Who doesn’t like a little bit of a problem? Whereas it’s all the time rewarding to tackle new advertising and marketing endeavors, sure companies, like franchises, really feel the warmth greater than others.
Whether or not you’re a meals and beverage franchise, a multi-location dealership, a nationwide actual property group, an enterprise financial institution, or something in between, you recognize that managing advertising and marketing efforts throughout the board can typically really feel like an uphill battle.
On this information, we’ll make it easier to tackle frequent advertising and marketing speedbumps multi-location companies encounter and share 10 of the simplest franchise advertising and marketing methods.
Contents
What’s franchise advertising and marketing?
Franchise advertising and marketing means selling what you are promoting throughout all of your franchised areas. Basically, any effort you’re placing into rising your franchise is taken into account franchise advertising and marketing. This could imply advertising and marketing efforts at a prime branding degree all the way in which all the way down to advertising and marketing for particular areas.
Advantages of franchise advertising and marketing
Listed below are a couple of causes franchise advertising and marketing is so essential:
- A brand new franchise location opens each eight minutes through the course of any given enterprise day. This doesn’t even account for the brand new companies opened on daily basis.
- 42% of franchise advertising and marketing professionals and multi-location enterprise house owners really feel conventional advertising and marketing channels, like TV placements and PR, are not well worth the funding.
- 55% of multi-location companies imagine that social media is the main franchise advertising and marketing channel they depend on.
Clearly, there may be loads of competitors and alternative throughout the franchise and multi-location industries, which means franchise advertising and marketing is essential to face out and develop.
Nevertheless, keeping up with your franchise marketing is less complicated stated than carried out. Let’s resolve some franchise advertising and marketing ache factors subsequent.
10 franchise advertising and marketing methods
Managing your franchise advertising and marketing is usually a juggling act. Because the traditional saying goes “No ache, no acquire!” Let’s dive proper into how one can flip 10 main franchise marketing pains into advertising and marketing features:
1. Keep model consistency all through your franchise advertising and marketing
It’s no secret that one of many largest challenges franchise entrepreneurs face is location managers or franchisees that go rogue—particularly in terms of branding and model consistency. However till a teleportation or cloning gadget will get invented, you’re sadly unable to be at all of your areas to information them by means of their advertising and marketing (regardless of how a lot you would like you possibly can). This makes maintaining brand consistency throughout all areas a troublesome job.
However model consistency is extraordinarily essential for the success of your franchise advertising and marketing. We all know that 71% of customers say they’re extra seemingly to purchase a services or products from a model they acknowledge. Plus, we are able to’t overlook in regards to the age-old advertising and marketing “rule of seven” which states that individuals have to see details about a enterprise at the very least seven times earlier than they turn into a buyer.
So model consistency isn’t only a “nice-to-have” ingredient in your franchise advertising and marketing plan, it’s a need-to-have!
Easy methods to strategy it: The very first thing you must do is create a brand style guide. After you have your model information in place, you need to use it throughout all areas. If you have already got one in place, now could be the time to revisit! The extra thorough your model tips the higher.
Right here’s our checklist of what ought to go into your model tips:
- Firm logo in varied sizes and coloration choices (black and white, thumbnail dimension, banner dimension and so forth.)
- Your small business’s colours in hex codes
- Your chosen fonts in common, daring, and italics
- Your chosen grammar, mechanics, and elegance preferences (together with punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviation)
- Weblog submit title preferences
- Picture shapes and sizes for digital and print supplies
- Your small business’s boilerplate and mission statement
- Most well-liked tone and voice
- Social media finest practices by platform
An example of name tips.
Model tips will hold your model constant and empower your location house owners to create their very own advertising and marketing collateral whereas realizing they’ve a cheat sheet to assist them alongside the way in which.
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2. Determine your buyer base throughout areas
Let’s face it—your native clients’ pursuits at your Boston location will likely be completely different from these in your Houston location which differs from these in your San Diego location, and so forth!
In the event you generalize your target market with out consideration for the way their life differ by location, not solely does that lack of inclusivity restrict your attain, but it surely additionally offers your clients a much less personalized marketing experience.
Nevertheless, 80% of customers usually tend to make a purchase order when manufacturers provide personalised experiences. So figuring out your target market throughout areas now to ship a personalised expertise at every location later is a advertising and marketing tactic you gained’t need to miss out on.
Easy methods to strategy it: Taking time to identify your target audience throughout all areas when your plate is already full is less complicated stated than carried out. A extra environment friendly solution to execute that is to have a look at your target market from a chicken’s eye view and zoom in from there.
