As a franchise owner or operator, you’ve put marketing materials, systems and processes in place to help grow the company and enable your existing franchisees to thrive. But with sales and operational priorities, you may be wondering if you have everything in place to optimize growth and ensure you and your franchisees are getting the best possible return on marketing efforts. You may also know you have gaps that you’ve been meaning to come back and fill, but you haven’t yet had the time to do so.
In this article, we’ll discuss some of the blind spots and ongoing marketing and social media challenges we’ve seen in growing franchises as they scale.
1. A Fragmented, Inconsistent Brand Presence On Social
Maybe your franchisees want to share their own content on social media, and you want them to feel empowered to do so. Perhaps you haven’t implemented companywide social media policies and guidelines, and are now seeing a variety of social channels that range in the quality and consistency of posts. You may be wondering how to reign in and organize what’s already happening.
Or perhaps you’re hearing from some franchisees that they’d prefer to have more marketing support and that they’re finding it a burden to run their own social media channels.
Solution: Consider developing a brand and marketing center of excellence. This is a centrally managed set of assets, systems and processes that are kept updated and made available to everyone across the growing organization.
A central shared folder structure like Dropbox or Google Drive can be a great help in organizing all brand assets and marketing materials (e.g., logos, print and digital marketing files, product/service photography, and videos). Ensure only the latest versions are kept live and available for use on social media.
Process documentation and guidelines will also be helpful, particularly to new franchisees who are coming on board and looking to launch and scale up quickly. Keep in mind that many franchisees will not have marketing or digital technology backgrounds. So, providing clear, easy-to-follow documentation for initial setup and ongoing management (including screenshots or even step-by-step videos, where possible) can go a long way to ensuring you and your franchisees get the results you’re looking for without frustration or inefficiency.
Guidelines should include best practices for social media posting and specifications on which properties franchisees can and cannot create. For example, some properties may make sense to manage at a corporate/global level with franchisees optionally providing content to be included, whereas others make sense to have and manage at the franchise level. An upfront social media strategy can provide this framework.
2. Too Much Focus On Organic Social Presence
When developing your social media strategy, it’s important to consider that Facebook’s organic reach (the percentage of your followers who will see each post) has been significantly declining for brands. The same is true for organic reach on other social media platforms, too.
Since managing an organic social media presence across multiple properties with daily posts can be very time-consuming, especially when you multiply this by the number of franchisees you have, you may want to rethink how you’re allocating your social media efforts and dollars to ensure they are well-spent.
Solution: As part of your upfront social media strategy, you should consider which channels make the most sense to focus on for your audience, as well as the optimal posting frequency and content mix. Defining your content mix includes outlining the mix of the types of content, such as educational, inspirational and promotional content, as well as the mix of media types, such as video, images, linked articles and your own blog content.
Organic social media has a role in establishing the credibility of your brand and engaging those who are seeking you out on social media. But it’s not getting a lot of new eyeballs on your brand, nor is it a big driver of sales. Therefore, it may not make sense to post daily on all social channels. Or perhaps daily posts can be done through the corporate social media accounts, with content automatically cascading down to local franchisee pages (this can be done on Facebook, for example).
If you are in growth mode with limited marketing funds available, a strong paid social media program may be your best investment, with a lighter focus on organic posting. A paid social media program would incorporate smart targeting, strong creative and ongoing optimization to drive real, measurable growth in your business.
This could be managed by corporate (either internally or through an external agency), by the franchisee themselves, or by the franchisee in partnership with an agency. We’ve seen all combinations work.
3. Accidentally Competing With Yourself
One area that many franchises don’t realize is even a risk is that their franchisees may be bidding and competing against each other or the corporate entity with their digital advertising programs, driving up costs. From pay-per-click search engine marketing (SEM) on Google to paid social media programs on Facebook, Instagram or other platforms, any program that is geo-targeted and focused on the same keywords and/or audience groups may be costing more than it should because it is competing with other groups in your organization that are targeting in a similar or overlapping way.
Solution: Have a central person or group review campaigns at all levels of the organization to determine if there is overlap in targeting, resulting in inflated costs. Specifically, they should be looking at whether you are going after the same keywords or audience and geography (e.g., city or zip codes) through multiple ad sets or ad accounts. Set up a mechanism for all franchisees to contribute a monthly stipend to a centrally managed marketing fund to help to avoid this costly mistake.
To summarize, a strong marketing program that drives return for the franchisor and franchisees takes time and effort to set up properly. Implementing centrally managed systems and processes and setting a clear, informed upfront strategy help to manage risk and efficiently drive your growth objectives.
