calls bridge the gap. Call insights reveal times of peak demand, common product questions, and staff training needs that boost conversion rates.
Can call tracking single-handedly prove local marketing ROI for a dispensary?
Short answer: No. Call tracking is necessary but not sufficient.
Here’s why people get this wrong: call tracking tells you which channel produced a call but not always the outcome. Did the call convert to a sale? How much did that customer spend? Was the caller a new patient or a returning customer who already had high lifetime value? Without linking calls to point-of-sale (POS) data, CRM entries, or a reliable average order value, you're guessing.
Concrete scenario: Your Facebook ad drives 200 clicks, 20 calls recorded, and 6 sales at the storefront. Call tracking shows 20 calls came from Facebook. That suggests a 30% close rate for callers. But if those six sales were actually from two repeat VIP customers who saw the ad and came back, your attribution is inflated. If your POS isn't tagging the transaction to the caller or the staff forgets to ask "where did you hear about us," you lack ground truth.
Use call tracking as one input in a multi-source attribution model. Combine call metadata with unique promo codes, cashier tags, CRM records, and, where possible, offline conversion uploads to Google Ads or your analytics platform.
How do dispensaries set up compliant call tracking and measure local marketing ROI in practice?
Short answer: plan for consent, data residency, minimal retention, and CRM integration. Use dynamic numbers for online sources, and simple unique numbers for offline assets.
Step-by-step practical plan:
Map regulations per location. Identify call-recording consent laws and advertising rules for each state or province you operate in. For example, several US states require two-party consent for recordings. Canada allows one-party consent but privacy laws like PIPEDA still control personal data handling. Provincial rules often impose extra constraints on cannabis advertising. Choose a platform that supports compliance features. Look for automated consent prompts on call recording, regional number pools (so numbers look local), encryption, and custom retention policies. Ensure the vendor will sign a data processing addendum if required. Implement dynamic number insertion on your website. Use server-side or client-side DNI to swap numbers and capture source data into the call-tracking session. If you run paid ads, display unique numbers on landing pages tied to UTM data. Capture consent up front. If recording is on, use an IVR message that states recording is active and offers an opt-out. Log consent in your CRM with time-stamped records. Integrate calls with POS/CRM. The crucial step is matching a call to a sale. Use a caller ID match, staff prompts to tag transactions, or have the cashier ask a promo code exclusive to the campaign. Better: automate a "call ID" field in the CRM that flows to the POS. Assign value. Compute an expected value per call by tracking the percentage of calls that convert and the average sale size. Example calculation: 100 tracked calls, 35 in-store conversions, average order $75 = 35 x $75 = $2,625 revenue. If your cost for the campaign was $800, ROI = 3.28x. Report with transparency. Show raw call counts, calls that scored as sales, average order value, and net cost per sale. Present ranges when matching is probabilistic.Example: A Denver dispensary ran a Google Business Profile post and a geo-targeted paid search campaign. They used DNI and a campaign-specific promo code. Over 30 days they logged 120 calls from paid search numbers, 48 in-store redemptions of the promo code, and tracked $3,600 from those redemptions. That allowed them to reduce wasted spend on underperforming keywords and increase bids on the terms that produced high-value calls.
Should a dispensary outsource call tracking and compliance to specialized vendors or try to manage it in-house?
Short answer: it depends on volume and complexity. Low-volume shops can start simple. Multi-location operations usually need a specialist.
Considerations:
- Call volume and geography: If you have one location and a handful of calls per day, a simple static-number system with staff asking “how did you hear about us” may be enough. If you manage multiple stores across states or provinces, you need number pools, localized IVRs, and centralized reporting. Regulatory complexity: Different consent rules, advertising limits, and data residency demands make compliance tricky. Vendors who specialize in cannabis have processes and legal workflows in place. You pay for that expertise, and often it's cheaper than the compliance risk of doing it yourself. Technical debt: Integrating DNI, CRM, POS, analytics, and ad platforms requires tagging and maintenance. If your team lacks dev resources, a vendor reduces build and upkeep time.
Contrarian take: many agencies push premium attribution stacks because they sell implementations. If your staff can reliably ask callers one short question — "Is this your first purchase with us?" — and your cashier tags transactions for source, you'll learn a lot. In other words, human processes can replace expensive tools when your volume is manageable.
What are the limits of Google Business Profile insights for dispensaries, and how should you use them?
GBP is useful but imperfect. It reports queries, discovery vs direct search, customer actions (calls, directions, website clicks), and day/time patterns. These metrics surface demand and keyword intent fast. The limits:
- GBP aggregates and samples data. Numbers can be rounded or delayed and should be treated as directional, not exact. Calls logged by GBP only capture clicks on the call button from the profile. It misses calls that come from the number on your website or printed media unless those numbers are identical and click-tracked. GBP doesn't tie calls to ad campaigns. If you need campaign-level ROI, GBP must be combined with call-tracking DNI or unique numbers. Google’s policies and product changes can alter what GBP reports without notice. Don’t build a whole model on one opaque feed.
Use GBP for category-level signals: are people searching “dispensary near me” more on weekends? Which queries show up in discovery? Cross-check GBP call spikes with your call-tracking logs to spot inconsistencies and to validate which campaigns drive https://www.marketingscoop.com/blog/best-cannabis-seo-companies/ discovery traffic.
What regulatory and platform changes should dispensary marketers prepare for in the next few years?
Short answer: privacy restrictions and advertising policy shifts will keep tightening. Plan for less deterministic attribution and more privacy-safe methods.
Trends to expect and act on:
- Stricter consent and retention rules. States and provinces continue tightening data privacy. Prepare to store minimal PII, log explicit consent, and purge recordings and metadata at required intervals. Fewer deterministic signals from platforms. Google, Apple, and browsers are reducing cross-site tracking. That impacts cookie-based attribution and forces more server-side matching and first-party collections. Changes in GBP and ad policies. Google updates rules on local listings and how certain categories are displayed. Track policy docs and maintain a conservative approach to promotional language on profiles and posts. Rising scrutiny on AI-based call scoring. Automated transcription and scoring look great, but regulators are starting to ask how those models handle personal health or sensitive product discussions. Keep human review options and the ability to redact sensitive content.
Action items for 2026 readiness:
Build first-party data collection into every customer touchpoint: loyalty signups, appointment booking, and IVR consent logging. Adopt server-side event uploads for offline conversions so you can still measure campaign impact while respecting browser privacy changes. Audit your vendors: ensure they can comply with data residency and deletion requests across your operating regions.Final practical checklist before you spend on the next campaign
Use this quick checklist to avoid common mistakes:
- Have you mapped call-recording consent for every state/province you operate in? Is your call-tracking vendor able to granularly map calls to campaign UTMs and integrate with your POS/CRM? Do you have a way to assign actual revenue to calls, not just call counts? Are you using GBP insights to detect trends, not as your single source of truth? Do your staff know to ask one verification question that links calls to transactions when automation fails?
Final contrarian note: spend less time chasing perfect attribution math and more time closing the loop between caller and cashier. Track enough to make good decisions, not to justify endless tool subscriptions. The shops that win are the ones that treat call tracking as part of an operations playbook - numbers inform staff training, hours, inventory, and offers. Get that right, and marketing becomes an engine instead of a guessing game.