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Digital Marketing For A Franchise
Digital Marketing for A Franchise – What Works Today?
In the networked world that we live in today, digital strategies are an important component of marketing for a franchise. Digital marketing can permeate into all aspects of traditional franchise marketing to make for an effective plan.
With digital technologies, franchises can increase their local targeting capabilities. They will also be able to enhance their brand awareness among viewers. This also depends on the franchise system.
The Franchisor will plan and execute larger marketing strategies nation-wide. This can be supplemented with local franchise digital marketing that will increase footfall at their local store. By keeping general franchisor guidelines in mind, your franchise can go ahead and incorporate some great digital marketing strategies.
Read ahead to know the digital marketing strategies that can make your franchise stand out. These are appropriate to get you noticed in the digital landscape of 2020.
1. Video Content Marketing for Franchise
Visually stimulating content can put your franchise on the digital map. You will be delighted to know that YouTube is the second biggest search engine after Google. People approach YouTube for demos, recipes, and other kinds of content.
A franchise can benefit from video marketing because it adds a personal touch to your local business. Here what you should know about video content marketing for your franchise.
How Can Video Content Marketing Establish Your Franchise’s Identity?
Videos let you tell some compelling stories to your audience. A franchise’s identity can get lost in the larger marketing efforts made by the franchisor. With video marketing, you can display your franchise’s personal story to your customers.
It can bring out your identity to create strong and lasting impressions. Through this, your potential customers will understand your franchise beyond just the products or services you provide.
Visuals also tend to target and appease the emotions of your audience. By putting out some bold video content, you will be letting your franchise’s personality shine through. By mixing visuals, sounds, and texts, you will be able to connect with your audience on an emotional level.
What is Video Content Marketing?
This is a kind of advertising strategy where video content is used to involve the audience and promote your brand. These are often educational and informational. Viewers almost always add value to their time by watching these videos.
With this, your franchise will be able to convert viewers into customers and get them to purchase your content or product. You will also be able to bring current customers to return and purchase your product again. This is especially beneficial to attract customers to your franchise when there are many more in your city.
Such video content marketing is distributed across various channels. YouTube is an excellent platform. However, you can also use other social media platforms and websites to distribute video content.
Benefits of Video Marketing for Your Franchise
This is one of the strategies that you get you noticed in 2020. Here are the benefits of adopting video content marketing for your franchise.
1. Emotional Connection
Videos capture and induce emotions in wonderful ways. Your franchise can use video content to cater to the emotions of your target audience. For instance, you can use your franchise’s location as a nostalgic point in the video.
Say that your franchise offers services for the elderly. You can create a video that describes what the locality looked like when your target audience was younger. Through this, you can encourage families to take a nostalgic trip by bringing the elders to your franchise in the locality.
Such emotional content brings viewers to identify with your brand and triggers consumer action.
2. Increases Conversion Rate
Many franchises have not yet caught up with the trend of personal video content marketing. This is because videos may not seem as easy to produce as other kinds of content. You can use this to your advantage to give your franchise a competitive edge.
By marketing your local franchise through video, you will be able to bring viewers to notice you. With more traffic, the conversion rate may also increase rapidly. Video content has been considered to be one of the most conversion-friendly marketing mediums.
3. Not Difficult to Produce
Many people avoid video content marketing because of the stereotypes attached to it. They are considered expensive to produce with studio equipment. However, in today’s digital landscape, producing videos is much simpler.
With the right tricks, even a good quality phone camera can create some great videos. There are multiple free editing tools available that will quickly let you put your video message in perspective.
They will also take very little time to learn and master. With this, you can make some impactful videos and distribute them.
4. Better Engagement
Visually appealing content is more engaging than text. If your content is of good quality, your viewers are likely to pay more attention to your videos as well. With a multi-level approach to content, text, sound, and visuals are used simultaneously to bring every viewer to appreciate it.
5. SEO Optimization
With video content, you have a better chance of waking your franchise’s web page rank better on a search engine. A study conducted by Comscore suggested that video content can increase a website’s chance of ranking higher on the SERPs by 53%.
All you have to do is add a video to your website. Hence, video content marketing can also increase your franchise website’s organic traffic.
How Can You Get Viewers to Notice Your Videos?
Now you know the benefits of using video marketing. How can you bring your franchise’s content to attract the most viewers? Read ahead to find out.
