Category Archives: Lead Generation

Localizing key to Conversion rate Optimization for Franchises

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Here are a few simple ways you can optimize your Franchise websites for lead optimization. Read on to also see our 8 Point Checklist For LOCALIZING your Franchise/Franchisee’s Websites.

Have a Locally Optimized Website

Having a website that is optimized for local exposure gives your local franchises ‘credibility’ with the search engines.  The franchisee will be seen as a local business and can enhance their authority as a local professional and expert and boost website conversion.

Keep Your Website Updated

Having up to date news and content on each Franchisee website, including local ‘Grass  Roots’ news and information, is important to convey ‘freshness’ with search engines.

Put What the Consumer Wants Upfront

Put information about your services and products upfront. Also, make your join pages easy to get to! Front page access is best.  Give them this information upfront; don’t make them dig around your site looking for it. Your website visitors have a need – i.e. the service you provide - and the sooner you demonstrate that you can satisfy that need, the better. Continue reading →

Pinterest drives more traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, MySpace YouTube, and Reddit – Is It Something You Should Consider to Share Your Franchises Brand Image?

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Pinterest is a new(er) social media site that could very well help you get the desired “local” exposure as well as engagement for your franchise.  Read on to see how companies like Lands’ End to Facebook are using Pinterest to their advantage.

Pinterest is a new, innovative and exciting site that allows its users to ‘Pin’ images from anywhere online. It has quickly become a large social community of people who like to view the world through imagery.  Pinterest is built upon SHARING.  Sharing personally built life categories with personally built content.

The best thing about Pinterest is the ability to get personal with others. For a business that could be showing and demonstrating their products and services to customers in a whole new way. This is a great platform to establish franchisees local presence through the personal ‘boards’ in Pinterest.

One of the biggest advantages to Pinterest is the demographic that has made the site so popular. The site caters to a female audience (reportedly nearing 70 percent), most of whom are under the age of 45. This much sought after demographic can play a key part in the purchasing decisions of the average American household and your bottom line.

How can your franchise brand use an image sharing website?

Whether you sell something that’s exciting, seemingly uninteresting or especially offer a unique service that’s hard to understand Pinterest will make it exciting and simple to understand through imagery. W a bit of creativity and research you’re bound to find a way to use the new platform.  Especially if you use Pinterest to invite your customers into your personal franchise business or local franchise life.

Here are some creative ways to establish your brand locally with Pinterest

Hold a Contest

One creative way to utilize Pinterest is to hold a contest. Lands’ End recently held a contest they coined: “Pin It to Win It”. Participants were encouraged to browse the Lands’ End site, create pins of items they liked and the most creative and stylish entries won prizes. This kind of contest can engage your audience and also gets them to your site, browsing your products and linking to them!

A hair and beauty franchise could give a demonstration on quick hair styles or hold a contest as such while a food and beverage franchise could hold a local photo at the location contest. Again, creativity and making the contest unique with a local twist would be advantageous.

Conduct Market Research

Have plans to revamp services or products in 2012?  Why not test out new products or even your upcoming ad campaign on Pinterest?

Other brands have started using Pinterest as a platform to conduct market research or test product launches. In a recent Mashable post, one creative suggestion was to use Pinterest as sort of a social online focus group to see first-hand reactions, on a platform not as inundated as Facebook.

Feature Customers

One way to appeal to this demographic is to play to their vanity. Feature customers on your Pins, especially if you have a clothing boutique or store. “Customer A paired these shoes, belt and top to create this stylish winter cocktail party look!”. Showcase customer purchases that exemplify their style or pin photos of products that go well together and that customer X recommends.

Present Concepts in a New Way

Pinterest allows you to add contributors to your boards. Have a few team members put together a storyboard on Pinterest to present to a customer. Or co-Pin with a customer to create a board full of ideas for their next event or shopping spree.

If the product or idea is presented in a clean, simple and creative way using Pinterest it can stand a chance of being better received. Not only that, it allows you to creatively engage with customers and prospects can see too!

Put a Face to Your Franchise Brand

Personalizing and localizing your brand can be a hard thing to do with plain ol’ web copy. Use Pinterest to showcase your brand uniquely, what makes you different, what your brand stands for and use it as an opportunity to highlight your employees too. Putting a face to your brand is key to localizing your brand and easily done with Pinterest.

