What makes a CBD brand stand out in today’s overcrowded market? In this episode, host April Pride talks with Sophia Trunzo and Lior Root, co-founders of Paradigm Media, about what it really takes to grow and sustain a cannabis or CBD company online. With backgrounds in field marketing, paid media, and affiliate strategy, these women understand how to outmaneuver platform bans, make every touch point count, and turn newsletter clicks into long-term customers. Whether you’re building your first brand or scaling an existing one, this episode breaks down their 360 approach to customer acquisition—complete with content campaigns, influencer strategy, and a pre-launch discovery phase that turns marketing guesswork into real growth.
🔵 Key Takeaways
Paradigm’s 360 strategy includes paid media, affiliates, email, content, and social—all integrated for max impact.
A successful CBD marketing strategy today requires 10–25+ customer touch points—double that of most industries.
Email marketing is still queen: up to 60% of CBD brand revenue can come from your list.
The first 30 days are for testing: a discovery phase helps align your actual audience with your ideal one.
One-stop shops work: From ads to newsletters to landing pages, Paradigm handles it all so founders can focus on product.
🔵 Timestamps
[00:00] Intro: Meet Sophia and Lior from Paradigm Media
[02:00] Why they personally use cannabis and CBD
[03:56] From field marketing to digital strategy—how Paradigm got started
[06:17] Why hard-to-market products excite them
[07:30] What is the 360 customer acquisition strategy?
[09:07] Paid media + affiliates: a CBD brand’s day-one needs
[10:30] The power of email: 40–60% of revenue
[12:30] Why content marketing is key post-COVID
[13:22] More brands, more noise: how to stand out
[15:14] You need 25–50 touch points to convert a customer
[17:00] Discovery phase: find your real audience
[19:00] Why in-house design and development matters
[21:43] Why brands love the all-in-one workflow
[23:00] Strategy without cannibalizing your own sales
🔵 Featured Guests
Lior Root | @lior_root
Sophia Trunzo | @sophiatrunzo
🔵 Additional Resources
SetSet Blog: “Women Leading the Future of Cannabis and Psychedelics”
🎙️SetSet Podcast: Ep. 82 “CBD for Sleep Support: What Works”
🎙️SetSet Podcast: Ep. 81 “CBD for Inflammation: Relief for Women”
🎙️SetSet Podcast: Ep. 20 “Women in Cannabis Entrepreneurship”
How are you growing your plant-based brand? What’s worked—and what’s been a total fail? 👇 Let’s talk about it in the comments after the transcript below.
🔵 Transcript
[00:01] April Pride:
Hey, this is April, and this show, Set Set Show, discusses cannabis, psychedelics, and altered states of consciousness generally. It's intended for audiences 21 and over. Also, I am not a medical expert. If you are looking to engage with psychedelic substances, please consult your physician before doing so.
[00:21] Lior Root:
I saw that it takes between 10 to 25 touch points to acquire a customer. And just to put it in perspective, in every other industry, it's between 6 to 10 touch points. Here, we're talking like 10.
[00:52] April Pride:
Hello and welcome to The High Guide. I'm your host, April Pride. As some of you may know, not only do I host this show, I'm also a serial creative entrepreneur. The High Guide is my sixth startup, so when I'm not educating myself on cannabis and other potent plants, I'm sharpening my skills as a product developer and marketer. And when I read the testimonial at the top of the show, I wanted you to know more. So I started digging and I found that the digital marketing firm responsible for the meteoric rise of several [CBD marketing strategy] brands I've watched over the past years, I found that the firm was co-founded by two women. And because I know many of you who listen to this show also work in cannabis and are also women, Paradigm Media and I came together to share this episode to outline the three rules of the Paradigm Playbook: best practices and insights to digitally [promote CBD brands]. So if you could talk about your relationship with the plant, like you consume cannabis, you use CBD on the daily as a supplement, just yeah, how in the past and now do you interact with the plant?
[02:00] Sophia Trunzo:
Yeah, so I have been a THC user for probably the last 10 years. I'm just very type A, very high strung, and it's something where it helps me to just kind of tap out of that after a work day and actually be able to relax my mind and go to bed. As far as CBD, I really love topicals personally. I like to use them for any type of pain or inflammation of muscles if I'm like feeling like I punched over my computer all kind of over my shoulders or kind of my lats so that I'm feeling a little bit of that cooling sensation actually makes me a little bit more aware of the way that I am my posture um with that chlorine effect so I really do like topicals a lot um and then I really do like oils just because you can really use it for anything you put it in your coffee you can put it in your morning smoothie and your post-workout um you know smoothie as well or post-workout drink and then it's also something where you can mix it in with lotion or you know there's so many different uses for the oils um so yeah.
