10 Tips for Spending Money to Find Franchise Leads

Getting great franchise leads isn’t like politics—whoever spends the most money doesn’t win. Spending smarter is what counts. Here are 10 tips to help you get started.

Invest in an experienced franchise development professional. This is crucial. You want someone experienced to lead the charge. They will help you generate leads effectively and provide insight into awarding them.

Spend money on a great franchise development site. When potential leads look at your brand’s franchise development site, they want to be impressed. Make sure your website is designed by a professional. Creativity counts.

Develop an SEO strategy for your franchise development site. If you want people to actually see your beautiful website, you need an SEO expert. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of making your website easily findable. If you don’t strategize key search terms and concepts, your website may be rendered virtually invisible to search engines, which means those using the search engines won’t see it either.

Take advantage of PR opportunities. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again— PR is your friend. If potential franchisees see positive buzz about your brand from the media, they’ll consider you more credible and trustworthy. They want to see proof that your brand is successful, not just hear it from you.

Create a pay per click (PPC) campaign targeting your top markets. How do search engines like Google and Yahoo! make so much money? Through PPC auctions. Brands and individuals can buy listings in search results. You can bid on an ad in an auction, and if you win, your brand gets that ad slot. These results are shown with organic, non-paid results. So, figure out your target market and start bidding!

Develop a remarketing campaign. If people have already visited your site, chances are they’re interested in what you have to say— or at least more interested than the people who don’t look at your site at all. Use this to your advantage and focus a portion of your efforts on them.

Create a smart social media strategy. Highlight franchisee and customer testimonials on your Facebook and Twitter, and post secured PR placements to your LinkedIn page. It pays to boost your social media footprint.

Invest in a CRM platform. CRM stands for customer relationship management. Your platform will allow you to manage your business relationships. You can store data about leads, potential leads and sales information all in one place.

Invest in targeted email blasts. If you’re spending time and money on customized emails, make sure you’re sending them to the right people. Try purchasing email lists with the demographics of your targeted candidates.