1. Start your Video in an Attention-Grabbing Way
There are several videos on the internet, and your video will only have about the first 10 seconds to grab the viewer's attention. Make the beginning of your video relevant. Add some compelling questions that will persuade your viewers to watch your entire content.
2. Add Value to Your User’s Time
Make the content relevant to your audience’s needs. Solve any problems they may have using your video’s content. Videos that offer advice on the procedures to complete certain tasks and recipes rank very high.
You will have to tailor content to the personality of your franchise’s potential customer.
3. Use Multiple Platforms
Yes, YouTube is a crucial part of any video content marketing strategy. However, it need not be the only one. Various platforms have a different reach, and your franchise’s video will reach a larger audience if you use their potential.
For instance, Facebook Video and Webinar host videos that reach different audiences. The content of the video and its purpose may also differ. It is a good idea to take a look at these multiple platforms and see if your video content can be circulated here.
4. Keep Your Content Consistent
With consistent and planned videos, you will be communicating your franchise’s personality to your audience. Keep the look and design of the video similar across each content video you create. This will boost your franchise’s brand recall.
If you have people in your video, the same cast can create a consistent image. A video-content calendar is a great idea to maintain the flow. You can also create some timely content for your calendar.
Space them out and release them periodically so that regular customers can keep a tab.
5. Keep the Quality High
A high-quality video will engage viewers better and keep them invested. They are also more likely to pay attention to your video if it is of high quality. Opt for an HD video so that it can be circulated well on all platforms.
If your videos are consistent with high quality, your viewers will also return to watch more of them.
6. Use a Call to Action
You cannot forget that the ultimate goal of your video is to convert viewers to customers of your franchise. So don’t forget to add a call for action. These can be as simple as asking your viewers to visit your website.
You can also ask them to subscribe to your newsletter. With this, your viewers will be prompted to act and get one step closer to purchasing your product or service.
Now that you understand the nuances of video content marketing go ahead and create your videos. Stay consistent and time them just right for the best results.
2. Local SEO
One of the biggest digital marketing strategies to get your franchise noticed is by using local SEO. This will lead local consumers to your product. Read ahead to know what local SEO is and how it can work for you.
What is Local SEO?
Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) allows you to market your franchise online in a very efficient manner. Whenever local customers are looking for a specific service, they will be guided to local sellers through this.
Purchase-intended searches often have a local intent to them. ‘Near me’ is a phrase that is often used in local SEO. When this is used, Google often understands that users are looking for lists or queries that have to do with their current location.
By using this to your advantage, you can guide local consumers to your franchise.
Local SERPs
To understand local SEO, you will also have to pay attention to the local Search Engine Ranking Page (SERP). This refers largely to the three business listings that appear below the map when you search Google. This is also called the Google local pack.
By using local SEO, you can aim to bring your franchise into the top 3 listings and get maximum visibility. In this, users can see reviews, photos, and opening times. How can you get on this listing?
All the information available here comes from the Google My Business profile of your franchise. Without this profile, your business will rank nowhere in the search.
What is Google My Business?
Google My Business or GMB will record your business profile. This feeds information to the Google local pack and Google maps. It also feeds information about your franchise to the knowledge panel or the top right white area on a desktop. On mobile, this is the top-most search.
This is called the Knowledge Panel and will provide comprehensive information about your franchise when you look for it on Google. It will provide information about your services, contact details, and opening times, among others.
This is also a very customer-driven Knowledge Panel. It has reviewed, and GMB attributes that are written and generated by customers of your franchise. By making this profile as accurate as possible, you will be building up your reputation with customers.
What Should I Know About Citations?
Another important component of your local SEO efforts is citations. These refer to the Name, Address, Phone Number, and Website URL (NAPWs) of your franchise. When this appears as a pack anywhere, it will affect your local SEO and SERPs.
Getting these in place will help you reach people that are looking for businesses like your franchise. If you don’t, there is a chance that other competitors will overtake you on the search.
These citations appear in two different types. These are outlined below.
Unstructured Citations
These largely appear due to the press and social media. Here the NAPW information of your franchise is connected from the platforms to appear on the search. However, it will not be structured.
Structured Citations
These are derived from business listings like Yelp. When you fill in these listings, your franchise’s NAPW is recorded in an ordered manner. These are typically taken from any form fields that you may have filled.
