Understanding The Unique World of Franchise Marketing

Understanding Franchise Marketing Channels

Despite being characterized by so many differences, franchise marketing still surprisingly operates through several marketing channels that are similar to what's used in SMB and corporate marketing.



Over the next pages, we will unpack these channels that help franchise marketing strategies function. We will also look at how they are related to the topic in focus.



Search Engine Marketing



This is one channel that has gained popularity over the past decade. It simply stands for the ease to be at the top of search results when potential clients look up your products or services on search engines. Businesses can either pay for this privilege or earn it by combining the following activities.



For several business owners, search engine ultimately refers to Google which is the primary destination for over 90% of people searching for information online. However platforms like Bing and Safari do their bit when it comes to attracting traffic from app, mobile, and map search. So it would not be fair to count them out. 

As a franchise standing against local SMBs and multinational brands, showing up in the local pack is something you don't want to overlook. One effective way of doing this is by using a combination of tactics that's either available to the franchisor, franchisee, or even both of them. Some of these tactics are outlined as follows.





Creation of Active Push



Instead of relying solely on customers to find you via serendipity, it is often important to take advantage of the tons of marketing opportunities that are available at your disposal. Some of them include:



• Local Business Listing: Ensure to list your business on visible platforms that carry local business data. 
  
  
• NAP Data Accuracy: There's a need to ensure that all the data on your business listing including name, phone number, email, and address is complete, accurate, and consistent. Bear in mind that it is these data that customers and search engines will locate you with. 
  
  
• Remove Duplicates: Be sure not to have more than one listing in a particular location. The presence of two or more listings for a single location on one platform can create confusion for customers, especially when they contain varying information. Apart from that, Google's guidelines strictly prohibits businesses from claiming more than one listing per location. 
  
  Indeed, duplicate listings can sometimes emerge from your natural activities like rebranding or movement, customer activities like creating listings that they can't find, or data aggregation by search engine. The best way to overcome this is by ensuring the use of a reliable software to detect and remove all duplicate listings with potentials of being problematic.
  
• Tags and Structured Data: Users of "Google My Business listings" know that it offers an opportunity for you to add tags and attributes like "women-led" or "wheelchair accessible" to listings. These tags do not only help to enrich listings, but they also help to ensure that your listing surfaces on Google when longer-tail searches are made. 
  
  While the business is in charge of adding some attributes to the business by themselves, Google solicits others from the public. Whilst managing your Google My Business listing, your business should be able to select all appropriate attributes that are available. 
  
  
• Rich Media and Content: One other element that presents listing in an attractive manner to search engines is rich media. This can be anything from images to contents like opening hours, menus, promotions, and services. Generally, listings tend to perform better in Google positioning when they are enhanced with images or other contents. 
  
  
• Call to Actions: CTAs are popular for enhancing contents of search listings. However, their duty do not just stop there. They are also able to convert listings to direct engagements with potential clients. 
  
  
• Voice Optimization: With the popularity of voice searches rapidly increasing and with accuracy becoming a thing for most voice-recognition software, there is no better time to leverage voice optimization than now. Making your listing voice search ready will put your business at an advantage when searches are made via Google voice, Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and other assistants.
  

Facebook & Yelp Page Listings Franchise Marketing

Facebook has grown overtime to become one of the most popular source of listings. Its level of visibility can not be questioned.



Facebook business listing is a very important contributor when it comes to search ranking. Generally, Facebook can be a challenge of its own, but the owners of Facebook have put some organizational tools in place to make the whole process easier. Just as we've seen with GMB pages, some franchises and individual employers tend to often create different Facebook pages, with each bearing its own branding choices, passwords, and administrators. This duplication of account creates serious headache for cooperate marketing departments and regional managers of franchises. It's almost impossible to forget about running any kind of promotion or national campaign while coordinating them. Different franchises adopt different methods for dealing with this. Several of them respond through centralized efforts (that is consolidation of locations under a "parent" Facebook account.) It, however, allows the different subsidiary franchises to be in charge of posting their own content, and receiving reviews that are tailored to their locations.



Further Thoughts on Listings:



The decision on who takes charge of managing listings would often depend on the franchise in question. Therefore, experts often advise that listings be made to be consistent with the individual brand in question, but also responsive to any local need that may come up. Local needs like special holiday promotions should also be put into consideration.



The management of listings can either be done at the franchisee level or at the franchisor level. There are situations, however, where a company may decide to use a strong location marketing tool. Depending on choice, they can even decide on co-owning and managing the franchise, whereby the franchisor would be in charge of setting up the universal elements like tags and logos, while local businesses take charge of managing their hours, contact information, and promotions.

With a powerful location marketing solution, businesses can manage multiple listings in one place - making corrections and managing across tons of apps and sites.



Yelp Listings



Although Yelp cannot be compared to Google in the area of controlling local consumer experience, it still ranks highly among platforms used for local business searches on Google. The platform also displays star rating of businesses, which attracts easily in search engine results.



Many businesses have Yelp listing that they do not know about. Local franchisees of such businesses are expected to get in and claim the listing. Although it started as a food and lodging platform, Yelp has long grown into a global platform that customers will check before visiting any sort of business. The listing/review site has a huge influence on the choice of customers.



Unlike the case of Facebook and other similar platforms, Yelp listings are highly location specific. Franchisees often try to avoid locations that are lagging behind. Hence, the importance of having total control over local pages. Connecting with your customers and responding to their concerns and reviews is also important on this platform. Yelp is known to have one of the toughest set of guidelines as far as review management behaviors and listing owner permissions is concerned. So before touching any yelp listing that represents your franchise location, it is important that you take time to read all the guidelines attached to that location.



Reviews



There are several other listing platforms that we've not listed in this article. However, one thing remains common among Google and most other sites listed in this article - they allow for customers to post review about the services offered by the company. Positive reviews on major review sites play an important role in moving a business up in search results. This is why highly rated businesses often weigh more on Google's algorithm compared to businesses with poor reviews.



Some review platforms have guidelines that permits franchises to ask happy customers to leave positive reviews, while some other platforms frown heavily at it. Another method that a franchise can adopt to promote positive reviews is by monitoring and responding to both negative and positive reviews.



Unfortunately most franchisees often have conflicting goals with their franchisor in the aspect of reviews. For corporations, bad reviews would always have bad impact on the reputation of a brand. Local franchises, on the other hand, see reviews as something very personal. Everyone wants to have their hands on deck to find and resolve cases of bad reviews. Reviews also offer franchisors and franchisees an opportunity to know what local customers are thinking about their brand. It also helps to address issues where needed, build relationships, increase revenues and referrals. 

The big question, therefore, is who is in charge of the process of review monitoring and response?

The answer to this depends greatly on the culture of the franchise in question. However, using platforms like Moz Local can mean that you'll have a middle ground that can help you share the responsibility. To put it clearly, everyone should be involved in the process of monitoring reviews. The information that they can provide at different levels can be what drives the franchise to greater heights.

In cases where a franchisor is nervous about the ability of the franchisee to handle response to reviews, a simple set of permissions in your reputation management platform can be the eyes that everyone uses to see responses before they get published.