What types of businesses truly benefit the most from social media marketing? Pretty much all of them (seriously)! Small mom and pop shops, big franchise brands, and everything in between. The end goal is usually the same for all – Generate business through social media. The strategy behind achieving that goal is the part that requires a more unique approach to each business type. Let’s take a closer look at what goes into building an effective social media marketing strategy for franchises versus small businesses.

Building a Social Media Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses

Small businesses use social media to build a foundation for their brand. The social marketing strategy revolves around getting their name out there and building credibility to gain the audience’s trust. Small business owners are masters at what they do – Running their business! But when it comes to implementing a social marketing strategy, it’s common for there to be some slight panic. 

Every effective strategy begins with setting goals – SMART goals, to be exact. Create goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Align those goals with your social media campaigns (both organic and paid) and you’re set!

Here are a few common campaign objectives that are typically best for small businesses building a social media presence:

• Increase brand awareness
• Increase website traffic
• Increase community engagement

Once you have your goals and objectives down, hone in on who your target audience is. As a starting point, think about the following criteria:

• Age
• Location
• Interests
• Income
• Career
• Education

The following are all pieces of an effective small business social media marketing strategy. Create content and paid advertisements with your identified goals and target audience in mind. Which platforms are your customers using the most? What time are they the most active online? What content types will engage your audience the most?

The moral of the story? Small businesses should follow this checklist for a sustainable and result-driven social marketing strategy:

✅ Set SMART goals.

✅ Identify the target audience.

✅ Utilize social media to spread brand awareness.

✅ Maintain a strong social media presence by creating posts and ads based on your goals and customers.

Building a Social Media Marketing Strategy for Franchises

Now that you know the basics of what goes into building a strategy for small businesses, get ready for an entirely different approach with franchises.

Unlike small businesses, franchises already have a foundation set. They are past the point of getting their name out there, determining their goals, and figuring out who to target.

Oftentimes, franchise brands can skip the top of the funnel awareness campaigns. Some franchises can jump straight to the considering stage or even the decision stage of the buyer’s journey. Companies should attempt to showcase their value and convert potential customers during these stages. With franchise brands, the focus is on building a strategy that is cohesive, up to date with local trends, and constantly being optimized for the best results.

The following are a few common campaign objectives that franchise brands typically utilize:

• Lead Generation
• Web traffic
• Messenger
• Store traffic

A great place to begin is creating brand guidelines at the corporate level for franchisees to follow. Launching social media campaigns without any guidance for franchisees can leave a bad impression of the brand and cause unnecessary headaches for all franchisees.

Each franchisee’s local Page will use the same brand colors, profile photo, content types, posting frequency, while also implementing local content to attract and engage local audiences. This way, franchisors can rest easy at night knowing their social media strategy is consistent, effective, and sustainable!

Speaking of attracting local audiences… That’s the other major difference between social media marketing strategies for franchises vs. small businesses: Localization. The challenge for franchise brands is using social media to successfully connect with the local communities of each franchise location, and remain ahead of local competition.

How can franchises maintain a successful local social media strategy? By staying up to date with local trends, analyzing what types of content the audience engages with, peeking at what local competitors are up to online, and constantly optimizing for a truly sustainable social media strategy.

SocialMadeSimple’s Director of Client Services summarizes the key differences in the approach of a social media marketing strategy for franchises vs. small businesses! 

Video Transcript

Veronica: For our clients, it’s about looking at different strategies through the same lens. So whether it’s a small business or a very large corporation, it’s the same lens and same goal we are trying to achieve. We want to generate business for our customers and that’s the ultimate goal, but it’s how we approach it that has to be a different strategy.

For smaller mom and pop shops, we have to establish the company first. Get their name out there, get awareness, etc. If you have a brick-and-mortar shop, we want to get the name of your store out there so that if people are driving by, they know who you are and want to go in the store because they have seen and heard about who you are. So we have to establish their presence before we can generate that traffic into their store or their online website.

With larger brands, it’s a little bit different because they typically have established their presence online and have a brand behind them. So with them, we look at it through the lens of the creative. Do they need a creative refresh? Do they need a bit of rebranding and making sure that the creative is up to date and trendy? Additionally, with larger businesses, we are able to look a bit at the bigger picture. What have you done in the past that has worked well? What hasn’t worked well? Then taking insights from that and applying it to our campaigns so we can do maybe a lead generation campaign while additionally doing a web traffic campaign, for example.

So with larger businesses, it’s more about making sure their business is seen in the best light, and with small or medium-sized businesses it’s more about establishing their brand in the first place and then generating those leads and sales.