Although many franchises are brick-and-mortar businesses, like restaurants or stores, many are moving away from traditional marketing to digital options.
Traditional marketing methods, such as direct mail, radio, television advertising, public relations, and print advertising still work -- but they can't compete with the cost-efficacy and high ROI of digital marketing systems, like search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, social media advertising, video sharing sites, and local search engine marketing.
Although you have a world of options available for how to run a digital marketing campaign, three of the most effective for franchises are local SEO, social media marketing, and blogging.
Local SEO
It's possible for a franchisee to set up a digital marketing campaign to differentiate itself from the franchisor without violating corporate policies. A franchisee can easily track where their new digital marketing leads are coming from without confusing them with the leads they buy from their corporation's lead-generating advertising.
Despite the efficacy of the data-driven approach of local SEO marketing, many owners find it difficult to manage this type of marketing because of the nuances around NAP-name, address, phone number-citations. So, a franchisee who develops a digital marketing strategy should work with a marketing agency familiar with franchise business operations. Local SEO for example, will get you faster results than if you tried to figure out how it all works through trial and error.
Social Media Marketing
Your business can't afford to neglect social media marketing for building brand awareness. You can either devote a part of your day to connecting with your customers on social media, delegate the work to a social-media-savvy employee, or outsource the work to an agency.
A social media marketing campaign will help you get the word out about your franchise business. Besides building awareness about your brand and giving your business exposure, it also provides an invaluable opportunity to get to know your target audience better.
In the long run, developing a relationship with your customer base will make it easier for you to improve your customer avatar, making it far more accurate. You'll recognize a customer's actual needs based on your social media conversations with them.
Blogging
A blog can help franchisees create more awareness around their brand and win over new buyers. Incidentally, if you are not a writer, you can always outsource the writing to freelancers. The main thing is to stick to a regular publishing schedule.
Regularly publishing content that provides your target market with value will help you build your business in at least five ways:
-
You'll attract more leads by ranking high in search engine results.
-
You'll establish your own community because you'll be able to have a two-way conversation. Unlike a cookie-cutter corporate-designed website, which only permits a one-way conversation, your blog will allow your readers to use the comments section to tell you what articles they resonate with. This feedback will make it easier to decide on what topics to write about.
-
You'll build a reputation as an expert in your industry because of your carefully researched and well-written blog posts.
-
You'll be able to highlight positive reviews from satisfied customers rather than waiting for people to leave a positive recommendation on a third-party business review website.
-
You'll find it easy to sign up subscribers for your ezine by offering them a valuable free report in exchange for the email address. Once someone has opted in to receive your emails, you can build a warm relationship by consistently offering them valuable content.
All things considered, digital marketing provides a higher return on investment than traditional marketing. Digital marketing not only makes it easier to track all your most important metrics, but it also reaches more people at a lower cost.
