Run your best franchise marketing

Is website development important?

Franchises need a place for customers to land just as much as any other business. Medical centers, pet care, personal services, whatever your franchise falls under, a well-run website is the place to start with your marketing efforts.

Unfortunately, you can’t stop. Your site needs to be maintained and updated. Make sure your website contains the proper contact information, the type of services you offer, where your branches are located, and what your franchise is about. Developing content, increasing digital advertising, and expanding your SEO efforts will follow. Determining your marketing budget may help decide how much can be put towards website development.

What is search engine optimization?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a way to increase your website traffic and rank higher on search engine results. This is done by using keywords in your content, performing market research, and understanding what your audience is looking for, and answering it in your content.

People are constantly searching for questions and inquiries and that’s what drives traffic for businesses, including franchises, and that’s where your SEO efforts can make a difference. Not only does keyword optimization increase your ranking and visibility, but your site will also be seen before your competitors—which in turn affects your bottom line in a positive way.

Best practices for SEO efforts for franchises include making sure all your locations are listed in Google maps, use of location-based keywords, consistent branding for all your locations, and encouragement to customers to leave reviews for each location.

What is digital advertising?

Digital advertising consists of any and all content you put out on digital platforms. That includes social media ads, banners, popups, landing pages, email schemes, and commercials to name a few.

Paired with your content marketing, SEO efforts, and social media presence, digital advertising is an ideal way to grow each branch of your franchise. Localized strategy works well for franchises and allows each branding effort to focus on certain locations. Efforts include local paid search campaigns, localized display ads, and localized video campaigns. These can work well when you have multiple businesses to showcase.

Each branch of your location should be listed on Google My Business. Doing so will help with getting your business featured when people search for your product or services in the area one of your branches is in.

Do you need to worry about social media marketing?

A full-funnel marketing strategy includes an active presence on social media and that includes franchises. Whether you have two or ten locations, you need to take advantage of the awareness for your brand you can build on platforms.

When you include social media in your marketing strategy, you’re giving your franchise a chance to have organic brand awareness, increase sales, and gain more leads by communicating with potential customers. Social media posts are often where people ask questions about the business or a product, and by engaging with them, you build brand trust and better your chances for lead generation.

Many franchisees choose to be fun or playful with their posts. Others are serious and informative. Whatever approach you choose for your franchise, your messaging needs to be consistent for all your locations since it represents the entire brand. Combine your social media engagement strategy with digital advertising efforts so you’re hitting your target audience from all sides.

What is included with content marketing?

Content marketing is online resources you put out for audience consumption. Essentially, that includes information such as blog posts, eBooks, podcast episodes, videos, or anything that can be considered as digital material.

This type of marketing allows you to establish your brand as a trusted resource, build upon search engine optimization, increase website traffic and referral rates, and social media engagement. As a franchise, your content development should go hand in hand with the services you offer. Health and Fitness franchises can publish various blog posts about healthy habits or how-to training videos. Pet services can provide podcast posts about how to care for different pets or the latest in vet medical breakthroughs. The opportunities are endless with what kind of content your franchise can put out.

Before jumping into production, it’s important to first start off with strategy. You want to make sure you provide content that people will actually benefit from. That begins with learning what your targeted audience is searching for and answering those questions in your material. It also involves developing a content calendar so your posts are consistent and organized and also utilizing SEO keywords as you go.