How Mainland and 1851 Franchise Impact Your Brand Story & Supports the Sales Funnel

You might be asking yourself, "PR sounds great and all, but what does it do for our bottom line?" At Mainland and 1851 Franchise, we make sure that every solution we provide is designed to drive leads and sales straight to your door. Our 3-part process starts by establishing your story and audience and takes you all the way through publication and distribution.

Part 1 | Who is Your Target and Where Are They?

This is essential to creating the voice. Who are they? What do they do?

With our model, this is established in a few ways:

1. Through a persona project, we interview your franchisees to understand their buying process, what they read, how they search, and what gaps they see in the brand (your blind spots).
2. You have the insights, so you answer: where do you want to grow? This can be established through your insights, real estate/targeting tools and Google Analytics studying.

Ultimately, our recommendation is to pile on in states (when you have a validator), meaning increase your budget in that state and surrounding states. And use insights (like economic conditions, product interest) to influence your strategy.

Part 2 | Establish the Content

In today’s franchise development world, the prospect needs to be fed content that helps them figure out their decision. Their decision is the key term, meaning they want to come to the conclusion that your brand makes sense for them on their own.

To do so, they spend a ton of time researching, reading and absorbing various parts of your story.

Upon interviewing buyers after they have bought, there are a lot of similarities in why:

• They believe in your product.
• Leadership makes them feel confident in the future.
• The cost to get in aligns with their financial goals.
• They can open in the market they want.
• When asked if they would do it again, they say “Absolutely.”

With this insight, we build content that supports each of these categories. Based on the level of engagement with Mainland, this can either happen quickly or slowly and methodically.

Our Baseline Content Check List includes:

• Aggregated Content: Earned (PR) media from the past, updated with a more current statement (size of brand, growth quote, cost to open)
• 4 Key Stories: These will create real content on the site that we can build from:
• Franchise Growth (why you, why now): Essentially the launch news story. Why is the brand a great business opportunity, and why should someone buy now?
• Franchisee Highlight Story: This will be a story on an existing franchisee. We will want you to guide who we feature.
• Franchise Growth Market: This will be a market you have identified for growth.
• Consumer Positioning: How you are standing out in the category? This should include corporate and franchisee interviews.

Then, the following stories create an incredible baseline:

Category 1: Positioning the Brand

1. Why I Bought [Brand]
2. A Breakdown of FDD, What a Buyer Needs to Know
3. How [Brand] Stands Out
4. 5 Tips for Performing Due Diligence on [Brand]
5. CEO Brand Update & Vision
6. Competitive Landscape Review

Category 2: Growth of the Brand

1. Targeted Growth Stories 1 - 4: Why this brand, why now, why this market?
2. Category Winning
3. National Story: What is the most important thing happening in [Brand] this month?
4. Multi-Unit: How I grew my [Brand] business

Category 3: Opening, Signing, Marketing

1. New Opening Feature: Franchisee to Open in X Market
2. Signing Feature: Franchisee Signs on to Open in X Market
3. Consumer/Marketing: New Product Feature

Category 4: Franchisees

1. Franchisee Profile
2. Employee Profile: Why I Love [Brand]
3. Why I Bought [Brand]
4. Why I Am Growing with [Brand]

Then, we get into counter content, which will be your point of view that answers any reason someone wouldn’t buy the brand.

So, you have some content, now what?

If you engage Mainland and 1851 for digital services and advertising (what we call AMPD), we can:

• Build look-a-like audiences of current franchisees or leads.
• Build a matched audience that takes your leads and sends them content.
• Build audiences of those who have gone to your development site but haven’t filled out an application.
• Target similar brands: Not just competitors but investment ranges, as buyers will be talked into looking at a category of investment.

Part 3 | Amplify the Reach of Your Content Through Internal, Earned (PR) and Paid Distribution

How Audiences Are Built on Mainland and 1851:

• 1851 Natural/Organic Audience: Search for “Chicken Wing Franchise” and you will find 1851 in the top results. We are owning key terms that buyers would search for to ensure we are driving people interested in owning a franchise into the site. Then, from the story, they can click into the specific brand page to learn more about the opportunity.
• Brand Audience Inbound: Brands will create and build their audience through various means:  
• Newsletters (introducing content to your audience) to cold/active leads and to current franchisees.
• Send an intro newsletter (either created by 1851 or by you) to your audience lists.
• Cold/Warm Leads: Sharing updated content (every 4 articles or so).
• Current franchisees/internal team: Sharing that you have new stories live (either individually on new content, or every 4).

Sharing on social media: Every time a new story publishes, your team posts on social and then shares it with their audiences.

Brand audience paid: Through AMPD, you can increase the right audience in the right markets by building ad campaigns. This can be done through your social too by boosting a post.

How to pick the right content: There are three easy ways. First, if you see an article is getting more reads than another, that means the content is sticky. Second, look in Google Analytics and see if you find a spike in article referral traffic. Third, determine whether or not that story addresses a key part of the buyer’s process (like an updated growth story).

Ultimately, to be successful, brands will want to:

• Create/measure content that resonates with that audience.
• Campaign against that content and through 1851.
• Nurture the audience.
• Use the content to constantly deliver the news of the brand.

So, what can you do on your own?

When an article publishes:

• Post on your brand's social media and tag the sources
• Boost that post to the right audience
• Send it out to your lead database (letting them know that a new piece of content has published)
• Send it to your team and ask them to like, share or comment on social media  
• Send it to any franchise brokers you are connected with
• Send it to your customers (oftentimes, customers end up being prospective buyers)
• Add the News widget to your site to encourage more research
• Post the article on LinkedIn Pulse
• Get proactive — find connections on LinkedIn and send them a link
• Post on PR Web (for further reach)

Other things Mainland and 1851 Franchise can do:

• Film a video interview with you and/or your franchisees to elevate the creative/storytelling beyond just an article. We can even turn that video into many pieces of content (broken out by specific/impactful quotes, shareable images for social)
• Help you strategize your marketing spend
• Help you define your positioning
• Improve your franchise sales site
• Amplify the stories or create momentum through earned PR
• Build a how-to guide — how to be successful as a franchisee

The bottom line is, Mainland and 1851 Franchise can do a lot to impact your brand story and your sales funnel. We know the franchise business inside and out, and we have the expertise, strategy and technology to help you achieve your growth goals.