10 Most Effective Franchise Marketing Strategies

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, that managing advertising and marketing efforts throughout the board can typically really feel like an uphill battle.

On this information, we’ll aid you handle widespread 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 your small business throughout all of your franchised places. Primarily, 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 high branding stage all the best way all the way down to advertising and marketing for particular places.

Advantages of franchise advertising and marketing

Listed below are just a few causes franchise advertising and marketing is so necessary:

• 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 day by day.
• 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 now not definitely worth the funding.
• 55% of multi-location companies consider that social media is the main franchise advertising and marketing channel they depend on.

Clearly, there may be loads of competitors and alternative inside the franchise and multi-location industries, which means franchise advertising and marketing is essential to face out and develop.

Nonetheless, keeping up with your franchise marketing is less complicated stated than accomplished. 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 beneficial properties:

1. Preserve 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 with regards to branding and model consistency. However till a teleportation or cloning gadget will get invented, you’re sadly unable to be at all of your places to information them via their advertising and marketing (regardless of how a lot you want you can). This makes maintaining brand consistency throughout all places a troublesome job.

However model consistency is extraordinarily necessary for the success of your franchise advertising and marketing. We all know that 71% of shoppers say they’re extra doubtless 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 folks must see details about a enterprise no less than seven times earlier than they grow to be 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!

Tips on how to method it: The very first thing it’s best to do is create a brand style guide. After you have your model information in place, you should utilize it throughout all places. If you have already got one in place, now’s the time to revisit! The extra thorough your model tips the higher.

Right here’s our listing of what ought to go into your model tips:

• Firm logo in varied sizes and coloration choices (black and white, thumbnail measurement, banner measurement and many others.)
• What you are promoting’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 publish title preferences
• Picture sizes and styles for digital and print supplies
• What you are promoting’s boilerplate and mission statement
• Most popular tone and voice
• Social media greatest practices by platform

An example of brand name tips.

Model tips will preserve 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 best way.

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2. Determine your buyer base throughout places

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!

If you happen to 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, however it additionally offers your clients a much less personalized marketing experience.

Nonetheless, 80% of shoppers usually tend to make a purchase order when manufacturers provide personalised experiences. So figuring out your target market throughout places now to ship a customized expertise at every location later is a advertising and marketing tactic you gained’t need to miss out on.

Tips on how to method it:  Taking time to identify your target audience throughout all places when your plate is already full is less complicated stated than accomplished. A extra environment friendly strategy to execute that is to take a look at your target market from a fowl’s eye view and zoom in from there.

When you establish what makes up your target market at a excessive stage you possibly can take it all the way down to the regional stage. From there, you should utilize free on-line instruments like Google Trends to know the curiosity of matters by location to see how your messaging might barely differ between areas.

One other workaround can 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 sources 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 high of your many handy places, a various vary of workers, and viewers segments, you’ll discover it may be difficult to know ship all this info to your potential clients in one of the best ways.

With so many potential marketing channels to select from, how are you aware which methods will likely be simplest? And how are you going to talk your chosen methods’ effectiveness to your franchise managers?

Tips on how to method it: We’ve damaged down the highest advertising and marketing channels for franchise companies into just a few core pillars. Introduce your franchisees to the next and encourage them to attempt it for their very own profit:

Search engine marketing

search engine optimization is on the core of any sturdy advertising and marketing plan for good motive—it’s free! Not solely do clicks from natural search outcomes come for gratis to you, however with 90% of shoppers looking on-line earlier than making a purchase order digitally or in-store, search engine optimization may help every of your places develop gross sales quicker.

Search promoting

With search promoting, there at the moment are extra choices than ever for dynamic location focusing on on the ad copy and marketing campaign setting stage, so your possibilities of pulling in a click on from a choose location’s native buyer is almost assured.

An instance of a search advert for a neighborhood Ford dealership.

Search advertising ensures you’re displaying to potential clients when it issues—as they’re looking on high serps like Google and Bing. Plus, paid search ads can enhance model consciousness by as much as 80%. You probably have a location that’s struggling to drag in new clients, paid search advertisements are the very 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 participating content material for completely focused audiences. Though it’s possible you’ll be juggling varied places and buyer bases, you possibly can phase 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% quicker and pull in 66% extra certified leads per yr than companies that don’t use video.