Both of these are extremely important to get for local SEO. Likely, your franchise will not rank well if you omit this. You will not only have to build these citations up on relevant websites but also will have to keep them updated.
What Should I Familiarize Myself within Local SEO?
You now know how local SEO works. Here are a few concepts to deepen your understanding of how your franchise can rank well.
- Proximity
This refers to how close your business is to the user who is searching for it.
- Relevance
This asks whether the query entered by a user is relevant to your franchise and the products or services it offers.
- Prominence
This refers to what your consumers say about your product. This also includes reviews.
How Can I Work on My Local SEO?
Now that you know what local SEO is, you may want to use it to get your franchise noticed locally. This is where it matters most. Read ahead to find out how you can make your franchise local SEO-friendly.
1. Localizing Your Website
Your franchise may have a website that could be optimized to reflect the location. Use the location of your franchise several times throughout your website. You can also involve your franchise in local community events. You can include links to these on your website.
2. Citation Building for Your Franchise
Look for online business directories and make sure to include the NAPW on them. Add any additional information. Take care to also include this within your website so that you can rank well.
3. Get Your Google My Business (GMB) Listing in Place
Make sure to claim ownership of the GMB listing for your franchise. This will make you rank higher and even within the Google Pack for your business area.
4. Manage Your Reviews and Ratings
Register your platform on websites where people can review your franchise. These reviews send a signal to Google to rank your franchise. It will also reflect the quality of products or services offered by your business.
You can encourage your customers to review your business so that you can rank well in local SEO.
5. Work on Your Backlinks
Some natural backlinks from authoritative sites can keep your franchise visible on local SEO. These can even be listings. You can also work on getting backlinks from business associations, bloggers, and newspapers. All of these will keep your franchise website climbing up the local SERPs.
You may be delighted to know that local search marketing is better than all other local advertising for your franchise. It can boost your franchise’s image and put it on the radar so that it ranks well.
3. Content Marketing for Your Franchise
Content marketing is a digital marketing tactic that may have the potential to double your conversion rate. The strategy has been around for a long time and has shown great results consistently. Here is what you should know about content marketing for your franchise.
Create a Content Marketing Strategy
A good content marketing strategy for your franchise will work out how you can increase brand awareness and purchase using content. You will have to research your audience and create a content calendar to put out your best material.
Here are a few ways in which you can get content to market your franchise.
1. Pick the Goal of Your Content Marketing Strategy
Ask yourself what you want your digital marketing efforts to do for your franchise. Pick out the goals and tailor your content to suit them. Perhaps you want more traffic for your website. You may also want your content to bring more viewers to visit your franchise.
Pick a goal that is specific to your needs and limit your content to just this. It is also a good idea to keep your goals measurable. If lead generation is your goal, create a target amount for the leads you want to generate.
You also want to ensure that the target or even the goal is achievable. If it is not, you will be wasting your content on a goal and target that cannot be achieved. You will be better off using your resources on a lesser goal that can still be achieved.
Keep a deadline for your content marketing goals. If you want to increase conversion rates by 10%, set a deadline. It could be a year or more. Within this, set smaller deadlines that can take you through the larger deadline more easily.
2. Get to Know Your Audience
Your franchise will have a particular set of audiences that are relevant to your business. By researching your target audience, you can tailor the content to suit their needs. These are also the largest chunk of the audience who will be reading your content.
There are a few demographic parameters you can use to get to know your audience. Take a look at their age, gender, income level, education level, and location. This provides you with a hint as to the tone and content that such an audience will appreciate.
Pay attention to where they gather on the internet. Tailor your content to suit that platform. You may also want to look at the kind of questions that they have been asking. This will let you create 'how-to' articles that answer their queries.
Also, note the kind of content that your target demographic responds to. Do they prefer simple listicles, or are they drawn to long-form stories? Craft your content to suit their sensibilities.
It is also a good idea to find influencers that your audience's trust. By getting them to create content around your franchise, you will be able to get influential backlinks that lead back to your content.
Through this, you will be able to drive traffic to your franchise’s product or service.
3. Grade Your Content
It is a good idea for you to grade your content so that you can keep track of your progress. You can use an excel sheet or any other audit application to keep track of your content.
You can conduct a content audit by keeping an inventory. Here, you can add the URL of your blog or website. Next to the URL, you can grade it. This can be based on the quality of the article.
Note the content type and the number of words. You may also want to note the performance of the article. A few things to look at are traffic on the webpage, the bounce rate, and the user engagement on it.
