For franchises, digital marketing is a potent instrument for expanding their business across several sites while preserving a consistent corporate identity. To ensure that every campaign reflects the franchise’s basic principles and resonates with the unique preferences of each region, it is crucial to strike a balance between local personalization and brand consistency.
This article is for you if you are thinking about becoming a franchisee and want to know how to use a franchise marketing strategy to set your company apart while adhering to established brand requirements. Let us begin!
What Customers Expect From Franchises
Consumers want flawless and consistent experiences from franchises, no matter where they are located. Developing successful digital marketing initiatives requires an understanding of these expectations.
The following are consumer expectations and how digital marketing can meet them:
- Consistent brand experience: Consumers anticipate uniformly high-quality marketing collateral and customer support across all platforms. A brand style guide should be put into place by marketers to guarantee uniformity throughout all franchise marketing.
- Relevance on a local level: Offers, promotions, and messages have to be customized for their particular locality and cultural background. Local events or success stories should be featured in blogs, videos, and social media posts.
- Community involvement: Consumers frequently look for proof that the franchise supports the neighborhood. Post updates about charitable activities or neighborhood partnerships, and share user-generated content created by nearby clients.
- Omnichannel experiences: Every interaction should be smooth, whether it takes place in person, via email, live chat, social media, or your website. Potential issues with both online and offline customer experiences are addressed by omnichannel marketing techniques.
Digital Marketing for Franchises: 5 Steps for Success
1. Make sure the brand is consistent
For marketing to be successful, branding must remain consistent. Because it guarantees uniformity among franchise partners and makes your branch easily recognizable, consistency becomes even more crucial in the context of franchises.
Whether you’re establishing your own franchise or joining an existing network, delivering a consistent message with a unified visual presentation is essential. Having cohesive branding guidelines that address messaging, visuals, color schemes, tone of voice, and every other aspect of brand representation is an absolute must.
2. Establish the Framework for Your Online Presence
Creating a distinct franchise website is a great way to begin your digital marketing endeavors. Your website serves as both your digital business card and a place to maintain the constant visual appeal and messaging while adhering to the franchise brand rules. It also gives you the opportunity to show off some of your uniqueness.
To build a stronger relationship with your audience, you might, for example, use your About Us page to consider the journey of your staff. Building trust can be greatly aided by “about us” pages. If you incorporate your story into the content, viewers will see more than simply generic details about a global business. Rather, they will discover the tale of a compassionate business owner and their group who are determined to change the world.
Additionally, you can use your website as a central information source by showcasing your goods and services, posting details about special offers, reward schemes, certifications (if applicable), and other business details regarding being a franchisee. You can use several digital marketing techniques, such content marketing and SEO fundamentals, with a successful website. More on those later.
3. Localize
Localization can help set your company apart from other franchises and competitors. Just as successful as the strategy we mentioned for customizing the About Us page is adapting your digital marketing tactics and overall approach to local markets. By embracing your local location, trends, landmarks, and more, you may develop deeper relationships with your customers and brand.
Creating distinctive experiences for local clients, offering loyalty programs, demonstrating support for community activities, and demonstrating familiarity with local customs are all examples of localization. The degree to which localization is permitted should be discussed with your franchisor; any local initiatives must nonetheless adhere to the values and standards of the brand.
4. Adopt Social Media
Make sure your social media approach respects branding consistency while also taking into account local needs and expectations. Ask your franchisor about any special social media standards they may have (posting guidelines, preferred social channels, content formats, and more).
To better understand the demands of your local clients, you can, for example, create a social media community, sponsor local sports teams, and post about pertinent regional events. This strategy will help you strike a better balance between distinctiveness and brand consistency.
5. Continue to Communicate Effectively With Your Franchiser
The collaboration between a franchisor and a franchisee is successful for a number of reasons. While franchisees should remain open and transparent and be willing to discuss any problems or new business ideas, franchisors should continuously offer help and direction to both new and seasoned partners.
This would entail talking about the intricacies, best practices, and corporate policies pertaining to digital marketing techniques and any obstacles that brand consistency might present to your creative vision.
Franchise Digital Marketing FAQs
1. What is the most difficult aspect of franchise marketing?
Some people may find it difficult to follow stringent branding requirements, while others may believe that doing so restricts their marketing tactics.
2. Can I only do local SEO as a franchisee?
No. For smaller franchises, local optimization often makes the most sense, especially if they’re brick-and-mortar establishments providing goods and services. However, if you’re part of a smaller network within a larger franchise, casting a wider web for SEO can be equally rewarding.
3. Can localization be counterproductive?
It depends. If you use localization to create a different brand persona, then yes, it can lead to clashes between you and your franchisor and may even result in reduced brand trust. However, if you localize within the branding guidelines, it can be an effective marketing tool to differentiate yourself from your competition.