In today’s digital age, businesses must adapt or risk falling behind. This transformation is especially critical for franchise businesses. In this blog, we’ll explore the significance of digital marketing for franchises and why it’s essential for their success.

The Digital Age Is A New Paradigm

In the past decade, the digital landscape has undergone a dramatic shift. Consumers now use the internet to research, shop, and connect with businesses. This fundamental change in consumer behaviour has redefined the marketing landscape. Franchise businesses must embrace this new shift to remain relevant and competitive.

Building Brand Consistency

One of the primary challenges for franchise businesses is maintaining brand consistency across multiple locations. Inconsistent branding can confuse customers and dilute the franchise’s identity. Digital marketing offers a powerful solution to this challenge.

Through a unified online presence, franchise businesses can ensure that their brand messaging, logos, and values remain consistent across all locations. A well-maintained website and social media profiles provide a centralised platform for delivering a cohesive brand message. Take, for example, global franchises like McDonald’s or Starbucks. Their online presence is uniform and integral to their brand’s identity.

Localised Marketing Efforts

Franchise businesses often rely on local markets for their success. Each location serves a specific community with distinct preferences and needs. Digital marketing allows franchise businesses to effectively tailor their marketing efforts to these local markets.

Through localised SEO strategies and targeted online advertising, franchisees can precisely reach their immediate communities. For instance, a local branch of a fitness franchise can use digital marketing to promote special offers or events to attract nearby customers. The ability to harness the power of digital platforms for hyper-local targeting is a significant advantage for franchises.

Cost-Effective Advertising

Compared to traditional advertising channels, digital marketing offers cost-effective solutions that can be scaled to fit a franchise’s budget. Franchise businesses often have limited marketing resources at each location. Digital marketing allows them to maximise the impact of their advertising spend.

Online advertising platforms, such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads, enable franchises to set precise budgets and track their return on investment. This flexibility ensures that marketing resources are used efficiently, providing the most significant impact for each dollar spent.

Leveraging Customer Data

Customer data is a goldmine for businesses, and digital marketing provides the tools to mine it effectively. Franchise businesses can collect and analyse data from various digital touchpoints to gain valuable insights into customer behaviour and preferences.

By understanding their customers better, franchise businesses can create personalised marketing campaigns that resonate with their target audience. For example, a fast-food franchise can use customer data to offer tailored promotions to customers who frequently order specific menu items.

Online Reputation Management

In the digital age, online reputation is paramount. Consumers increasingly turn to online reviews and ratings to make purchasing decisions. For franchise businesses, managing their online reputation is not a choice; it’s a necessity.

Digital marketing strategies, such as proactive review management and online engagement, can help franchise businesses maintain a positive online presence. Effective reputation management can increase consumer trust and improve brand perception.

The Role of Social Media

Social media has become a cornerstone of digital marketing, offering a platform for brands to engage with their audience in real-time. For franchise businesses, social media provides an opportunity to connect with customers on a personal level and build brand loyalty.

Creating a social media strategy that combines corporate messaging with localised content can help franchise businesses establish a solid online presence. Engaging with customers through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can increase brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Mobile Optimisation

With the rise of smartphones and mobile devices, optimising digital marketing efforts for mobile users is imperative. Franchise businesses must ensure that their websites and marketing campaigns are mobile-friendly.

A responsive website design and mobile-friendly marketing materials are essential for providing a seamless user experience. Mobile optimisation enhances customer satisfaction and positively impacts search engine rankings, as search engines prioritise mobile-friendly websites.

In today’s digital age, franchise businesses must recognize the power of digital marketing. It’s not just a trend; it’s a fundamental shift in how businesses connect with their customers.

For digital marketing ideas for franchises, please call The Franchise Institute. You can dial 1300 855 435 or email us via this contact form, and one of our experts will contact you soon to answer all your questions.

The post DO FRANCHISE BUSINESSES NEED TO FOCUS ON DIGITAL MARKETING? appeared first on Franchise Insitute.

If you want to make an impact on your target audiences, you need to use these avenues to promote your business. But it takes much more than merely creating social media business accounts. This is especially true if you are a franchise.

