How to herd cats: Working together to unlock successful Digital Franchise Marketing

Identifying the problem

84% of Franchisees see digital marketing activity as essential to their success as a business and the stats back this up – 89% of people search on a weekly basis for local businesses on Google, with 76% of them resulting in a call to their local business.

However, 16% of franchisees in a national study said they didn’t feel like they had the expertise to execute successful marketing, while 34% said they didn’t have enough time. 15% of franchisees stated that they aren’t sure what works and what their ROI is, and 63% believe they could be performing better in direct lead conversion.

At a national scale and at local level, across a multitude of locations, and with contrasting aims and goals, we know it can be hard for franchisors and their existing outlets to run aligned digital performance activity to the best of their ability. Not only is there often a crossover between national and individual franchise marketing efforts, but there can be cannibalisation between franchisees where operating areas overlap. Running unaligned campaigns can lead to customer confusion, drive up marketing costs and undermine business success.

Building a solution

We have identified a solution for both franchisees and franchisors:

A more symbiotic marketing strategy

The Marketing responsibilities including overarching strategy, brand image and reputation, mass awareness and creative direction should be owned at a franchise level.

At a brand level the Franchisor can use these tactics to warm up leads, who are then converted by the local franchisee further down the funnel. The marketing responsibilities of the local franchisee should lie in converting the brand-aware individuals into customers and executing local marketing campaigns within the specific areas in which they operate.

This is a problem that can only be solved centrally by the Franchisor by delivering four things:

• Day-to-day support
• Co-operation and buy-in
• Nationwide consistency
• Maximum efficiencies

How can we help?

Establish a framework by which National marketing is driving awareness and reach to the masses, while localised franchise efforts convert low-funnel audiences into sales.

Give teams at a franchise level the support and reassurance to invest in the programme.

Demonstrate how the success of one franchise can be replicated across a network, and how wide-spread efficiencies can help grow market share.

Centralised resource savings e.g. x20 different franchises in the network, each requiring 2 hours of resource from in-house marketing manager to launch digital campaign = 40 hours across the network vs. alternative centralised agency solution = 8 hours cumulatively to launch. This could equate to 400% saving in resource costs