[02:54] Lior Root:
And for me I've also been a THC user for like over 15 years now and I used to smoke daily. Now with work I try to keep it for weekends only. Also I'm a mom and so for me it's just something that helps me relax over the weekend and kind of zone out from work. And for CBD I definitely love to mix this CBD flower in my joints and so that's something that helps me too. So, you know, I'm originally from Israel and when we roll joints, it's usually mixed with tobacco, which I'm trying to stay away from. So mixing it with CBD is definitely, you know, the alternative for me. So it really helps and kind of balances the THC with more relaxing vibes from the CBD.
[03:56] April Pride:
Yeah. So what is your background as entrepreneurs that you're bringing into the [CBD marketing strategy] space? You know, it's very nascent. So you have an opportunity here to really settle some benchmarks for how people [promote CBD brands] online. How did you develop that expertise and where do you see where I'm going?
[04:19] Lior Riot:
Yeah. So both of us come from the digital marketing industry. And I started in the supplement and health and wellness industry about 12 years ago when Facebook advertising just started. So it was very similar challenges with that type of product that, you know, are not getting approved on Facebook or Google and things like that. And you need to find a way to advertise them. And so I think for me personally, being in this type of industry since the beginning of my career, I always had to struggle and overcome those challenges of advertising this type of product that are not easy to advertise, but you can still do it. You just need to find those loopholes and work with the policy teams to make sure that you're following all of their rules but again still finding those loopholes to promote those products. And I think for Sophia, working in the field of marketing…
[05:28] Sophia Trunzo:
Yeah, I was doing field marketing and sales for a while. And then I started working with a smaller agency that I was solely working with one local brand here in San Diego that was in the [CBD marketing strategy] space. So they were my only account and I was working very heavily with them. Basically, that transitioned to an in-house position and that's where I met Lior. So I was doing the social media management, then transitioned into affiliate marketing management. And that's where I was working really closely with Lior. She was doing the paid media. So those go hand in hand. And yeah, we just found that we had a really great, not only professional work, but also personal relationship as well. So yeah, it was just a really good fit and a very smooth and easy transition to where we're at now because we already have that passion. We already have that experience. And then we already have that rapport together.
[06:17] Lior Root:
Yeah. And both positions were very sales-driven, result-oriented. So we always, no matter what product we were each selling at our previous positions, it was always a challenge that you need to overcome and think outside of the box. And I think this is what separates us from other agencies right now is that we ourselves always like the challenge and if you put us in a position where we're advertising, I don't know, a lipstick, like it's easy, maybe it will be fun for a week or two, but after that we get bored and we definitely thrive on the challenge. So I think with CBD and in general the cannabis industry is full of challenges and I don't think that this will go away anytime soon. Right now we're just dealing with like CBD and hemp products but as you know in a few years you're going to see cannabis products and THC products selling online through e-commerce and they will face those challenges that we are now facing with [marketing hemp products].
[07:30] April Pride:
As pioneers in the CBD and cannabis industry, Paradigm Media quickly recognized a demand for strategic experts to navigate and grow through its many challenges. They've established themselves as a one-stop shop in all things [CBD marketing strategy] for cannabis companies of all sizes. Take a look at their website and you'll see some of the biggest names in CBD. So what is Paradigm's secret sauce? Well, I would never ask Lior and Sophia to reveal exactly what they've contributed to their client's success, but they get that so many of the listeners of this show are cannabis entrepreneurs, many of whom are, like them, women. Knowing that rising tides lift all boats, they offered to share a few things they know to work when [promoting a CBD brand] online. They call their data-driven approach the Paradigm Playbook, and it's driven by a 360 customer acquisition strategy with three rules. Number one, connect brands with their ideal audience. Number two, increase their sales. And number three, thrive in this competitive market. So talk a little bit about the 360 customer acquisition strategy. That's something that it seems like you developed after working with clients and wanting to apply a process or an order to the process, right? So explain—we’re going to go through it—if you want to tell us how you got to three, and why those three phases are important, and expand on each of the phases, just talk about it in general.