You would have to promote all your branches to the respective local audiences while maintaining your overall brand identity. Also, you need to make your presence felt in a highly competitive landscape. Here are some tips for using social media marketing in your franchise business:

• Go Local – We live in a world where the use of mobile devices is increasing phenomenally. Customers are always on the move and using their smartphones, tablets, and other devices to search for information about brands on social networks.

They read customer reviews and consume your content, and a large percentage of the searches are location-based. If you want to reach these customers, you need to use the local business ecosystems to your benefit by integrating your franchises’ branches.

• Monitor Social Media – When it comes to listening to your customers and responding to them, it is crucial to have a centralised system. You need to monitor all your local social media activities across various platforms and address any potential problems as soon as you notice them. An experienced social media marketing company would be able to handle these aspects for you.
• Build Better Buyer Personas – While an experienced marketing team can create comprehensive buyer personas, your franchisees would be able to make them much better nuanced. Since they deal with local customers every day, they know their habits, problems, intent, and worries much better. They would also be able to help you create localised content that engages your customers and drive more conversions for your franchise network.
• Adapting To Various Channels – Since every social media network targets different audiences and has a specific purpose, you need to adjust your content marketing strategy specifically for the channels you use. For example, if your branding and product rely on high-quality images and visual content, you should focus your marketing efforts on Instagram.

Facebook is about expanding your brand presence and keeping customers engaged, as it is the largest social network today. If you want to share news and promote new content while communicating with other brands as well as your customers, Twitter is the platform you should be using.

• Create Fresh Content – When it comes to promoting a franchise, there is a level of complexity which gets added to your existing social media marketing strategy. You need to ensure that the content you create resonates with and keeps your local audiences interested, on specific social networks. However, make sure that each franchise has original content that they can use.

As mentioned earlier, while maintaining the freshness and individuality of content for every single branch in your network, you also need to focus on establishing a recognisable and reliable brand that garners trust. In simple words, the local content that you create should not harm your franchise’s brand image.

• Maintain Consistency in Branding – Consistency is the other factor to keep in view while creating any content for your social media marketing strategy. You can do this by establishing comprehensive social media guidelines.

These should have distinct rules at your franchisees need to follow and clear instructions regarding the type of content they need to focus on. When you use social media correctly, it helps you establish a unique personality and humanise your brand.

• Use Analytics – Skilled social marketing professionals will help you set clear social media goals. They will also employ digital marketing analytics tools that will help you assess the performance of every single branch in the social media channels that you use. If you are a franchise dealing with multiple accounts in various locations, you would have to choose the metrics and tools very carefully.

 
While you focus on reaching local audiences, make sure that your company’s branding efforts remain untouched. If you want to know more, feel free to get in touch with us at The Franchise Institute. You can call us on 1300 855 435 or fill in this contact us form, and we’ll reply as soon as we can.

Thanks for reading,
The Franchise Institute Team
1300 855 435

The post TIPS TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IN YOUR FRANCHISE BUSINESS appeared first on Franchise Insitute.

The Value of Local Marketing

Local marketing increases the local awareness, reach & engagement of your brand significantly. It also helps generate customer loyalty, which leads to repeat business and helps you establish a positive brand image in the local market.

Franchisees have a good understanding of the local business landscape and their competitors, making marketing an essential aspect. National franchises have a completely different market to cater to and face different competition when compared to local franchises. Marketing campaigns in different areas are tailored to achieve specific results.

For example a national café franchise might be the perfect spot for high school students on a Friday afternoon, while it might be a favourite date spot for couples in a different area. You might find it difficult to cover all these bases with a national campaign. Once you have a better understanding of your local community, including factors like age, employment, and what interests them, will help you achieve better success in your marketing efforts.

Ideas And Inspiration For Marketing In Local Areas

#1 Conduct Events

Involving yourself in local events is a great way to come in contact with the local community. This is a subtle way to market your products or services to a local audience. It is an excellent way to boost brand awareness and create a positive public image in the community. For example:

• You can start sponsoring local sports teams. This will expose your brand to a wider audience.
• Involving your brand in fundraising events will send a positive message to the local community and its a great way to show your appreciation.
• You can also offer your business space to host different events. This will inevitably result in new customers visiting your business. In addition to this, your company will also be recognized as a local ambassador for many different causes.

