If you are a franchise owner or you are thinking about investing in a franchise, marketing should be one of your key concerns.
In many cases, the franchise corporate office will take care of national marketing campaigns and define the brand identity. They may also provide you with traditional marketing collateral, such as fliers or direct mailers. However, it’s in your best interest to engage in franchise marketing in your local area.
Franchise Marketing Online
Digital marketing tactics are a great way to promote your franchise locally. Here are some tips for doing this:
Leverage Your Industry Expertise
You can use your local franchise website and blog to demonstrate your expertise in your area. Here are some specific ideas:
- If you are running a cleaning franchise, you can create content about some basic cleaning advice to your prospective customers.
- If you run a fitness franchise, then you can post online videos demonstrating some effective exercises.
By sharing your expertise through your online content, people will trust your advice and they may look to your business to solve their problems down the road. Publishing custom content through your blog and social media can educate your potential customers who are in the “awareness” stage of the buying process. Through this content, you “give away” helpful information without a pushy sales pitch or overt expectation of anything in return.
With this kind of franchise marketing, people in your neighborhood will trust you and call you when they need help.
Network, Connect and Cooperate
One good marketing strategy is to network with other franchise owners outside of your service area. Teaming up with others allows you to learn from them, extend your professional reach and produce better content for your website.
For example, with a strong network or following, you might plan to conduct regular webinars to share industry news or training. To the right is an example of an online webinar registration form you could send in targeted e-mails or post on your site.
You can also ask other owners and experts you respect to contribute to your blog through guest blog posts and then offer to reciprocate on their blog. This partnership allows you both to gain exposure to audiences outside your service area that you may not reach otherwise.
Together, you can build a pool of effective digital marketing resources, earn inbound linksand gain professional connections that help build your local brand.
Share Positive Stories
People love happy endings. When you share stories about how customers have benefited from your products or services, you can share your “story” without being pushy. Video testimonials can be extremely effective in this area. You can also share relevant local news stories, case studies and events on your blog so that people can see the impact you are having. You want to show potential customers that their own happy ending lies with your franchise business.
Your visitors may have a positive relationship to the national brand of your franchise. Your positive stories and testimonials can give them a positive relationship to your local office.
Provide a Great User Experience
People come back to websites that provide a great user experience. If you focus on how your visitors will experience your franchise website, then you can keep them coming back for more.
A great user experience translates into fresh and insightful content coupled with an engaging visuals and simple navigation. A website that is optimized for mobile usealways ranks high with users. The Salesforce mobile site, shown here, was ranked one of the best mobile sites in 2014 by Search Engine Journal.
These types of consideration for your user’s experience gives visitors a reason to stay on and return to your site. Creating this kind of engagement on your local website and social media accounts will set you apart in your business area.
Source: salesforce
Attract New Leads to Grow Your Business
Franchise marketing at the local level is a key issue for acquiring and retaining leads and customers for your business. You can leverage your website and social media to attract leads, drive sales and increase profitability for your franchise with a strong digital marketing approach. These basic tips explained above will get you headed in the right direction.
The helpful e-book below, “How Chickens Can Transform Your Business,” gives you more franchise tips for your local business.