[09:07] Lior Root:
So when we just started, when we were introduced to the [CBD marketing strategy] industry, we both had very specific roles. I come from the paid media side. Sophia came from the affiliate marketing side. So those are the two services that we offered right off the bat because we both had experience in it. We both grew affiliate programs and paid media programs in the past that were specifically in the [CBD marketing strategy] industry that really rocketed from launch. So we were very comfortable with offering these types of services to our first clients. At this point, most of our clients are e-commerce. So paid media and affiliate marketing are kind of necessary. You need to drive traffic to those brands' websites somehow. And there is no other way besides running paid media ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google, Display, whatever platform you choose. Then affiliate programs are just kind of a no-brainer in this industry. It’s a performance-based program. So you're just using these affiliates to drive traffic to the website. Hopefully they convert. If they don't convert, that's where the paid media campaigns come in place and retarget that traffic. So we started with those two services and very early on we saw that, okay, some of this traffic is not converting—not from affiliate, not from paid media—but we are driving a lot of traffic to the site. Some of these people are signing up for a newsletter. Some of them are abandoning their carts. So this is where email came into play. Email marketing, at that point, we realized it's a very important service that we need to offer because it goes hand in hand with the other two services that we offer. So we tapped into that, we learned everything there is to learn about email marketing, worked with the right people, and introduced that service to our clients. And very early on we realized that most of their revenue is coming from email marketing. So 40 to 60% of your revenue is coming from email in this industry. We needed that service to help us generate revenue and show growth to our clients. So email marketing was added next. From there, COVID started. A lot of people started working from home, and all of these brands had to switch and change their strategy. Now they’re focusing on wholesale and retail, now they’re switching 100% to e-commerce. So how do you make that switch? And then realizing that all the people in the world are now working from home and spending at least 8 to 10 hours on their computers, we asked: what other service can we offer that will help them with traffic, brand awareness, and sales? That’s when content marketing came into play.
[12:30] Sophia Trunzo:
Yeah, content marketing really helps with the education. So it really just gives us a way that we are able to tell that story and basically lead the horse to water and make them drink. We do this with a bunch of different top publications that we're working with. This allows us to not only have that article and that education, but also a lot of the times we're able to leverage their endorsement from their Facebooks. A lot of these brands are not able to advertise on Facebook or Instagram. So maybe they don't have the budget specifically for paid media because you have to have some type of ad spend. But they may have the budget to do content. Through that content campaign, we're able to leverage that Facebook. So yeah, that's definitely become an essential part of our [CBD marketing strategy].
[13:22] Lior Root:
And from there, we thought about what other services we could offer that would help us with customer acquisition. At that point, we were already three or four years working in this industry, realizing that it's getting harder and harder to acquire customers. The competition is huge. Every week there is a new CBD brand. We were in the middle of a pandemic. Every married couple trying to make some extra income, someone who just lost their job, is launching a CBD brand. Everyone is fighting on all of these platforms to acquire customers. So then we realized, okay, there needs to be a full [CBD marketing strategy]. It's not just about running ads on Facebook like we did in 2017 or 2018 when nobody knew what CBD was and were excited to try this new product. Now we’re two or three years in, and everyone is fighting for that customer, trying to convince them they have the best product, the most unique [CBD marketing strategy]. And at that point, we saw that it takes between 10 to 25 touch points to acquire a customer. And just to put it in perspective, in every other industry it's between 6 to 10 touch points. These days, just so you know, it’s 25 to 50.
[15:14] Sophia Trunzo:
People are seeing an email 200 to 300 times before they actually convert. They’re opening that email, reading it, deciding not to purchase—yet. And we will follow you until you do.
