The Unique World of Franchise Marketing [Guide Sneak Peek]

Posted by MiriamEllis

Image credit: Dion Gillard

Can franchises make good digital marketing agency clients? There are almost 750,000 of them in the US alone, employing some 9 million Americans. Chances are good you’ll have the opportunity to market a business with this specialized model at some point. In this structure:

The Franchisor grants permission to others to operate under its trademark, selling approved goods and services supported by an operating system and marketing.
The Franchisee is the person or group paying the franchisor for the right to use the trademark and the benefits of the operating system and marketing.

Seems simple enough. But it’s this structure that gives franchise marketing its unique complexities. For your agency, the challenge is that you can’t enter these marketing relationships equipped solely with your knowledge of corporate or local search marketing.

You need to deeply understand the setup to avoid bewilderment over why implementation bogs down with franchise clients and why players lose track of their roles, or even overwrite one another’s efforts.

In this post, we’ll give you some quick and useful coaching on the franchise model, but if your agency just got a phone call from Orangetheory or Smoothie King, you can get the bigger playbook right away.

Download The Practical Guide to Franchise Marketing

Roles and goals make franchises unique clients

Image credit: woodleywonderworks

Imagine a post-game locker room scene. On the field, all players seemed united by the goal of winning. But now, at different press conferences, the owner is saying the coach failed to meet standards, the coach is saying the owner should keep his opinions to himself, and several of the star players are saying they didn’t get the ball enough.

Franchises can be just like that when there’s confusion over roles and goals. Read on to get a peek into the playbook we've prepared to help the team as a whole work better together:

This post is excerpted from our new primer: The Practical Guide to Franchise Marketing.

Franchise marketing is a unique kind of activity. It does share a lot of qualities with corporate marketing (on the awareness side) and with SMB marketing (on the local side) but as we noted earlier, it’s sort of a joint custody arrangement that — like all custody arrangements — can get contentious at times.

Everyone wants the best for the brand, but everyone’s “best” is very much a matter of their own perspective and goals. Typically in this arrangement, there are at least two stakeholders, though sometimes there are more. The stakeholders and their goals tend to play out as follows:

Corporate Franchisor goals

  • Creating a strong brand to license more franchisors.
  • Controlling that brand so it isn’t negatively impacted.
  • Supporting franchisees with strong branding and resources so they succeed.

Master Franchisor goals

  • Working with corporate to protect the brand.
  • Licensing more local franchisors.
  • Supporting franchisees with resources so they succeed.

Regional or Area Franchisee goals

  • Driving customer traffic and revenue at individual locations.
  • Growing their portfolio of locations.
  • Supporting location managers with resources so they succeed.

Owner/Operator Franchisee goals

  • Increasing location(s) foot traffic.
  • Increasing location(s) revenue.
  • Building customer loyalty at the location(s).

In what ways is franchise marketing different from corporate or standard SMB marketing? There are some unique challenges that franchisors and franchisees face which are worth unpacking. Some of them are:

    • Conflicting goals between franchisor/franchisee
    • Faster turnover of locations and addresses
    • Different opening hours, menus and promotions from location to location
    • Unique local sales and marketing opportunities and challenges
    • Competitors on both the brand side but also among local SMBs
    • Lack of clearly defined marketing roles causing work to be overwritten, duplicated, or even neglected

Getting your agency’s head in the game

Image credit: yourgoodpaljoe

Your agency can be a better coach to franchises by having a playbook that respects how they differ from corporate or SMB clients at the very outset. But differences don’t have to equal weaknesses. Are you ready to draft a game plan that draws from the strengths of both franchisors and franchisees? 

The Practical Guide to Franchise Marketing


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Post source = http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/12934917

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Customer Surveys: Why You’re Crazy Not to Use Them

Image
One of the best things about the Internet is the way that it has mutualized communication. Before the Internet, media went in a one-to-many direction. Social media has turned that dynamic on its head in two ways. Now, communication is both many-to-many and one-to-one. Plus, with the plethora or social channels and messaging apps, there are more ways than ever to reach your customers. And there are more ways than ever for them to reach you. But you’d be surprised how few companies take the opportunity to actively listen to their customers. They prescribe everything to their audience. Sure, they may do some user testing. But by not interacting directly with their customers, they are missing out on a big opportunity. People are increasingly favoring brands  and companies that make them feel like a part of a community. They feel like they have a role in the success of your business. Your success is success for them too . If you don’t make them feel like a part of what you’...
Read more

Knowledge Graph Eats Featured Snippets, Jumps +30%

Image
Posted by Dr-Pete Over the past two years, we've seen a steady and substantial increase in Featured Snippets on Google SERPs. In our 10,000-keyword daily tracking set, Featured Snippets have gone from about 5.5% of queries in November 2015 to a recent high of just over 16% (roughly tripling). Other data sets, with longer tail searches, have shown even higher prevalence. Near the end of October (far-right of the graph), we saw our first significant dip (spotted by Brian Patterson on SEL ). This dip occurred over about a 4-day period, and represents roughly a 10% drop in searches with Featured Snippets. Here's an enhanced, 2-week view (note: Y-axis is expanded to show the day-over-day changes more clearly): Given the up-and-to-the-right history of Featured Snippets and the investments people have been making optimizing for these results, a 10% drop is worthy of our attention. What happened, exactly? To be honest, when we investigate changes like this, the best we can usual...
Read more

Expert Tips for Creating a High-Quality Content

Image
To produce great works of art, being creative and inspired is necessary, but a lot more goes into it. Creating content is pretty popular nowadays, everyone can do it – as the resources are available to everyone,  you can write a book on your computer, or start a youtube channel and be a filmmaker using your iPhone, it’s that simple! But just because everyone can do it, doesn’t mean everyone can produce good content. Here are some expert tips for creating high-quality content that will blow everyone away! Be Original This might be harder than you think, almost everything has been done before – but don’t let that discourage you! But being creative all the time is impossible, sometimes you just want to get it over with. But quality content takes time, you need to think things through rather than to just rush it and get it done in a few hours. If you want to be original, you’ll need to think about the things you are creating, their purpose, what is the message you want to put out...
Read more