If you are running a franchise, chances are you have difficulties with creating a marketing plan. It’s common for businesspersons to face challenges with franchise marketing because it’s one of the toughest things to do in the online marketing era. You own a business in a world where competition for customers is fiercer than ever. The only way to stand out from the crowd is to create a well-planned marketing plan.
Luckily for you, franchise marketing is the subject we will discuss in this article so if you follow the guidelines, you will find easier to navigate in the waters of digital marketing.
But first, what is franchise marketing?
Franchise marketing implies creating a branded online marketing strategy for every individual location underneath a broad corporate strategy. You need individual marketing plans for every one of your locations because obstacles like population demographics, market area, local competition, and even weather can influence your marketing campaign’s success.
Why should you invest in digital marketing?
Usually, franchises use TV advertising, print advertising, direct mail, radio, and PR. But nowadays the best way to reach new clients is to expand your marketing plans to the online realm, where social media, video, SEO, PPC, and local search keywords are kings.
The best way to boost your sales, leads, and visits is to create a digital marketing strategy for every location underneath your franchise. A great number of franchises fail at making the shift to digital advertising because they don’t offer it the needed attention.
What should a franchise marketing strategy look in 2019?
If you are looking for a list of steps, on how to create a marketing strategy, this is not the article you should be reading. This article will offer you something more.
Keep reading.
This post will provide basic information on digital marketing essentials and how to use them, examples of problems franchises may experience, and tips on how to overcome them.
But first it’s important to know what marketing channels you should use for promoting your business. You should rely on your website, social media channels, email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and analytics and reporting. You will have to decide what marketing channel attracts more clients. For example if you sell ice cream, you will benefit more from social media than from click advertising.
Franchise marketing targeting SEM and SEO
SEO is essential for you, when someone searches for your name on Bing or Google they want to see your content. Your goal should be to get as high as possible in the search engine results. Studies show that more than 50% of people click on the first three results, so this should be your target.
What do you need to rank well organically for every franchise location?
- Be local relevant for searchers with content that supports geo-targeted searches
- Use your web presence to establish your brand as an authority on the market
- Create a secured, mobile-friendly, coded, and fast website
- Unique, remarkable, and relevant content for your business
If you have websites for every one of your franchise locations, you should create individual content for each of them, to rank well individually. Do not rely solely on your corporate website, all the other ones should be content heavy and well-optimised.
As a franchise, you have numerous locations and you have to be confident in the local SEO and the consistency of all your locations’ citations and directory listings.
Franchise marketing targeting Social Media
Social media is highly important for franchises. It is one of the tools, you can control the most, but this can also bring you challenges. Control can lead to inconsistency in messaging and branding. Moreover, when you have a profile for every location, and different people are running them, the entire process can become a nightmare.
You should create social media guidelines all your locations should respect, recommendations on messaging, branding, and how to create a successful social media strategy. And, don’t forget to enable the Facebook Locations page feature. If you have troubles in doing it, or creating a social media campaign for one of your locations, you should contact a professional franchise marketing agency to offer support.
Franchise marketing targeting PPC
Another amazing advertising tool you can use is PPC, it can get your brand in front of your clients at the moment they’re searching. The issue comes from multiple hands in strategy.
If you are running a national franchise, you should use search ads and display ads to promote your company and locations. If you manage to strengthen the brand, you will boost your leads and sales. You can use the same strategy for all your locations, but it’s advisable to customise it for each one of them for the ads to be relevant and compelling to your local audience. You can do it by:
- adjusting negative keywords for common local searches
- differentiating from your local competitors’ offers and ads
- using local cities in ads and keywords
Franchise marketing targeting Email
Email marketing can help you grow your franchise in an effective way. Opt-in email marketing implies sending messages to current clients, prospective ones, vendors, or referral partners, bottom-line to people who have decided to receive them. Why should you use it? If someone has chosen to receive your newsletter, they are definitely more likely to open and engage with the email than if they would receive an unsolicited message.
You may have difficulties in staying locally relevant and creating consistent messages. It’s advisable each location to have a different newsletter template, they should control the branding, consistency, and style of the email. When sending an email make sure the content is relevant for that particular location, and audience.
And don’t forget to research your competitors. You may have the best marketing strategy in the world, but if your competitors outrank you, it will be useless. Ask for professional support, it will help see where your company stands, and what steps you have to make to boost your success.
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