Social media platforms are crucial for any company’s marketing campaigns, including franchises. Just because your franchise business is supported by a brand or a trademark and favors their reputation, it doesn’t mean you won’t need marketing at all. The fact of the matter is that your franchisor already has an established presence on social media. However, you must still promote your franchise location, in order to generate enough business and drive your franchise towards success.
In other words, your franchise business requires separate promotion from your franchisor and the best way to promote it is through social media. In most cases, a franchisor will provide you with developed marketing campaigns and strategies. You must leverage those strategies to boost awareness about your franchise locally. Moreover, you must engage your local customers and encourage them to visit your store. With that in mind, here are a few tips on social media marketing for franchise businesses.
Check what your franchisor has provided
As mentioned before, a franchisor will provide you with an already developed marketing campaign and various strategies for your other marketing efforts. It’s important to check your franchisor guidelines, in order to maintain brand consistency. You may be promoting your local franchise on social media, but that franchise is still a part of a brand.
That being said, each brand has their own unique identity and tone of voice that makes them recognizable by the customers, as well as makes them unique. Of course, you have the opportunity to adjust marketing strategies for your local business but you must never deviate from your franchisor’s brand identity. Furthermore, if you have a strategy of your own that you might think will perform better, make sure you consult with your franchisor before you decide to run it.
Set your goals
Every social media marketing campaign requires you to set clear goals beforehand. Which goals you will set depends on your franchise needs. For example, new franchises on the market require exposure, awareness, and visibility. You must promote your local business to local customers, in order to generate traffic and encourage people to visit. For example, announce an opening day event on social media and offer free incentives to customers who visit.
On the other hand, if your local customers are already familiar with your franchise, you might want to consider improving sales, encouraging repeat business and ensuring customer loyalty. That requires a different set of goals, as well as strategies that will help achieve those goals. In any event, you must set goals before you decide to run a marketing campaign, in order to ensure that your social media marketing efforts will drive viable results.
Choose the right platforms
Your franchise business must be where the customers are. That means that you must establish a presence on each social media network your customers are present at. Your franchisor can provide you with detailed information about your target audience and the networks they’re most commonly present on. That way, you won’t have to establish a presence on networks that aren’t relevant and waste both time and resources in the process.
In addition, you’ll be able to develop personalized and custom promotions for each network and ensure that your messages are resonating well with your customers on every social media network. What’s more, even though customers are the same on different networks, you’ll need a specific approach for each platform. Once again, your franchisor can supply you with information about their approach for each individual network, so that you can maintain consistency with the brand’s tone of voice as well.
Engage with the local community
Infographic: How Franchises Impact the Local Business Landscape
When promoting your franchise on social media or attempting to establish a good presence for it, it’s important to not only focus on trying to sell a product or service. As a matter of fact, your franchise must engage with the local community and establish a good relationship with your customers. Your franchisor reputation can greatly benefit you in this endeavor, especially since customers are already familiar with the brand. It’s not uncommon for franchisor brands to involve themselves in local charity or fundraising events.
You can leverage that to promote or host an event that will offer something valuable to your local community and positively impact the local economy. Social media platforms are a great medium for carrying your messages to your customers and building awareness for such events. In addition, it’s important to regularly engage with your customers over social media through meaningful conversations and relevant content. That way, you ensure that your customers have no reason to disengage from your franchise.
Monitor your efforts
Every social media effort requires monitoring. You can’t know for sure that your strategies are working well, even if your franchisor has provided you with a proven strategy. That’s why it’s important to track valuable metrics and monitor the effectiveness of your campaigns. For example, monitoring customer engagement, responses and activity is a good way to determine how customers react to your efforts. In addition, you can leverage social mentions to track conversations your customers are having about your franchise.
That way, you can determine what your customers are saying and in what sentiment they’re mentioning your franchise. Again, your franchisor reputation plays a vital role in the audience’s overall impressions but it’s still important to make your franchise reputable regardless. If the results of your metric monitoring aren’t favorable, then it’s time to make some serious improvements to your marketing efforts.
Social media marketing for franchises isn’t that different from marketing for regular businesses. The main difference is that your franchise already has a developed brand supporting it and established marketing strategies ready to be utilized. However, even though your business is supported by a brand, it doesn’t mean you won’t have to build your own presence or build awareness for your franchise on social media.