Show

Display ads offer you a strategy to goal your viewers on websites throughout the online—once they’re not even actively looking for your small business. This will increase consciousness to your model. In case your department managers discover a dip in gross sales, display ads might be the answer since shoppers who’re retargeted through show advertisements are 70% extra prone to convert.

Social

With 3.5 billion lively 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 places.

The beauty of social media marketing is you can get outcomes no matter whether or not you determine to go the free or paid route. So should 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 limitless choices that may match any places’ finances (or lack thereof).

In fact, there are further advertising and marketing channels it’s best to 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 places on board with the proper 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 helpful marketing plan.

It will get trickier if 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.

Tips on how to method it: The very first thing you’ll need to take 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. Nonetheless, the kicker of franchise advertising and marketing is it’s the identical idea as native advertising and marketing—simply multiplied.

Whenever you current your location house owners with low-cost or free choices, they’ll don’t have any motive to not need to implement them. Some examples might be setting them up with a social media account for normal posts or facilitating on-line workshops to foster their search engine optimization 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. One of the best ways to encourage that is to analysis statistics to show the ROI in the event that they have 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 understand that advertising and marketing budgets don’t need to be large. It doesn’t all the time take some huge cash to make a huge impact, however a bit can go a good distance!

5. Consider your choices for franchise advertising and marketing execution

Whereas some franchises are positive with particular person places operating their marketing strategies themselves, others choose to streamline advertising and marketing from one central crew or group for all places.

Each choices current their very own units of challenges. If you happen to’re managing the advertising and marketing methods for all places, you could have a giant job—you should not solely execute a successful multi-channel marketing technique that features optimizing campaigns, writing advert copy, and deploying presents, however it’s a must to do this for various areas and audiences.

If you happen to enable franchisees to run their advertising and marketing themselves, it’s a must to fear about model consistency, optimized spend, and an absence of management round outcomes.

Tips on how to method it: It doesn’t need to really feel like a lose-lose scenario if you select which route out of the 2 you need to take. As talked about above, each managing advertising and marketing to your places versus letting them handle it comes with execs and cons.

To establish what’s greatest to your model, we advocate doing a self-evaluation with the next questions:

• How a lot further time do I’ve to supervise my places’ advertising and marketing methods?
• How a lot time do my location house owners need to put into advertising and marketing?
• Would implementing advertising and marketing on the location stage require any coaching?
• What forms of advertising and marketing channels do I must have operating 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 places? How would these places measure and report on their very own success?
• How continuously would I anticipate to vary up the advertising and marketing technique?
• Is it straightforward for me to persistently talk with all of my places?

Relying in your solutions, you’ll find yourself leaning in the direction of one over the opposite. Nonetheless, should you’re nonetheless not sure then that’s completely positive! An alternative choice can be to contain a advertising and marketing companion to assist oversee your franchise advertising and marketing methods together with you. That means you gained’t have all of the places’ advertising and marketing in your shoulders, and you’ll leverage a useful resource that has each advertising and marketing software wanted at its fingertips.

No matter you determine, discovering the proper software to track your marketing throughout places and channels will likely be essential for measuring success. (We’ll speak extra about this in a minute!)

6. Create a robust native search engine optimization technique

It’s essential give attention to search engine optimization that’s each nationwide and native. Nationwide typically comes naturally to many franchise companies at this level, however with no strong local SEO approach, you gained’t be capable of present up for searches when and the place it counts.

Tips on how to method it: The best strategy to complement your nationwide search engine optimization with a neighborhood search engine optimization technique is to incorporate key phrases associated to your places inside your content material—this may be simply accomplished via location pages in your web site. The subsequent 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 shoppers have used Google Business Profiles to seek out contact particulars for a neighborhood enterprise.

Moreover, attempt to place your model as a companion to every of your places by creating local-friendly weblog content material. Brainstorm a weblog matter that’s particular to every certainly one of your places, and also you’ll save time in your editorial calendar planning whereas additionally staying according to native content material!

It’s also possible to rapidly analysis different native companies to hyperlink to for sources inside your content material to construct belief along 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 search engine optimization wants. 

