🕒: Five minutes
In the previous section we saw that franchisees and franchisors have access to numerous marketing channels. A marketing strategy that incorporates all of a company's national activities is common practice for large consumer brands.
Nevertheless, there should be a local marketing plan both for franchisors and franchisees. It would be best if you collaborated on this, but if you can't, at least make sure that you've worked out your side of things.
For many companies, local marketing is the last thing on their minds. Instead, they focus on their national strategies. All your customers are local, so that's unfortunate! Therefore, in order to have a competitive edge on the ground, your franchise can develop and implement a local marketing strategy.
Since franchisees live and work in local communities, they are best equipped to communicate with them. Therefore, Local Area Marketing directly benefits them.
Franchisees have the ability to communicate with customers on a one-to-one basis on an ongoing basis, which ensures our brand is first in their minds when they consider making a purchase.
Franchise business models have local area marketing as part of a broader national campaign, as franchisees are familiar with the local community and have the ability to customise marketing messages for that particular area. Make your business stand out as being involved in those community-focused events, dates, and celebrations.
Credibility and trust are built by building relationships with customers and being perceived as local.
Franchisees may increase their share of the market by ensuring they have local marketing strategies in place and staying informed of what's happening locally.
Another question to ask is do you have an online presence for your franchise business?
In addition to the product and/or service offered, a franchisee website must publish additional information.
Ideally, a franchise’s website should have a strong, consistent brand, but it should also be relevant to the business on a local level.
Understanding the Customer Journey
The term "customer journey" refers to the time between when customers hear about our company and when they make a buying decision.
The best way to do that is to divide the experience into steps, recognizing that some people will drop out of the process at every stage. Franchisers will recognize this as the "sales funnel."
Competitor Analysis
Generally, brands have already figured out their positioning with regard to other national brands, so this one is primarily for franchisees. Discover who your local competitors are and how you can counter them. They might be other big brands, but there will also likely be local SMBs that aren't on the franchisor's radar.
This information will help you position yourself to win a bigger share of the local pie. Are there any gyms that are better than yours in terms of equipment and weight training? Are they primarily marketing to young men and athletes?
Do they advertise on local radio? It might be a good idea to offer more cardio and yoga classes and to target women and older clients. People who are trying to lose weight may be encouraged to attend nutrition classes. And so on.
Building Authority
It's time to put that plan into action by creating content to support it after you've determined who your customers are, how they buy, and how you intend to position your franchise in the local market.
Corporate franchisors should spend time creating an informative, interesting brand website with dynamic, engaging content. In addition to selling, your content should aim to educate, inform, and/or entertain. Your organic SEO will improve because your consumers will be encouraged to return. A laser focus on the conversion of visitors into customers should also be part of your content.
This same concept should guide your social media content, which should link back to your site as often as possible. According to experts, 60% of your posts should be engaging, timely content, 30% should be shared, and only 10% should promote your products and services.