JARS Cannabis New Buffalo caught buying links in failed marketing attempt

The new JARS Cannabis dispensary in New Buffalo, MI is run by the JARS Cannabis conglomerate. When launching a new cannabis dispensary, dispo owners often wonder how to market the new location, new website, etc.

Some, do things like buy ads in local newspapers or media outlets (if it is legal to do so). Others run promotions like first time patient discounts. Sorry, first time patient discounts don’t exist anymore. But you get my point.

The lazy move for a cannabis company to do, would be to reach out to a “marketing company” and pay them money to pay for backlinks on established cannabis websites.

This happens a lot, and some people just consider it PR. Where should people draw the line though? One place I like to draw the line is whether or not the representative of the marketing company representing their client uses a real name or not, is willing to hop on a video call or not.

In this instance, JARS Cannabis, utilizing White Hat Links LTD, reached out to me through a fake persona named Katie Davies ([email protected]) – very typical of these fly by night operations.

JARS Cannabis Utilized Underhanded Marketing Tactics

This type of content marketing relies on fraudulently presenting an inconspicuous article and sneaking in a link purely for SEO purposes. For years, I’ve been running a honeypot to catch cannabis companies that use these marketing practices, name them, and shame them.

I received an offer to publish a press release for JARS Cannabis through the THC Newswire. The fee was paid, the article – which wasn’t a press release – was published for a few weeks. Then, JARS Cannabis demanded, through their intermediary White Hat Links LTD, a refund because they were actually hoping that I’d publish it on ganjier.com instead of thehighestcritic.com. One payment processor dispute by White Hat Links LTD (provably black hat links actually) later, and we have a complete cycle that showcases definitively that JARS Cannabis attempted to buy a black hat backlink from me for SEO benefit.

All this to say, if JARS Cannabis is willing to participate in underhanded marketing techniques, what else would they be willing to do? Is that a place you want to be buying cannabis from?

My high opinion? No. Absofuckinglutely not.

This opinion is additionally informed by the fact that JARS Cannabis has not responded to repeated requests for comment about this situation.