Over time, you will be able to spot some key patterns with your content. Try answering a few questions like why some content does better than others. With this, you will be able to better manage your content plan to put out that ranks well.
4. Manage the Guidelines
Create a guideline that your content should adhere to. Within this, it is a good idea to also include any guidelines that your franchisor may also require from you.
Once you have audited and graded your content, you will have a fairly good idea of what works well. Use this to update the content guidelines on a timely basis. This will keep your content relevant.
If you are a franchise in the medical field, this guideline may become even more important. It will keep your writers adhering to the technical terms and procedures.
You can include the types of content you will be publishing for your franchise. Put down a list of the content types or content buckets that you can use. For instance, these could be ‘how-to’ posts, ‘benefits of’ articles.
These may also include a certain word count for each content type. You can also differentiate them based on call-to-actions.
You can also include guidelines for the images that will be used. You can note down what custom graphics you can use. Note the font and color scheme for the content. You may also want to pay attention to the quality of images that will supplement your content.
Your guideline should also include the tone of your content. This ties back to the audience research that you have conducted. When you know what audience your content will address, you can tailor the tone to suit their needs.
A technical guide for your franchise products will use a formal, straightforward tone. However, a blog article may use a friendly and conversational tone. It is a good idea to take note of these.
5. Manage Your Content
Think of the platform on which your content will be displayed. It may be a website or a blog. It may also be a blog that is a part of your e-commerce website. Depending on what your franchise’s identity is, you can begin to manage your content accordingly.
You will also have to schedule your content right. You can use Google sheets or any other scheduling application to get your content published at the right time.
How Can Content Marketing Benefits Your Franchise?
Now you know how to pick and manage content for your franchise. Here’s how this can benefit you.
1. It Will Create Brand Awareness
Your audiences may be drawn to your website because of the content that you put out. Many of them will also notice your franchise for the first time due to this content. This opens new windows of opportunity for your franchise.
2. Generating More Leads
This kind of marketing can get more leads to your business that traditional marketing can. More people will visit and seek out information from you through this. It is the first step to getting people to visit your franchise’s website.
3. Increases Conversion Rate
This is done largely through SEO-friendly webpages for your franchise. You can link these high-ranking pages to product pages on your website. Hence, you will increase the potential for conversion.
4. Value for Your Money
Compared to traditional marketing, content marketing is a cost-effective option. One of the biggest resources needed for effective content marketing is your time. If you lack this, you can delegate the work to a digital marketing agency.
You can use materials like blogs or even e-books to market your content.
5. Social Media Marketing for Your Franchise
One of the most popular and fun ways for your franchise to make its digital mark is by using social media marketing. You can create authentic and hyper-local social media pages to engage your customers.
These can provide an insight into the working of your franchise and attract new customers to these personal stories. It can benefit a franchise by acquiring and retaining customers.
While a national advertising plan can put the franchisor on the map, it can leave a local franchise with little market presence. Specific franchise marketing should be designed to make local social media plans.
Through this, each franchise will be able to generate personalized content that considers their unique social experience. Here’s how a franchise can engage in social media marketing.
Built-In Tools
Several built-in social media tools can track location. You can use Facebook locations or locations or any other social media site to track your franchise's address. If your franchise has a separate page, this can make tracking the location that much easier.
Adhere to Franchisor Guidelines
Franchises need to adhere to the guidelines on style and font that the franchisor has outlined. You can go ahead and experiment with local content as long as these guidelines are adhered to.
Post Quality Content
You can use social media to announce any discounts, promotions, and the like. Make sure that the content is authentic and of great quality. You can use content delivered by the head office or create your own, depending on your franchise system.
Monitor Conversions and Engagement
Social media is a great platform for interactive marketing options. Your franchise can use this platform to put out content that brings about social media comments and engagement. You will also be able to monitor the conversions.
You can use the patterns of the posts that do best to reach more people better.
What Social Media Platforms Can I Use?
This depends on who your audiences are. Once you figure this out, you can figure out which platform they use the most.
You can use a Facebook business page, Instagram, or a Twitter business account. There are also Snapchat account, a LinkedIn company page, and a Pinterest business account. However, the best strategy is the one that is done well.
Choose only a few channels and contribute your best to it.
6. Online Reputation Management Strategies for Your Franchise
Online reputation management is generally used by the franchisor to manage the entire brand. However, you can tailor it to individual franchisees’ needs.
