When you’re looking for business growth, researching how to market a franchise is crucial for long term success.
Unfortunately, budding businesses can often find themselves drowned out by a sea of similar hopefuls. Franchises and start-ups face problems that can seem insurmountable. These include weak advertising, poor user interaction, and a lack of publicity.
Marketing is the obvious solution to all of these problems, but how do you find the right marketing strategies and techniques?
There are three steps to begin this process:
- establishing the techniques you’ll use
- identifying your audience
- identifying what you’re “selling” and budgeting
How to Market a Franchised Business
Choosing Marketing Techniques
Modern marketing is so much more than newspaper ads and television commercials.
From ads to keywords to social media usage, there are so many marketing terms and techniques to learn about.
Some of the most important things to consider when learning how to market a franchise include:
SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization. This often entails a large number of marketing techniques to aid in search engine results. The sooner a business appears on the search engine results pages (SERPs), the greater chance it has of attracting clicks, views, traffic, and even sales.
Optimizing search engine rankings requires attention to keywords and readability of content. You also need a user-friendly website and knowledge of each search engine’s requirements.
Ads
There are plenty of internet advertising techniques that are floated around, but one of the most common is pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
These methods involve paying publishers to show brief ads and videos on their sites that will direct the viewer to the business’s website. This increases traffic and eventually revenue, but some output is required.
Social Media
Social media is a key part of business and franchise marketing because of the vastness of the audience that it reaches. Ads aren’t the only way to make the most of social media; an influential presence or large following on social media can also garner attention and increase sales.
By interacting with followers, building profiles, and connecting with potential clients and customers, businesses can use social media to the best of their advantage.
Interact with your social media followers.
Identify Your Audience And Your Intention
As of March 2019, 90% of the North American population and more than 50% of the world’s population had internet access.
This is a large market of people that you could potentially reach and draw interest to your products or services.
You’ll need to first identify who you’re trying to reach and generate interest in.
Baby boomers, millennials, and Generations X and Z all have specific interests that have been cultivated both by the cultures they grew up in and the present one. Other factors that have affected their responsiveness to marketing include previous marketing attempts and demographics such as:
- race
- culture
- location
- religion
- political beliefs
- personal values
As of March 2019, 90% of North America and 50% of the world’s population has internet access.
Identifying your audience can help you narrow down which techniques you’ll use and how you’ll portray your message. For example, an older audience may require older techniques and a more refined message. Meanwhile, a younger target group may mean increased use of social and visual media.
Your intentions here are also of importance. What exactly are you trying to sell? Is it a service, a product, or an idea?
This will have a large bearing on how you choose to market yourself and your franchise. Marketing products may mean greater use of ads and visual media, while a service may require blogs and written content to increase visibility.
Think about what you’re trying to sell.
The Importance of Budgeting
Marketing a franchise, especially a new one or one delving into unfamiliar territory, requires the establishment of a budget and a limit on spending.
Considering agencies is a great idea when first venturing into the marketing world because of their clean-cut rates and inclusive plans. Marketing professionals work hard to tailor their services to each business that hires them, and the abundance of marketing agencies means there are plenty of options for any industry.
Limit your spending.
There needs to be a limit, however, to how much you are willing to spend.
One agency may not include all of the techniques you’ll choose to use, so you need to make allowances for expenses you may choose to take on outside of the base rate you pay when you outsource. Setting specific goals will help you determine whether your current expenses and results are what you’re looking for.
Wasting money is certainly not an option for new businesses and for older ones either, so setting a fixed amount and fixed desired results can help you easily track progress and make alterations when necessary.
Other Marketing Tips
There is so much to learn about marketing that it can’t be condensed into one blog or even a few, and it can take years of trial and error to learn the best ways to put your business out there.
Readability for blog content, websites, and landing pages is crucial to good search engine rankings as well as increasing the time users spend on your site and the number of different pages they visit within the site. Backlinks to and hyperlinks from your websites are also important.
Learn How to Market a Franchise with EWR Digital!
The amount of information can be overwhelming, and that’s why marketing agencies are a great option for any business of any age. EWR Digital has consistently been delivering meaningful results for Houston franchises for 10 years. To learn more about how we can help build your business, contact us by clicking here!
How to Market a Franchise: The First 3 Steps | EWR Digital – Houston, TX