[15:28] Lior Root:
So our goal was: if we know it takes so many touch points, then we need to make sure we're meeting these potential customers every step of the way. From our ads on paid media—they’re opting into our emails. They’re being targeted by affiliates. They’re now seeing our advertorials on Us Weekly and Men's Journal. What’s the next step Then we realized social media plays a big role. So influencer marketing and maintaining your social pages for organic content became part of the [CBD advertising tactics] toolkit. A lot of consumers these days will check out a brand’s social pages before making a decision. So we need to make sure that their social pages match what we’re running on paid media, match the messaging in our emails, and that the influencers they work with align with the target demographic. It just takes so many touch points. So we needed to build a strategy—a 360 [CBD marketing strategy]—to meet potential customers at every step of the way and lead them through their customer journey toward purchase. From there, we saw that every brand has an idea of who their ideal demographic is, but that's not necessarily what the data shows. So we developed a pre-customer acquisition strategy before launching anything. That’s our first 30 days with any client. We run small-budget campaigns for paid media, content, social media—across the board—and use that discovery phase to find out who their ideal audiences actually are. People clicking from Facebook might be older than those clicking from Instagram. So after those 30 days, we pause everything, look at the data, and relaunch. We use different creatives for Facebook, different messaging for Instagram. We might even feature different products with different price points because we’re targeting a different demographic. That discovery phase is critical for us and very eye-opening for clients.
[18:45] April Pride:
And how turnkey is Paradigm as a [cannabis marketing agency]? Do you create the graphics and the creative for a newsletter? Or is that something you work on with the brand's team?
[19:00] Lior Root:
This year, we added graphic design and web development services to become a true one-stop shop. Almost all of the brands we work with at this point are taking advantage of those services. Once we have full control of the marketing, we know what banners work best, what calls to action get the best click-through rate, what type of graphics work—do we need a GIF, do we need a video, do we need just a simple image? Sometimes we need to develop landing pages. And to run ads on certain platforms, it’s much easier when we work with our in-house design and dev team to create those assets. Brands are loving it because they can be hands-off and focus on product development.
[20:00] Sophia Trunzo:
Yeah, and I’m going to brag, but that’s one of the big advantages of working with us. You don’t have to coordinate with multiple vendors for reporting, communication, weekly calls, or monthly strategy sessions. It’s all in one place. You know you have a dedicated account manager for each specific service. They’re solely focused on your [CBD business growth]. You’ll get weekly reports all in one spot. Weekly calls in one spot. You're speaking to all your vendors in one place. You’ll have more transparency and visibility on your brand. Even if you only know marketing 101, or you’re not a digital expert, you’ll be able to understand what’s working, what’s not working—and we’ll guide you through it on our weekly calls.
[20:57] Lior Root:
That goes for small brands—maybe it’s a one-person shop trying to make extra income—to large brands that have recently been acquired. We can’t disclose names, but even the big ones often don’t know how to get their brand on Google, Facebook, or Instagram.
[21:33] Sophia Trunzo:
Or they’ll have different vendors for every channel—one for Google Shopping, one for Google Search.
[21:43] Lior Root:
With us, you get everything you need in one place. Even if they start with one service, very early on they see how seamless our workflow is and how well we integrate with their team. Then they bring us on to handle more services and fully integrate us into their business. What we love is becoming an extension of their internal team. We hop on weekly calls with them. We have a Slack channel for quick communication. And every brand becomes our baby. Our client retention is also very high. Almost all the brands that started with us when we launched this [cannabis marketing agency] are still with us. We’ve worked with many for years now, and we have full visibility into their business, their KPIs, and their internal marketing ops.
[23:00] Sophia Trunzo:
We’re out-of-the-box thinkers. We really enjoy the creativity that comes into all of our strategy sessions. It’s imperative. You have to make sure you’re [promoting CBD brands] in a way that stands out. And also, we make sure we’re not cannibalizing sales between clients. We make sure all that data is reflected in the strategy.
[23:28] April Pride:
See why we asked Sophia and Lior to be your high guides on today’s show? We hope you enjoyed this episode for those of you [marketing hemp products]. Please let us know what you think. Would you like to hear more from Sophia and Lior about navigating restrictive regs while promoting products from both the cannabis and the hemp plant? DM us on IG at the high.guide and let us know what you think. You can find Paradigm Media online at paradigmmedia.agency and be sure to check out our show notes to learn more about Paradigm, including how to get in touch with Sophia and Lior to level up your own brand's [CBD marketing strategy]. Thanks for listening to this episode of The High Guide and tune in every Friday for a new episode covering all things plant-based pleasures. Subscribe and follow wherever you listen to podcasts. And we don't just give good ear here at The High Guide. See us at our most funny on IG, where you can find us at thehigh.guide and online at our website, thehigh.guide, where you'll find the best advice from all your high guides and where you can sign up for our newsletter. Thanks for joining this show and every show here at The High Guide. I'm your host, April Pride.
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