So you have a great story…now you need to get it in front of great people. While there isn’t a magic formula to gain attention to your content, there are best practices to follow. In simple terms, you will want to:

1. Determine Your Target Persona (Who and Where): What is the demographic profile of a person this story will resonate with and what geographic areas are you targeting?
2. Maximize the Content: Ensure the headlines are sharp and engaging and tells the “why” behind your brand.
3. Build the Audience: Utilize AMPD, Social Media, and your own marketing channels to engage your audience.
4. Measure the Engagement: Do you and your audience share/like/comment and then click on the content?

Each step in this journey is outlined below. 

Step 1: Determine Your Target Persona (Who and Where)

In order to build your base audience and nail your persona marketing, 1851 can help you identify: 

1. Ideal Candidates – specifics that aligns with as much data as possible: Net worth, age – and when you know what your franchisees read / watch / live, we can target using more sophisticated data points.
2. Look-A-Like Audiences: Sometimes the audience is too small, but we can create look-a-like target audiences that behave similarly to current franchisees.
3. Similar Brands: 1851 can target competitors as well as brands with similar investment ranges, as buyers will be talked into looking at a category of investment rather than a specific type of business.
4. Key Growth Markets: There are two types of markets brands will typically target – current markets (growth in a concentric circle around existing locations) and pioneer markets (new markets). The tighter you are with your identified markets, the better chance for spending money more efficiently.

With a target persona and market in hand, now you need to deliver your story to this audience. In today’s buying world, it can take a year (or more) before someone decides to inquire about business ownership. They need a specific trigger to move forward. Remember, we are selling a life decision, not a widget.

Step 2: Maximize the Content:

1851’s framework features two types of content: Main site (our readers) and brand page (your readers). 

The main site is designed to create content for the top 90 percent of the funnel and your brand page is meant for about the bottom 30 percent (those who have decided on your brand and are in the research phase all the way through close).

The main site journey of the funnel goes something like this:

• Those first being introduced to franchising
• Those researching franchising
• Those researching a specific category
• Those researching your brand

Thus, our editorial team works tirelessly on finding and telling awesome stories about the franchise industry, franchisees, franchisors and trends. We do this because each step of the sales process needs support content. 

Then, we get to your brand page. We make sure we are filling up each stage with multi-prong anchor content: Why franchising > why this category > why your franchise > why now

If the audience is engaged, create strategic anchors within the story that lead to other compelling content and drives the reader to continue their journey.

Building Content That Resonates with the Prospective Buyer: 

It will take time to build up a content base. You will want to leverage stories that will connect with the prospective buying audience. This should include:

• The Basics: Buyers buy because they love the product or service; they believe in the leadership; the ROI is sound (both in cost to buy and how much they can make); they can open where they want; and franchisee validation is strong. Each brand on 1851 should create content that fits into each of these buckets to ensure the readers/prospects have content that helps them understand the positioning of the brand – and helps make them feel comfortable with what they find when researching it.
• Why the Brand/Why Now: Should focus on the top 10 reasons
• Validators: Highlight stories of successful franchisees –why they bought, what they love and their future growth plans.
• Rebuttal Content: In the sales process, prospects will find reasons why not to buy. Your content address the reasons they wouldn’t buy – with counter content that helps them feel comfortable.
• Positive News Movement: Quarterly growth updates are an easy way to update the buying audience about the growth and movement in the brand.
• Aggregated News: Whenever your brand is featured in the media, we should take these third party validation pieces and aggregate onto the site. Additionally, if you want to get creative:
• Take a headline from another brand and write what you would have said had you been interviewed for that story.
• Take a headline including another brand (competitor or similar investment) and write your opinion about what they are doing and how you do it better.

Our account team will work with you to ensure we have each part of the puzzle planned and set up to support the buyer’s journey. And remember, within the 1851 dashboard, you have the ability to write and post your own whenever you want. (Ask us how!) 

Step 3: Build the Audience

With defined targets (persona and markets) and strategic content (great stories), now you need to build the audience. Audiences are built through a three-pronged approach: Earned, Owned, Paid.

Earned audiences are organic. They are built from main site spotlight positioning, SEO, Google searches, and 1851’s own marketing of the content through our social channels.

Owned audiences are built from nurturing campaigns to those connected to your brand. Take the below steps with your published content: 

1. Share it to your personal social media sites.
2. Share the right content to your brand’s social media sites.
3. Email the story to your co-workers and franchisees so they can share. Remember, franchisees sell franchises!
4. Create a monthly newsletter (we can help!) that shares all of your content to both active and dead leads.
5. Create an internal monthly recap newsletter for franchisees.
6. Highlight a supplier in your content (so they will share it with their networks).
7. Utilize webinars (led by us or your team), newsletters and drip campaigns.

Paid audiences are built from leveraging our AMPD tool, PPC, and retargeting campaigns.

Step 4: Measure the Engagement

In today’s world, data is king, yet few brands are truly leveraging their data to optimize their campaigns. To do so:

1. Download your monthly data report (click the PDF creator on your analytics tab on the 1851 dashboard).
2. Analyze which stories are getting the most reads.
3. Review the analytics on your development site. Which articles are driving the most referrals from 1851 into your site?
4. What markets are you seeing the most traffic from (with low lead conversions)? We should build a story that resonates with that market specifically.
5. Listen to insights from your prospects. What are their hesitations? What are their concerns? What excites them? This is valuable data.

If analyzing your data seems overwhelming, don’t worry, we can help. 

Following the process (or even parts of it) will help drive the readership for your content and encourage users to use the storytelling to motivate them in the buying/sales process.

The best brands have taken the above and put it to work (either with our help or on their own).

Remember, the lead time from when prospective franchisees start researching brands to when they inquire is long. They often do a great deal of online research about a brand before actually engaging with it, and you want that information to be solid and compelling.  

We use our 1851 Franchise platform to help brands shout their successes from the rooftops and grow their audiences organically. We develop captivating content around people and topics that are important to your target audience. In the branded articles we write for you, we make sure to link to relevant content across both 1851 and the web to paint a comprehensive picture of your franchise opportunity. 

And, by promoting this content through 1851, prospective franchisees are seeing it as third-party validation rather than marketing directly from your brand. 

As a next step, we would be happy to review the above and make sure all the elements are in place to maximize your success.