When you establish what makes up your target market at a excessive degree you possibly can take it all the way down to the regional degree. From there, you need to use free on-line instruments like Google Trends to grasp the curiosity of matters by location to see how your messaging could barely differ between areas.
One other workaround could be to create advertising and marketing collateral that’s various sufficient to talk to all clients no matter life-style. A wholesome mixture of each, nonetheless, will give your clients that localized expertise whereas saving you as a lot time and assets as attainable.
3. Know your resolution choices (+ which of them your model wants)
There’s an infinite quantity of value your franchise has to offer its clients. Add that on prime of your many handy areas, a various vary of staff, and viewers segments, you’ll discover it may be difficult to know learn how to ship all this data to your potential clients in one of the simplest ways.
With so many potential marketing channels to select from, how have you learnt which methods will likely be best? And how will you talk your chosen methods’ effectiveness to your franchise managers?
Easy methods to strategy it: We’ve damaged down the highest advertising and marketing channels for franchise companies into a couple of core pillars. Introduce your franchisees to the next and encourage them to strive it for their very own profit:
SEO
website positioning is on the core of any sturdy advertising and marketing plan for good purpose—it’s free! Not solely do clicks from natural search outcomes come without charge to you, however with 90% of customers looking out on-line earlier than making a purchase order digitally or in-store, website positioning may help every of your areas develop gross sales sooner.
Search promoting
With search promoting, there are actually extra choices than ever for dynamic location focusing on on the ad copy and marketing campaign setting degree, so your possibilities of pulling in a click on from a choose location’s native buyer is sort of assured.
An instance of a search advert for an area Ford dealership.
Search advertising ensures you’re exhibiting to potential clients when it issues—as they’re looking out on prime search engines like google and yahoo like Google and Bing. Plus, paid search ads can enhance model consciousness by as much as 80%. When you have a location that’s struggling to drag in new clients, paid search advertisements are one of the best route for making it identified to potential clients that you just’re of their space with tons to supply.
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Video/OTT
Video marketing on YouTube or through OTT (over-the-top) streaming permits your franchise or multi-location enterprise to create partaking content material for completely focused audiences. Though you might be juggling varied areas and buyer bases, you possibly can section your video advertising and marketing in hyper-specific methods to make sure every location will get a chunk of the pie.
Plus, video advertising and marketing can develop income almost 50% sooner and pull in 66% extra certified leads per yr than companies that don’t use video.
Show
Display ads provide you with a solution to goal your viewers on websites throughout the net—once they’re not even actively looking for what you are promoting. This will increase consciousness to your model. In case your department managers discover a dip in gross sales, display ads may very well be the answer since customers who’re retargeted through show advertisements are 70% extra prone to convert.
Social
With 3.5 billion energetic social media customers worldwide, it’s no secret that social media advertising and marketing is a should if you wish to heighten your possibilities of reaching all of the potential clients round every of your areas.
The beauty of social media marketing is that you could get outcomes no matter whether or not you resolve to go the free or paid route. So in case you’re struggling to get all of your franchisees on board with one advertising and marketing technique, social media advertising and marketing is an accommodating resolution with countless choices that may match any areas’ finances (or lack thereof).
After all, there are further advertising and marketing channels you must take into account as a part of your technique. Check out all of the basics of local marketing to seek out out what would give you the results you want.
4. Get all areas on board with the appropriate technique
Talking of budgets, with a number of franchises, it may be powerful to get them on the identical web page with the advertising and marketing spend and technique that you just encourage. Every location has its personal wants and finances which you need to accommodate inside your really useful marketing plan.
It will get trickier while you need to save your self time by creating an simply transferrable franchise advertising and marketing technique that may apply retailer to retailer but additionally is versatile sufficient to not have one set finances utilized.
Easy methods to strategy it: The very first thing you’ll need to have a look at is all of the free and low-cost marketing options out there. Small companies have been doing this for years, however for a bigger enterprise, this feels counterintuitive. Nevertheless, the kicker of franchise advertising and marketing is it’s the identical idea as native advertising and marketing—simply multiplied.
If you current your location house owners with low-cost or free choices, they’ll haven’t any purpose to not need to implement them. Some examples may very well be setting them up with a social media account for normal posts or facilitating on-line workshops to foster their website positioning experience.
