How To Drive Traffic to a Franchise Site With Paid Ads

With single-platform dominance decreasing and personalization becoming more important, franchises should invest in strong creative and smart strategy to capture the best return on paid advertising.

By Morgan Wood1851 Franchise Contributor

7:07AM • 09/27/24

While they shouldn’t be the sole focus of a marketing strategy, paid ads play a vital role in building brand awareness. Still, the landscape is shifting, and franchisors need to follow suit to ensure their franchisees’ marketing dollars are spent in an efficient way. 1851 Franchise spoke with Aren Johnstone, president of Franchise Ramp, to learn more about how franchisors can build a robust strategy to encourage traffic to franchise sites.

Realize That Single-Platform Dominance Is on Its Way Out

There are various platforms that support paid ads. For a long time, the paid ad discussion revolved around the idea that brands needed to understand where their customers are and focus funds on advertising on that platform. While there is still something to be said for personalization, Johnstone suggested franchisors take a more diversified approach.

“Single-platform dominance is declining. From the 2000s to the 2010s, it was Google. From 2010 to 2021, it was Meta. In 2022, we started on a sharp decline,” he said. “Your customers’ time is more distributed than ever. They’re not only on Instagram all day. They’re on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Paramount … Everyone’s vying for their time.”

Sticking with a platform that is delivering results is a smart idea, but brands should not devote their entire budget to one spot. In addition to consumers’ attention stretching further and further, Johnstone noted that one person is only going to watch the same ad on the same platform so many times. Eventually, they will be checked out. Diversifying both location and substance, to some extent, will keep things fresh and encourage long-term engagement.

View Creative as an Ongoing Investment, Not a One-Time Thing

Johnstone emphasized the importance of good creative and highlighted a more flexible approach that focuses on appealing to the audience.

“Performance creative is creative that disregards fluffy messaging,” he said. “The content should be in the user’s voice, so it should be first-person. It should have some sort of problem-solution narrative, and it should be optimized toward customer generation or cost per acquisition.”

This, again, provides a strong baseline, but content creation cannot be a one-and-done venture. Rather, this approach should be applied to the ever-evolving task of content creation to keep things fresh and engaging for the audience.

“I recommend highly — and I’ve seen brands do this and succeed — to take a significant portion of national fund dollars, and instead of running advertising or paid media with the same creative they’ve always used, put those funds toward creative as an ongoing investment,” Johnstone said. “If they’re able to invest 20% of what they would have spent on paid media in creative, whether it’s influencer content, professional shoots or otherwise, they’ll actually see a lift in their paid media.”

Follow an Impactful Structure

It doesn’t matter how beautiful the ad is or how much you pay to drive it if it’s not something the consumer really cares about. Johnstone provides an outline of how impactful ads should be structured.

“In your hook sequence, you want to pose some sort of problem that your brand actually solves or a feeling or emotion your core customer resonates with,” he said. “Then in your hold sequence, which is the next 15 to 30 seconds, you want to answer or solve that problem. With that simple structure, you can drastically increase the conversion rate because, instead of traffic seeing a Canva graphic about a free class or discounted introductory period, they’re coming in with some sort of problem-solution narrative. They have higher intent when they reach the website.”

Be Flexible With the Budget and Keep an Eye on the Future

The world of paid ads is consistently changing as new platforms gain traction, brands develop new creative and consumer demands change. Striking a good balance between leaning on what works and staying open to new possibilities will help brands stay ahead of the game.

Johnstone says he generally recommends spending 70-80% of the budget on proven top performers and dedicating the rest to experimentation.

“[A portion] of your budget should be left for experimentation and finding the next thing,” he said. “If you spend 100% of your budget on things that are your top performers, eventually, they won’t work. With that 20-30% of your budget that’s used for experimentation, you can try out a new platform and start to figure out what works. As platforms evolve [and performance changes], if brands have been experimenting, they’ll be ahead [and know where to go next].”

With more brands vying for consumers’ attention across more platforms, the strategy behind paid advertising is becoming more important. Ultimately, continuing to center the audience — whether it’s their preferences, problems or experiences — will increase the impact of the materials being sent out. By keeping a flexible budget, sticking with proven structures and strategies and remaining open to experimentation, franchises can ensure their marketing dollars are put to work most efficiently and maximize traffic and conversion for the system.

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