Making a Mark: How to Raise Visibility of Your New Franchise

TYLER J. BARANSKI Not only did you start your own business and become your own boss, but you began a franchise. Your efforts have gone from promotional print materials and local advertising to multiple markets and national reach.  How do you continue to expand your business and stay visible to customers and potential franchisees? How do you “make your mark”? Start with your marketing. You’re the boss, but you can’t do everything so a solid marketing team comes first. Matt Cavanaugh began as Director of Marketing at Engineering for Kids (which provides educational programming for kids through science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in 2010, one year before they began franchising.  Once they began to expand, the first assessment was obvious, “In most cases, our new franchisees are finding out about Engineering for Kids through internet searches,” said Cavanaugh. Ah yes, the Internet. In today’s world of Instagram lunches and live-Tweeted television, Americans are spending their time standing in lines online. Your presence on the Internet puts your business in the palm of their hands, so keep up with technology. From Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, the Blogger revolution, and even Pinterest, SEO (search engine optimization) and the ability to gain weight with Google is crucial. Sure, people spend hours online, but nobody wants to wait for results. It’s been said, “The best place to get lost is the second page of Google search results.” So, get to the first. Steve McQuown is the Digital Marketing and Social Media Manager at Carol Fox and Associates in Chicago, IL, alsoa firm believer in Internet advertising. “Based on the success we have experienced with Google Advertising, we recommend Google Adwords campaigns to nearly all of our clients. Google Adwords is a very cost effective way to reach new audiences and customers – we frequently see campaigns bring in 1,000 percent to 1,800 percent ROI,” McQuown said. Essentially, pay Google to Google you, but only pay for the interaction you receive. That means you don’t have to break the budget. “There is a very wide range in the budgets we work with, from just a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars per week. Clients typically increase these budgets as they see success in their own campaigns,” notes McQuown. Once people have searched for you, they control what they find. Social networking is the most time consuming activity for internet users, so link your social media platforms to your website and your website to your social media platforms. You must become a network within the network, and do it soon. The amount of work involved is highly underestimated, and hiring an outside agency to design, control and monitor Social Media marketing is increasingly popular. Creating the standard at a corporate level can avoid future confusion with franchisees. Engineering for Kids learned quickly, “We reached a point where we had many different pages across all of our franchises,” mentioned Cavanaugh, “and it seemed that we could not keep up with the interaction with our fans.” McQuown knows consolidation is the key, “Our first step is to ensure that our clients' profiles on the popular social media networks are up-to-date. We request the removal of any unofficial pages [created by fans imitating the client] and merge any duplicate pages/profiles on Facebook and Twitter.” After Google, Facebook is the second most visited web property. Their 137 million unique visitors per month spend an average of almost eight hours per month on the site – another huge opportunity for visibility. The most popular social media website is constantly changing, and their newest updates could constrain the amount of “free marketing” you’ll be able to do. If you’re new to the game, you might have to pay. Many companies use sweepstakes and giveaways to increase traffic and interaction to target relevant markets and grow an initial fan base. Targeting posts and encouraging shares can grow a page fast, but if you don’t have the means to design and promote such contests in an effective way, you can budget to have a simple post pay off with Facebook Ads. Be careful when considering your ultimate goal. If you’re looking for an increased fan base to encourage interaction for a more service based franchise such as Engineering for Kids, a Facebook ad will be useful. However, if you’re looking to increase sales or traffic to and from your website, and want to track that data, edge toward Google. “We find Facebook ads to be incredibly effective,” says McQuown, “but lose the ability to track ‘conversions’ when the goal of the ad is a sale that occurs on the client's website. With Google ads, this is all 100 percent trackable.” While there does seem to be a lot to paying for online ads, this is definitely not at the center of your mark. Customers and franchisors won’t see your ads and think of the money you’ve spent to gain their attention, they’ll see what you’re doing to retain their attention. Maintaining your online presence is the most important aspect of making your mark as a new franchise. This goes beyond daily posting and Tweeting, or continuous advertising. Internet users see your social media pages as their quickest link to you. Customer service will come into play daily, so make sure you have people you trust overseeing your accounts and interaction. Interaction does not mean advertising. Remember that most people are on social media for entertainment purposes, so creatively engaging them will work better than continuous hard selling. Social media is now the front line of both offense and defense when it comes to your new business and a negative mark can be worse than no mark at all. At the end of the day, you know your business best. The faster you figure out what your goals are, be it increasing locations or increasing your fan base, the faster you can get ahead of the curve in an ever-changing online market. One thing will always be true, quality beats quantity. Don’t spread yourself thin, but don’t miss out on opportunities because you haven’t done your research. Remember, making your mark is one thing, but keeping that mark relevant is the real success.