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7. You should definitely stand out from the competitors (together with your individual franchisees!)

Franchises have a singular competitor set in that whilst you compete with different native companies and huge manufacturers, you may additionally compete with your individual places. For instance, you may need two places down the block from one another that personal two fully completely different territories however might be competing for a similar clients. One main hurdle each franchise should bounce over is run advertising and marketing at every location with out stepping on each other’s toes—all whereas stepping on the competitors’s toes!

Tips on how to method it: We will’t stress sufficient how necessary geo-targeting is to your multi-location or franchise advertising and marketing. Geo-targeting is a means to make sure that one location’s advertising and marketing collateral doesn’t slip onto the screens of shoppers in one other location’s territory. Whenever you run advert campaigns with geotargeting you’re maximizing the general development of your small business 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 may assist right here if you wish to establish and goal their places too. In any other case, bidding on competitors’ branded keywords will assist to make sure your model reveals when of us are on the lookout for your competitors. That means you possibly can sweep the competitors’s clients away and produce them to your places.

8. Solidify reporting for all places, options, AND channels

Let’s get this straight: your small business has a number of places, providing a number of services or products, overseen by a number of managers, advertising and marketing to a number of completely different audiences, via a number of completely different channels. What a handful!

You don’t have time to loop in tons of 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 monitor with confirmed KPIs.

Tips on how to method it: For this occasion, expertise is your new greatest buddy! Make the most of digital tools that aggregate reporting throughout platforms, places, and extra to report on what issues. A number of issues it’s best to ask your self whereas scouting a reporting resolution embody:

• Would you like your location managers to have entry?
• What efficiency metrics matter most to your multi-location enterprise?
• What does a constructive efficiency appear to be for you on the nationwide stage? On the native stage?
• What channels have to be tracked? How will they be tracked persistently throughout places?
• What timeframes will you be seeking to run experiences on?
• What forms of downloadable or shareable information, if any, will you need to your experiences?

9. Educate your franchisees on franchise advertising and marketing

You and your franchisees are busy operating a nationwide model on the native stage—you all don’t have time for in-person items of coaching on all of your advertising and marketing expertise and greatest practices! By no means thoughts the truth that gathering the sources to assist location house owners perceive your model’s advertising and marketing plan is a feat in and of itself.

Tips on how to method it: Have enjoyable with it and get artistic along with your coaching! You may hold training online after hours to make it straightforward for all of your department managers to attend.

One other strategy to make advertising and marketing schooling extra accessible throughout places 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 brief on time, you possibly can write and e-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 operating coaching or creating coaching supplies, leveraging a advertising and marketing companion to facilitate coaching for you is one other nice choice.

10. Talk along with your advertising and marketing companions

You’ll have one company serving to with social that has a very completely different method than your in-house crew managing paid search. Or every location is likely to be working with their very own crew or advisor. How do you retain a number of groups and advertising and marketing companions aligned?

Tips on how to method it: If you happen to’re struggling to maintain monitor of all of your advertising and marketing options, then it might be value it to discover a advertising and marketing companion that may bundle all of your wants into one. Whenever you leverage a advertising and marketing companion that may home all of your channels and experiences below one roof it’s simpler to take care of consistency and performance tracking.

Within the meantime, although, communication is vital! You should definitely maintain common conferences along with your in-house crew, your location managers, and your businesses to take care of 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.

Clear up these franchise advertising and marketing puzzles in the present day 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 ideas is that the extra you possibly can plan forward and talk along with your places, the better 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’s definitely worth the time it can prevent later.

To recap, listed here are the highest franchise advertising and marketing ideas we talked about:

1. Prioritize model consistency all through your franchise advertising and marketing
2. Get to know your clients throughout places
3. Take into account all of your franchise advertising and marketing channel choices
4. Get all of your places on board along with your general franchise advertising and marketing technique
5. Consider your choices for franchise advertising and marketing execution
6. Guarantee your native and nationwide search engine optimization methods align
7. Attempt to stand out out of your franchise advertising and marketing competitors
8. You should definitely have clear reporting in place
9. Prepare your places in your franchise advertising and marketing efforts
10. Persistently talk along with your advertising and marketing companions