How Should You Budget for a Franchise Sales Website?

In the franchising world, it’s no secret that franchise development has been forced to adapt to new candidate expectations and behaviors over the last several years. Today, when developing a franchise development marketing budget, the franchise sales website needs to be top of mind. Especially in a post-COVID world, it is important that franchisors learn where to invest time and funds in order to optimize their brand’s franchise sales website budget and ensure that their online presence is as strong as possible.

“Unless you are an established brand, marketing efforts should be focused online,” said Linton Dowling, marketing director for franchise development company Raintree. “Marketing spent on old platforms such as magazines or billboards can’t be measured effectively with a limited budget. Find which platforms are working best and utilize those.”

The price for an entire website depends largely on the quality of the work (including web development, design, copywriting) and the website’s features. More expensive websites tend to be of higher quality, be produced in-house and contain more complex features such as microsites and individual franchise pages. A cheaper website tends to be lower quality, with some work outsourced to subcontractors whom you don’t know. 

When creating a budget, franchise brands should do a thorough evaluation of their proposed development websites and ensure that those websites are primed to accomplish two major goals: convert leads and guide due diligence. 

First of all, prospects crave information and the franchise sales site needs to provide it. They want something akin to a Franchise 101: everything and anything that has to do with starting a franchise, choosing a franchise, what to look for in a franchise, building their business, finding clients, hiring employees, marketing their franchise location, making a profit and so on. On franchise development sites, the messaging needs to be all about how to position the opportunity and clearly showcase the financial value proposition.

Therefore, the franchise sales website budget needs to allocate funds for the creation of blog posts addressing information needs, questions and concerns, as well as free reports that candidates can download to learn more about the topic in-depth.

It is also important to balance all of that information with engaging content and allocate a certain portion of the budget to video testimonials, photos, interviews and more. This type of content can showcase the types of owners that are a great fit for the brand to validate the franchise opportunity. 

In order to cut through the clutter of the internet and compel candidates to engage, franchise development sites must optimize for SEO so as to move to the foreground over competitors clamoring for attention. Of course, users want to have a good-looking site, but franchisors shouldn’t spend all of their budgets on appearance — the site also needs to be set up in a way that loads quickly. The franchise development website budget needs to include optimizing speed performance, usability, UI/UX design, SEO and mobile accessibility.

The actual price of creating a franchise sales website will depend greatly on the decision to outsource the work or develop the website in-house. “No matter what, make sure that within your budget, you have a dedicated design professional who can update the website as needed,” said Dowling.

As these tools create more precise and detailed descriptions of a brand’s ideal franchisee demographic, it is crucial to cater your online presence to a defined target audience. Even on a small budget, there are plenty of free courses that can teach companies about online analytics. 

By taking all of these factors into consideration, franchisors both big and small will be able to create a budget for the creation of their ideal franchise sales website to ensure that they are getting the most bang for their buck.