Running a franchise business is hard work, especially if you have multiple locations to consider when making decisions. 

Many important factors come into play when creating a successful franchise business marketing plan, and the same plan may differ depending on your market location. But the best investment you can make to get the word out is MARKETING. Social media marketing, to be specific. 

Within this blog, we’ll explore tips and best practices for navigating franchise business marketing, with a focus on brand recognition, marketing strategies for each location, and how to monitor your efforts!

Here’s a summary:

1. What Is Franchise Marketing & Why Is It Important? 
2. Tips for Successful Franchise Marketing on Social Media
3. Learn to Understand the Unique Challenges of Franchise Marketing
4. Franchise Marketing’s Best Practices on Social Media 
5. Final Thoughts

What Is Franchise Marketing & Why Is It Important? 

Let’s dive in, so what is Franchise Marketing? How can I learn to understand it? 

Franchise Marketing, by definition, is the process of creating, curating, and executing a marketing strategy for a franchise business. It is important to note that there are layers of touchpoints that go into a franchise marketing strategy to help align business and marketing goals. 

For example, there are corporate goals, which generally include brand awareness and recognition. Franchisee goals often involve a hyper-local strategy that’s more focused on objectives like lead generation and conversions. The corporate strategy and the local strategy must work in tandem for the franchise as a whole to be successful. 

That’s why working with a professional like SocialMadeSimple can be so helpful. If you’re looking to take advantage of SocialMadeSimple’s free 90-day marketing pilot, you can do so here!

Tips for Successful Franchise Marketing on Social Media

There are a million blogs out there that claim to have all the answers to franchise marketing. We’ll be the first to say that Franchise Marketing is ALWAYS evolving, especially with the constant development of new and improved social platforms. 

With that said, here is a list of tips that can assist your franchise business in developing a clear and successful marketing strategy.

Developing a Strong Brand: Branding is the process of creating and disseminating the brand name, its qualities, and its personality. Branding allows your customers to easily identify your products/services/locations and decide if your messaging aligns with them as a consumer. The clearer your branding and ideals are, the better response you will receive!

Leverage Local Marketing Opportunities: It is great to have expansive and global goals, but the biggest impact you can make on marketing your business is first focusing on your LOCAL impact. The local market should be your core focus for your franchise business to thrive.

Listen to what they value and how your services/products can better cater to creating a community around your business. Locals will come for your service/product, but they will remain loyal because of the comradery. Local events build a local brand.

Monitor and Measure Your Marketing Efforts: If you’re not analyzing and tracking your marketing efforts, you’ll have no way of improving. Here is a list of a few advertising metrics that you can use to determine if your marketing efforts are successful:

1. Return on Investment (ROI) 
2. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) 
3. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
4. Conversion Rate
5. Average Session Duration
6. Cost Per Lead (CPL)
7. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
8. Website Traffic

Monitoring and measuring the success of your marketing efforts as a franchisee or franchise business can be difficult. That’s why we always recommend that you work with a professional agency to achieve the best results for your business. 

SocialMadeSimple is the “anti-agency” agency. We focus on getting you real results and keeping the entire campaign planning and execution process as transparent as possible. If having an advertising professional on your side sounds exciting, try our 90-Day Franchise Pilot Program risk-free!

Learn to Understand the Unique Challenges of Franchise Marketing

There are many unique challenges within the realm of franchise marketing. Franchise Marketing needs a much more nuanced campaign strategy when compared with a single-location business. Below are some of the most common challenges franchises and franchisees face when executing a marketing plan. 

Resource Crunch: When managing multiple locations, marketing resources are often limited, especially when marketing is handled in-house. This lack of resources makes the process of scaling campaigns across all locations tedious and slow to launch. 

Many Franchises have started to use automation and CRM tools to assist in the process, but this adaptation is oftentimes used incorrectly and can condemn a marketing plan from the start. 

Unique Franchisee Needs: Franchisees usually follow a corporate structure for branding and business development. Every location is different and may need a more individual marketing plan. 

While a lead generation objective might be successful in one location, a newer location might need more of a brand awareness objective approach. Along with accounting for a franchisee location’s life cycle, the offerings and services being promoted must match the specific location’s needs. For example, a lawn care franchise like Weed Man offers different services in different markets across North America. A market in Florida looks much different than a market in Vancouver. 

The franchise as a whole suffers when the unique needs of each franchisee location are not met. 

Inconsistent or Copy & Paste Franchisee Branding: If every franchisee has the same word-for-word messages and posts across their social media, that is a failure. Franchisees can have similar offers and promos, but each location should have its own identity.

With that said, a franchise’s branding, as far as colors, fonts, logos, and overall franchise mission, should stay consistent. There is a fine line that franchisees must maintain to stay on-brand while also cultivating a unique community around their individual locations. 

Franchise Marketing’s Best Practices on Social Media 

As you now know, there are a great many challenges to overcome when cultivating your unique marketing campaign, especially for a franchise business. It is important to put your best foot forward to maintain best practices in the marketing space for optimal results. Below is a list of marketing best practices that a franchise can utilize to help their franchisees improve their social media presence. 

1. Consistency is key: Create a post schedule and stick to it.
2. Be Transparent and communicative: Make your posts direct and clear.
3. Provide ongoing social media training and support for franchisees: Keep ALL employees up-to-date on trainings.
4. Encourage collaboration and networking among franchisees: Work as a team, not as competitors.
5. Stay up-to-date with the latest marketing trends and techniques: Educate not only your employees but yourself on market changes and new opportunities to differentiate .

To see how SocialMadeSimple has used these best practices to make THE difference for many franchise businesses and given them the tools to reach their marketing goals, take a look at SocialMadeSimple’s case studies page!

Final Thoughts

Navigating the complexities of franchise business marketing is no easy task. Throughout this blog, we have offered you everything from ways to measure your marketing plan success to the best practices to keep while executing your plan in the social space. 

From cost benefits to maintaining brand consistency and delivering results with measured success, franchise marketing agencies can benefit significantly from outsourcing to a professional agency such as SocialMadeSimple.

SocialMadeSimple has partnered with many franchisees and would love the opportunity to partner with you and cultivate your marketing goals. So you can get back to focusing on what you do best running your franchise business.

From developing a content plan to keeping your brand consistent, being a valuable resource and asset to your existing team, and providing expertise from years of experience, SocialMadeSimple is the perfect professional agency to outsource to! 

You, too, can see powerful results with SocialMadeSimple as we offer a free 90-day franchise marketing pilot program! We hope you’ll join us and become our next success story.