Why Google Analytics and Purposeful PR are Essential Tools for Franchisors Looking to Grow

Mainland* — a marketing and communications company and 1851 Franchise’s publisher — recently hosted a Coffee and Analytics webinar in which CEO Nick Powills walked through the company’s data-driven findings to explain how brands can leverage the power of Google Analytics and purposeful PR to achieve their franchise development goals.

The Power of Google Analytics

Google Analytics has always been an incredibly valuable tool for franchise development, Powills says, which is why 1851 Franchise and Mainland are constantly looking for ways to best utilize the platform.  

“If you are not using this tool, you need to be because it gives you tremendous insight as a franchisor,” said Powills. “It allows you to better determine what your growth goals are and where you need to be to get there. In franchise development, it is not just about the lead. You need to have the tools in place to grow and bookend those leads. With Google Analytics, you can determine if you are actually drawing in people in a certain target market. If you don’t have anybody in Milwaukee coming to your franchise development site, for example, the odds that you are going to find the right prospect decreases. From an indicator standpoint, Google Analytics can help us find where we have lift so we can establish the right target markets or adjust our strategy accordingly.”

Powills notes that franchisors should be looking for applications, not just leads. “A lot of franchisors look at leads as the main indicator of their growth, but the application is the critical value of that lead,” he said. “Those are prospects who have taken the next step, made the calls, gone through Discovery Day. You can spend money on lead generation until you're blue in the face, but if you are not focused on applications, you are wasting time.” 

With Google Analytics, Powills says franchisors can be better prepared to focus on those indicators of where applications are coming from. “On the front end, Google Analytics allows you as a brand to understand your data — where are your top markets? Where are people coming from? This can help you decide your growth strategy,” he said. “If you have traffic in Milwaukee, the odds of you getting an application increases, as long as we're targeting the right people. Additionally, you can cross-reference franchise development site traffic and consumer site traffic in specific markets to find where there is demand on both ends.”

Recently, Google Analytics rolled out a new version, and Powills says after checking it out, it is clear that it is not as simple and user-friendly as before. That is why Powills says Mainland is looking to reconstruct its Google Analytics solution on the backend of 1851 Franchise so it is as simple as possible for clients to determine which markets have a higher penetration from a development standpoint and align that with the consumer standpoint. 

“That is a big focus of ours moving forward as we make investments in that category of data,” said Powills. “Anytime new technology comes through, it takes some time to understand, but Google Analytics is very important to franchise development, and we want to make sure to give our clients the tools to be successful.”

For those new to Google Analytics, Powills recommends logging on, checking out the geo tab, clicking U.S. and looking at traffic on all markets, as well as other indicators like time on site, bounce rates, etc. “If you have not spent time in Google Analytics, a 15-minute tour can show you some really cool things and help you determine your strategy moving forward,” he said.

The Power of PR

This month, Mainland has also continued to analyze its pool of nearly 300 franchisee profile interviews to determine where candidates across its client portfolio are receiving their information and how it is getting absorbed before signing. One big question Powills says they have been asking is: how can you impact franchise development through traditional PR? 

“We know in general that extra credit from third-party reporters does help impact leads, but I’ve always found PR to be about lead awareness, not generation,” Powills said. “The website ends up being the lead generator because that is where the prospect fills out a form. PR is just the starting point that leads to awareness.” 

By sifting through the data and franchisee responses, Powills says Mainland can build out a stronger PR plan that aligns with what franchisors are trying to accomplish. 

“We had a client with a large volume of leads last year, so we decided to chart out the PR we secured for them on a week-by-week basis,” said Powills. “We found that consistency of press is essential. Any week we were in the press, leads went up. Although PR is about lead awareness, it can also be the thing that pushes candidates over the edge. It's like the coin game at the arcade — there were already a lot of coins that were sitting there, but that last coin of the PR moment pushes them all over the edge.” 

That is why Mainland aims to achieve 52 placements a year for each of its clients in order to keep them in the media as frequently as possible. Additionally, Powills says the company pairs that with strategic content posted on 1851 Franchise. 

“From there, the big gap is: what are we doing with this PR and content? Do we send it to current leads, cold leads, existing franchisees? What is the campaign strategy beyond getting these big wins? We want to make sure we are sharing every placement on social media, for example,” Powills said.

And social media is increasingly becoming an essential resource for franchise candidates. When asked where they learned information about the franchise opportunity, Mainland found that most of the franchisees they polled said that social media was their primary source of news, particularly Facebook and Linkedin. Many prospects also found out about brands through local TV and community-focused newspapers, trade magazines, business journals, or national publications like Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and CNN. 

At the end of the day, Powills says Mainland’s primary goal is to build a consultancy that creates PR with a purpose. “If we do it that way, the odds of us impacting the lead generation process is going to increase for our franchisors,” he said. 

A Game Plan for the Future

Powills says August has been about leveraging data findings and looking ahead to establish future strategies. “Now that we are through the first seven months of the year with this data, there are strong conclusions coming into place,” he said. “We are starting to think about next year and how we can extract these findings and turn them into a solid game plan for the future.” 

Whether it be the analytic side, the PR side or both combined, Powills says Mainland is continually evolving its process and developing a more robust strategy to impact business on behalf of its clients. 

“If Mainland is an airplane and our clients hire us to be the captain, some of the brands we work with really want to ask questions and learn how the plane flies, while others just want to sit back and be told when the plane is working,” said Powills. “Either way is fine, and our primary goal is really just to extract the right data and do something with it, which is in line with what we want to accomplish overall from a strategy standpoint.” 

Watch the full webinar here.