This is especially important if a particular franchise has been especially seeing negative reviews. These comments stay on the web and can tarnish your franchise’s reputation.
Here is how online reputation management can be a great digital marketing strategy.
Suppress Negative Comments
This is done by saturating your search results. Here, a flood of positive reviews is released so that any negative reviews get suppressed in the process.
Search Results Are Monitored
As your franchise grows, many reviews will emerge. Through online reputation management, these will be constantly monitored. Your franchise will hence always be seen in a positive light.
Controlling Social Media
Through this, the conversations that people have about your brand are monitored and controlled. You can use this to keep your brand image positive.
Promoting Your Franchise
Through this, other authoritative channels will be used to promote your franchise. Using backlinks and other tools, your brand reputation can be enhanced.
Focusing On Multi-Media
Searches need not always be text-based. Videos and photos can make quite a mark on your franchise’s reputation. With online reputation management, you can control these. With this, you can ensure that multi-media images and videos that show your franchise in the best light rank high.
The above strategies are important as they can build trust with your clients. Clients who see positive reviews will be interested in the brand at hand and will be converted to customers.
It is also known to boost sales substantially.
Chatbot Digital Marketing for Your Franchise
AI is said to be one of the largest digital marketing trends that work in 2020. Incorporating this in your franchise's marketing plan can work very well for you. With chatbots, a large chunk of customer service communication is automated.
Here is what you should know about chatbots for digital marketing for your franchise.
What are Chatbots?
Chatbots are AI tools that take into consideration the frequently asked questions that your customers have. They then communicate with them to provide relevant answers. With this, you won't have to answer every question.
Your chatbot will do it for you. Money and resources are saved when chatbots are brought into the picture.
Benefits of Using Chatbots in A Franchise’s Digital Marketing?
Now you know what chatbots are. Read ahead to find out how they can assist a Franchise’s digital marketing efforts.
Handle Initial Communication
You will be left free to handle other franchise work as your chatbot handles initial communication. They will gather details regarding contacts, sales calls, and any customer service questions on behalf of your franchise.
Increase Marketing Communications
These chatbots automate large volumes of customer communication during marketing. Due to this, your franchise will be able to engage with more customers at any given time. The conversations are also easily managed as they can be location-specific, depending on the franchise.
Put Your Sales and Marketing on the Same Page
Sales and marketing can be very disconnected in a franchise system. With chatbots, you can bring both on the same page. Through an integrated chatbot strategy, the marketing funnel and the sales set up can be connected.
Employees on each side can stay connected through the large amounts of information gathered by the chatbot system. Through this, more of your franchise’s prospects can be converted to customers.
How Can I Use Chatbots in the Franchise’s Digital Marketing Strategy?
Here are how you can use chatbots as a part of your franchise’s digital marketing strategy.
Gathering Important Information
A key part of marketing is figuring out your audience and any changes in them. You may have thought that a particular audience profile in the market for your product. However, as time progresses, the customer profile may change.
Chatbots record important information like the name, information, whether they're a returning customer, and service ratings. This works as feedback for the marketing team to set up better plans.
It also offers a personalized service for any customer who wants to buy from your franchise.
Schedule the Right Calls
Chatbots will let you schedule sales or customer calls so that you won’t have to converse with your customers. Instead of multiple back and forth and wasted time, you can get the chatbot to do it for you.
Greeting Customers
A huge part of a good marketing plan is attracting the audience to your franchise. If the online experience is pleasant and interactive, the reputation of your franchise will only improve. A chatbot can do this for you by greeting your customers as they enter your website.
They can also guide them through your website if they find any portion difficult to navigate.
You should also know that it is easy to add a chatbot. Several platforms allow you to build a chatbot and incorporate it into your website. However, a chatbot alone may not be able to do much for your franchise.
It is a good idea to also work on web design and navigation to make the entire experience memorable for a visitor. With this, they will be prompted to visit again and make a purchase.
Endnotes
Every franchise has a specific system, and digital marketing efforts will depend on this. Some systems only allow individual franchise some definite material for digital marketing. Others give more localized freedom where franchises only have to adhere to a few guidelines.
In any case, a franchisor may want to encourage digital marketing initiatives at the local level. By using social media marketing and video content marketing, you can add a local and personal flavor to your franchise's marketing strategy.
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