Leveraging Digital Channels to Connect Franchisees with Local Customers

In the world of websites and SEO, the franchise brand’s website is important, but you also need a plan to build that online presence for each location.

By Lauren Reid

Digital marketing is the gateway to your audience. That sounds like a loaded statement — and it is — but it is also the truth. It’s no secret today’s consumers are online, and that means your franchise’s audience is online. You just need the right digital marketing framework to actually connect with them. Here, we chat about exactly which aspects of digital marketing are most important to franchise systems and share tactics for deploying them across locations. 

A Strong Search Presence for Each Location

In the world of websites and SEO, the franchise brand’s website is important, but you also need a plan to build that online presence for each location. Getting found online and in the right places is the cornerstone of all subsequent digital marketing efforts; if you have a strong search presence, that will help each franchise location gain authority for search advertising, social media efforts and review sites, as well. But it takes time to set up. 

No search strategy can thrive on the set-it-and-forget-it approach. Search engines want to offer the best service to their customers (the general public), and to do that, they are constantly improving their product (the actual search engine). The tactics you might have used to gain traction with search engines just three years ago are likely out of date today. 

If your franchise system has individual pages for each location, you need to help those franchisees with proper site framework that is friendly to today’s search-engine algorithms and in line with your brand’s digital priorities. Not every franchisee is knowledgeable about SEO either, so it is important to provide those resources either through a biannual boot camp or through quarterly communications about what needs to be updated on locations’ sites to ensure SEO compliance and effectiveness. As the franchisor, you’re responsible for overall brand awareness, but you need to equip your franchisees with the tools to drive local traffic — which includes knowing how to optimize for search engines.

Connect with Local Audiences Across Locations

Once the foundation for search and awareness is set, franchisees need to start thinking about search and social advertising. These digital marketing tactics have very specific targeting parameters that allow locations to connect with a hyper-local audience that is already searching for the things your business offers. Once again, not every franchisee is a digital marketing expert, and it is your responsibility as the franchisor to help them along this path. 

With pay-per-click search ads, 86 percent of all ad impressions accrue in the top four spots, according to research from ClickZ. This breeds heavy competition among local businesses for those coveted positions, and local franchise locations are no different. You need to help franchisees understand exactly who their customer is, which will help with targeting, then set up dedicated landing pages for the PPC campaigns that feature language specific to what was referenced in the original ad. With a landing page that speaks to the ad’s copy, users can easily make the transition into potential customers. Instead of sending them to your franchise’s generic home page, customers will see information about exactly what made them click on the ad in the
first place.

Social advertising also requires a deep understanding of each franchise location’s audience. There will definitely be crossover between locations since they’re all selling the same product or service, but there are always regional differences that need to be accounted for. With Facebook advertising, you’ll have to choose between custom audiences (an audience with targeting parameters you create) or lookalike audiences (an audience similar to your existing followers) for your ads. We recommend using a combination of both for franchise brand and franchisee location levels, focusing on using custom audiences for the franchise level, and for specific targeting at the location level, then lookalike audiences for franchisee locations. That allows the most optimal blend so your entire brand is seen by the most important users on the platform.

Set a Plan to Keep Franchisees Engaged Online 

And finally, each franchise location needs a way to continue the conversation with potential (and current) customers. There are two primary components to staying in contact with your audience online: retargeting and social media. 

At G/O Digital, we refer to retargeting as an “insurance policy” for your other digital marketing efforts. For example, you’re running a search ad; when someone clicks on your ad, you pay for that click. However, a click on an ad doesn’t ensure that user will actually purchase from you. In fact, it is quite common for a user to click on a search ad, not purchase or take the desired action at that moment, then leave your site, never to be seen again, theoretically. With a retargeting strategy in place, you prevent that from happening. That user is very likely to see your franchise’s ads again throughout the internet and might consider coming back to purchase. In fact, retargeting ads work 10 times better than regular display ads, according to research cited on CMO.com. The bottom line? If you aren’t using retargeting, you should be.

Wanted: Social Media Experts

Which brings us to social media. Although retargeting enhances that final conversion, social media is the constant reminder about who your brand is and why prospective customers should shop with you. To truly run social media effectively, you need a social media manager. However, in the franchise space where you have individual social media accounts for each location, that means having a social media manager for every location, which is not possible. Franchisees don’t have the budget to hire a full-time social manager, and franchisors don’t have the resources to do it either. 

What you can do as the franchisor is help make your franchisees social media experts. Social media guidelines, posting framework, ideas, photos and branding should all be easily accessible to franchisees. You also need to include at least a half-day of social media training for all new franchisees, and there should be quarterly or biannual social media courses and information sent out to franchisees. If you make it clear that social is a key component of your franchise system, franchisees will prioritize it as well. 

There is an enormous amount of industry knowledge required with digital marketing, and both small and large components change almost every week. As the franchisor, you need a strong digital partner to help you and your franchisees navigate this complex environment. With the right plan in place, you’ll see an increase in leads and actual conversions across locations. 

Lauren Reid is Director of Franchise for G/O Digital. Find her at fransocial.franchise.org.