#2 Include Your Brand Advocates And Influencers

Consider including brand advocates and influencers who are in the local area to boost awareness. This strategy will help you reach a much wider audience in and around your target market. Many brands tend to reach out to influencers or celebrities who have a vast social media following to talk about their brand.

This is a great way to spread awareness about the brand, but it won’t necessarily bring customers to your door. Roping in social advocates is a much more reliable and affordable activity. It has the potential to reach a wider and much more relevant audience. For instance, if you offer a food service, gifting a free meal or providing discounts to customers who upload photos tagging the franchise is a great way to create targeted hype around your franchise.

#3 Go Digital

Use the ‘Local’ feature on Facebook. This targets people who live close to your business. It is incredibly cost-effective and pretty easy to execute as well.

#4 Share Stories

When people share stories, they are able to relate to them on a personal level. Give your business a very distinctive personality and audiences will definitely show their support. Social media platforms are the perfect outlets to share stories about your business.

#5 Be Active

Staying active is crucial. The more active you are in the community, the more people will talk about your business in discussions.

If you want to know more about franchising, feel free to get in touch with us at The Franchise Institute. You can call us on 1300 855 435 or fill in this contact us form and we’ll reply as soon as we can.

Thanks for reading,
The Franchise Institute Team
1300 855 435

The post The Best Ways to Market a Franchise Business appeared first on Franchise Insitute.

However, it isn’t uncommon for franchise owners to be a little complacent with marketing, because their business works under the umbrella of a well-established name in the market. They feel customers would know where they are and will use their products or services when they require them. However, this isn’t a case. Modern-day consumers are extremely busy and also tend to be highly distracted.

In recent years, there has been a paradigm change in how consumers engage with businesses, and your marketing plan needs to be in-sync with these changes. Reaching your targeted audiences in 2019 is a lot about having a solid franchise marketing plan in place. Here are some aspects you can keep in view while doing this:

#1 Chatbots Are In

As a franchisee, you might have access to the main Franchise’s Facebook page. Chatbots are a major trend this year and if you haven’t setup one yet, it’s time you adopted this technology. These online tools can be set up to answer customer queries or requests automatically.

You are able to set chatbots to answer common queries such as your business hours, contact details, appointment times etc. Using these tools is a definite benefit because customers are able to get an immediate response which encourages them to visit your business when they need to. In addition, it saves you a lot of time from having to respond to these questions.

But this isn’t all that chatbots can do. They are also able to automatically notify prospects about sales, schedule appointments and more. While this technology cannot completely replace your sales or customer service teams, it’s a great way to reduce their workload and offer an excellent customer experience.

#2 Use Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is an extremely effective way of reaching new audiences and engaging them in online discussions about your products or services. The idea behind this type of marketing is to reach a wider audience and build credibility in the online space.

If you to largely cater to local customers, it is important to find influencers within that area to talk about your brand. These are the people who interact with your target audience regularly. If you haven’t including influencer marketing into your digital marketing mix yet, now is the right time to do it.

#3 Focus On Personalization

While this may seem like a contradiction, the fact is that advances in technology allows brands to personalise the experiences consumers have with their business. In the franchising space, you are operating under a well-known banner. When you focus on encouraging your audiences to connect with your business on a more personal level, it significantly improves your chances of improving sales and profitability.

While creating a marketing plan for 2019, prioritise the areas where you are able to create a more personalised experience for your customers. This could mean doing something as simple as training your staff to be courteous or remember names of regular customers.

The idea is to do something unique but which lies within the parameters of your franchise network’s guidelines. The important thing is to evolve and be dynamic in your approach to marketing in these demanding times.

If you want to know more about franchising, feel free to get in touch with us at The Franchise Institute. You can call us on 1300 855 435 or fill in this contact us form and we’ll reply as soon as we can.

Thanks for reading,
The Franchise Institute Team
1300 855 435

The post Do You Have A Solid Franchise Marketing Plan Set For 2019? appeared first on Franchise Insitute.