How Should Franchise Businesses Approach Digital Marketing Planning?

Franchise marketing is a hard nut to crack. Promoting your franchise business means creating an authentic and cohesive brand image and, at the same time, adapting your marketing efforts to cater to local audiences. There are numerous factors that will decide how your digital marketing strategy will develop, from your local competition to different customer demands.

Here are a few aspects of digital marketing every franchisor (and franchisee) should focus on.

Optimize Your Franchise Site for Search Engines

From your website architecture to link building, SEO is a vital aspect of franchise digital marketing. As you’re managing numerous stores across multiple locations, you need to primarily focus on local SEO tactics.

• Create indexable pages for each franchise location.

Each franchise location operates as a local small business, powered by the authority of your brand. Precisely because of that, you need to ensure that they have their own indexable web pages. This page should include vital information like:

• the business name
• an accurate business address
• working hours
• Google Maps and directions
• A phone number
• locally-oriented meta descriptions
• relevant CTAs

Now, some franchisors decide to create separate domains for each location. Even though this may help you rank higher in local searches, managing multiple domains is extremely difficult. This is why you should observe your franchisee pages as microsites, where your main domain (www.yourbusinessname.com) would be their parenting domain. In this case, the URLs of your franchise locations would be something like www.yourbusinessname.com/locations/location1

Don’t forget that content on each page should be unique. This will help you emphasize what makes each location unique and adapt your brand voice to local audiences. Above all, you will prevent the duplicate content issues.

• Build local links.

Local backlinks are an important aspect of Google’s Local Pack. Precisely because of that, you need to focus on earning high-quality links from local sites for each business location.

Create highly engaging, local content on for each site. Articles, videos, case studies, and infographics that solve your local customers’ problems and answer their questions are more likely to be shared and linked to.

Find relevant sites and blogs in your niche and contribute to them regularly. This will increase your brand exposure and boost your website traffic.

Build your presence on relevant local business directories. Apart from acquiring quality links from them, you will also earn online reviews that are vital for boosting customer trust.

• Claim your Google My Business listing.

Remember that you need to verify the listing for each business location. Make sure you add all relevant business data and keep it consistent across all listings. Additionally, make sure that your business name and descriptions always remain the same.

Build a Consistent Presence on Social Networks

Social networks help you humanize your franchise business and provide exceptional customer support. Now, as your franchisees interact with local customers and understand their needs better, it’s important to give them the control of these accounts.

The only problem with this approach is that many people are managing many accounts. This may lead to inconsistencies that will probably affect your messaging and brand personality. To maintain a solid image of a wholesome brand on social media, you need to create a comprehensive brand style guide that would give franchisees straightforward directions on branding and messaging.

Boost User Loyalty with Email Marketing

As the number of email users is still growing (it’s expected to reach 4.1 billion by 2021), email remains a key aspect of your digital marketing strategy. It helps you put the right offers in front of the right users, attract prospective customers, and build stronger relationships with existing ones.

However, building an email marketing campaign for a franchise business can be challenging. You need to adapt your email marketing strategy to the preferences of your local markets. This is especially important if you’re centralizing your email marketing efforts and sending out franchise-wide newsletters.

Another option is to let franchisees adapt their newsletters to their local audiences. But, just like with content creation or social media marketing, you need to ensure consistency. This is why you should establish flexible email newsletter templates and guidelines for each business location so you can control their tone, style, and branding.

Have a Story to Sell

Coca-Cola doesn’t build their branding strategy around selling carbonated drinks. Instead, they’re selling happiness.

TOMS isn’t selling shoes. They’re helping people in need.

Big brands always have a greater purpose, the one that goes beyond their products and services. And, that’s what their customers appreciate. According to some recent stats, almost 90% of customers would rather buy from socially responsible brands.

The same approach can be applied to franchise brand building. This infographic backs me up on that, explaining how franchise businesses impact the local business ecosystem:

Many big franchise brands have already built their brand around community commitment. For example, The UPS Store funds the Toys for Tots Literacy Program. They also invest in environmental sustainability and social responsiveness.

McDonald’s also emphasizes they’re proud to serve their community. As one of the most popular franchises, they have multiple charity programs, including Ronald McDonald House Charities.

Conclusions

As a franchise brand, you need to give your franchisees the opportunity to create localized marketing tactics that speak to their audiences. On the other hand, you need to mind the overall image of your brand and find a way to centralize these separate business practices under an authoritative and memorable online brand presence.

How do you plan a digital marketing strategy for your franchise business?

Emma Miller

A digital marketer from Sydney. Works as a blogger, Senior Editor for Bizzmark blog and a lecturer at Melbourne University. Tweets industry related articles.