With that stated, we all know that a mixture of advertising and marketing channels maximizes your possibilities of outcomes. Ideally, you’ll need your location managers to get on board with allocating a few of their income towards a marketing budget. The easiest way to encourage that is to analysis statistics to show the ROI in the event that they had been to go for it and to offer co-op funds from company if attainable. For instance, paid promoting returns $2 for each $1 spent–a 200% ROI.
It’s useful to take into account that advertising and marketing budgets don’t should be enormous. It doesn’t all the time take some huge cash to make a huge impact, however a little bit can go a great distance!
5. Consider your choices for franchise advertising and marketing execution
Whereas some franchises are superb with particular person areas working their marketing strategies themselves, others decide to streamline advertising and marketing from one central staff or group for all areas.
Each choices current their very own units of challenges. In the event you’re managing the advertising and marketing methods for all areas, you will have an enormous job—you need to not solely execute a successful multi-channel marketing technique that features optimizing campaigns, writing advert copy, and deploying provides, however you must do this for various areas and audiences.
In the event you enable franchisees to run their advertising and marketing themselves, you must fear about model consistency, optimized spend, and a scarcity of management round outcomes.
Easy methods to strategy it: It doesn’t should really feel like a lose-lose state of affairs while you select which route out of the 2 you need to take. As talked about above, each managing advertising and marketing to your areas versus letting them handle it comes with professionals and cons.
To establish what’s finest to your model, we advocate doing a self-evaluation with the next questions:
- How a lot additional time do I’ve to supervise my areas’ advertising and marketing methods?
- How a lot time do my location house owners should put into advertising and marketing?
- Would implementing advertising and marketing on the location degree require any coaching?
- What forms of advertising and marketing channels do I have to have working at every franchise location? Can every location deal with these themselves?
- Has my firm struggled with model consistency prior to now?
- How would I measure the success if I ran the advertising and marketing for all franchise areas? How would these areas measure and report on their very own success?
- How regularly would I count on to vary up the advertising and marketing technique?
- Is it simple for me to persistently talk with all of my areas?
Relying in your solutions, you’ll find yourself leaning in direction of one over the opposite. Nevertheless, in case you’re nonetheless uncertain then that’s completely superb! Another choice could be to contain a advertising and marketing companion to assist oversee your franchise advertising and marketing methods together with you. That manner you gained’t have all of the areas’ advertising and marketing in your shoulders, and you may leverage a useful resource that has each advertising and marketing software wanted at its fingertips.
No matter you resolve, discovering the appropriate software to track your marketing throughout areas and channels will likely be essential for measuring success. (We’ll discuss extra about this in a minute!)
6. Create a powerful native website positioning technique
You must give attention to website positioning that’s each nationwide and native. Nationwide usually comes naturally to many franchise companies at this level, however with no strong local SEO approach, you gained’t be capable to present up for searches when and the place it counts.
Easy methods to strategy it: The best solution to complement your nationwide website positioning with an area website positioning technique is to incorporate key phrases associated to your areas inside your content material—this may be simply carried out by means of location pages in your web site. The following fast repair for multi-location SEO is to put money into listings administration so native listings are correct for every location to assist drive leads. It could appear minor, however 64% of customers have used Google Business Profiles to seek out contact particulars for an area enterprise.
Moreover, attempt to place your model as a companion to every of your areas by creating local-friendly weblog content material. Brainstorm a weblog subject that’s particular to every considered one of your areas, and also you’ll save time in your editorial calendar planning whereas additionally staying in line with native content material!
You can too shortly analysis different native companies to hyperlink to for assets inside your content material to construct belief together with your native audiences. That stated, keep a pleasant presence in your native communities by encouraging location managers to take part in native occasions to set off model consciousness for searches later.
This multi-location enterprise has Google Enterprise Profile listings for every retailer location to suit native website positioning wants.
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7. Make sure you stand out from the competitors (together with your individual franchisees!)
Franchises have a singular competitor set in that when you compete with different native companies and huge manufacturers, you may also compete with your individual areas. For instance, you might need two areas down the block from one another that personal two fully completely different territories however may very well be competing for a similar clients. One main hurdle each franchise should bounce over is learn how to run advertising and marketing at every location with out stepping on each other’s toes—all whereas stepping on the competitors’s toes!
Easy methods to strategy it: We will’t stress sufficient how essential geo-targeting is to your multi-location or franchise advertising and marketing. Geo-targeting is a manner to make sure that one location’s advertising and marketing collateral doesn’t slip onto the screens of customers in one other location’s territory. If you run advert campaigns with geotargeting you’re maximizing the general development of what you are promoting by handing out a good, even slice of the cake (or on this case, viewers) to every retailer.
As for standing out from the competition, geotargeting can even assist right here if you wish to establish and goal their areas too. In any other case, bidding on competitors’ branded keywords will assist to make sure your model reveals when people are searching for your competitors. That manner you possibly can sweep the competitors’s clients away and convey them to your areas.
8. Solidify reporting for all areas, options, AND channels
Let’s get this straight: what you are promoting has a number of areas, providing a number of services or products, overseen by a number of managers, advertising and marketing to a number of completely different audiences, by means of a number of completely different channels. What a handful!
You don’t have time to loop in a whole bunch of information factors into one efficiency monitoring sheet. You want a way to make sure that all of your franchise advertising and marketing efforts keep a development observe with confirmed KPIs.
Easy methods to strategy it: For this occasion, know-how is your new finest pal! Benefit from digital tools that aggregate reporting throughout platforms, areas, and extra to report on what issues. A number of issues you must ask your self whereas scouting a reporting resolution embrace:
- Would you like your location managers to have entry?
- What efficiency metrics matter most to your multi-location enterprise?
- What does a optimistic efficiency appear like for you on the nationwide degree? On the native degree?
- What channels must be tracked? How will they be tracked persistently throughout areas?
- What timeframes will you be trying to run stories on?
- What forms of downloadable or shareable recordsdata, if any, will you need to your stories?
9. Educate your franchisees on franchise advertising and marketing
You and your franchisees are busy working a nationwide model on the native degree—you all don’t have time for in-person items of coaching on all of your advertising and marketing know-how and finest practices! By no means thoughts the truth that gathering the assets to assist location house owners perceive your model’s advertising and marketing plan is a feat in and of itself.
Easy methods to strategy it: Have enjoyable with it and get artistic together with your coaching! You may hold training online after hours to make it simple for all of your department managers to attend.
One other solution to make advertising and marketing schooling extra accessible throughout areas is to create varied coaching supplies. For instance, you possibly can shoot or share fast “how-to” YouTube videos for visual learners. For busy location house owners quick on time, you possibly can write and electronic mail coaching articles that they will learn in bits all through the day.
The extra coaching materials, the higher. In case your schedule is so jam-packed you possibly can’t even start to consider working coaching or creating coaching supplies, leveraging a advertising and marketing companion to facilitate coaching for you is one other nice possibility.
10. Talk together with your advertising and marketing companions
You could have one company serving to with social that has a completely completely different strategy than your in-house staff managing paid search. Or every location may be working with their very own staff or advisor. How do you retain a number of groups and advertising and marketing companions aligned?
Easy methods to strategy it: In the event you’re struggling to maintain observe of all of your advertising and marketing options, then it might be price it to discover a advertising and marketing companion that may bundle all of your wants into one. If you leverage a advertising and marketing companion that may home all of your channels and stories underneath one roof it’s simpler to keep up consistency and performance tracking.
Within the meantime, although, communication is vital! Make sure you maintain common conferences together with your in-house staff, your location managers, and your businesses to keep up constant cohesion throughout channels.
That is additionally one other alternative to distribute your model information to all advertising and marketing companions in order that there’s no confusion throughout businesses, advertising and marketing associates, or consultants on what your model’s voice is.
Remedy these franchise advertising and marketing puzzles immediately to decode a brighter tomorrow
If there’s one factor we are able to take away from all 10 of those franchise advertising and marketing suggestions is that the extra you possibly can plan forward and talk together with your areas, the simpler your job will likely be later. Plus, irrespective of your targets, channels, or audiences, there’s an answer on the market that may work to your franchise.
With a little bit of creativity and finesse, you can also make your franchise advertising and marketing technique do the heavy lifting for you. Placing within the time to sq. away your challenges now could be well worth the time it is going to prevent later.
To recap, listed below are the highest franchise advertising and marketing suggestions we talked about:
- Prioritize model consistency all through your franchise advertising and marketing
- Get to know your clients throughout areas
- Think about all of your franchise advertising and marketing channel choices
- Get all of your areas on board together with your general franchise advertising and marketing technique
- Consider your choices for franchise advertising and marketing execution
- Guarantee your native and nationwide website positioning methods align
- Attempt to stand out out of your franchise advertising and marketing competitors
- Make sure you have clear reporting in place
- Prepare your areas in your franchise advertising and marketing efforts
- Constantly talk together with your advertising and marketing companions