Promote Your Franchise Image Content

A franchise brand could start a board on  infographics.  Feature all of your image content in one place for easy access.

Infographics, product photos and your own photography can be featured. Do your research and see how other brands are using Pinterest to share their image content.

Pinterest can help a customer see the full picture of their needs before they even know they need it. Pin photos of activities in the area and how they relate to your franchise, landscape photos, photos of the local business and of course the staff. The possibilities really can be endless.

These are just a few of the creative ways your franchise brand can use Pinterest to spark interest and engage with customers. And to wet your palate for Pinterest even more, check out the announcement from Facebook – 60 new and exciting apps were unveiled including a Pinterest app.

A picture is worth a thousand words, in Pinterest’s case, an image could be the local exposure your franchise brand is needing to establish that local location to generate more leads.

Here is a great article on Pinterest’s popularity and it’s ability to drive traffic:  http://mashable.com/2012/02/01/pinterest-traffic-study/

Brought to you by ElementsLocal – the leader in branding your franchise locally.

Franchise Online Marketing Outlook for 2012: Creating an Adaptive Marketing Platform

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Reflecting back is more than just remembering where you wanted to be. It’s an eye opener about how dramatically the sands shifted under your feet in 2011 and a clear sign 2012 will be no different.

For Franchise Marketers Google introduced significant changes to the way it displays and delivers search results. Many franchise marketers had to quickly react to the importance of social media, blogging and directories. Our own vision of being a complete solution for franchise online marketing was expanded to include new best of breed partners in directory submission and social media. Our dashboard reflects the integrated nature of how pay-per-click, organic search and directories (such as Google Places) inter-relate and converge.

This being said, what does 2012 hold in store for Franchise online marketing? Seeing future trends is exactly what we need to do in order to anticipate change and be at the top of our game.

It’s not just about how to show up, attract and sell to consumers today, but next month, next year and years to come.  Lets transcend ideas like “social network” and “search engine” and focus  on consumers and technologies. Will we be using a search engine like Google in 5 years? Will we be using desktop computers in 5 years? What will future social networks look like? Answers to those questions are answers to the future of marketing and customer engagement.

Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and plenty of other large companies are innovating at amazing speed to gain control of our attention. Some are doing it through devices, some through content, others through infrastructure.

So, what is message we got from 2011? Change… we must take a critical look at what it will take to adapt to change.  Rather than jumping from one place to the next in your franchise online marketing plan, consider developing an adaptive model that allows for rapid assimilation of new technologies and trends.

Creating an adaptive model assumes that you will have to adopt new technologies or new methodologies. Is your company an early adopter? Have you taken on the risk of adopting a technology platform before everyone else? Or have you given up first mover advantage because you felt it was going to be too expensive or time consuming. Continue reading →

How Can Franchises Take Advantage of Everything Google Offers?

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Google is the most popular search engine in the world for a few good reasons. Its simple uncluttered interface, vast number of webpages and great results are among the top reasons.

But that’s not all Google has to offer and we find Franchise businesses using Google more and more to market and advertise, enhance their social media and mobile marketing, analyze their website traffic and even optimize and split test how effective the conversion is on their websites.

So ELEMENTS has decided recommend some of the hottest Google tools we see Franchises using today. ELEMENTS will also be conducting a FREE webinar on this topic on June 21st (click here to sign up >>).

Local Search & Advertising

1) Google Places

One of the largest impacts to the local search arena stems from Google Places, an online local directory of businesses. Most importantly, Google Places is no longer a separate search product anymore. Google now displays Google Place’s search results blended directly into Google’s general or “Everything” search when the search terms indicate that the end user might be looking for a product or service that can be satisfied locally.

Google Places Local Blend

Franchises now must ensure all of their locations are setup properly and optimized in Google Places in order to show up when people perform searches that can be satisfied locally.

2) Google AdWords Location Extensions

AdWords is Google’s PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising platform. Google has added location extensions to their AdWords system which allows the owner of the advertisement to display their advertisements to specified locations. Location extensions help make the consumer aware that the product or service they are looking for can be fulfilled locally.

3) Google Keyword Tool and Google Trends

By using Google’s free Keyword Tool, companies are better able to determine what keywords people are searching for and which keyword term targets would just waste their website’s valuable real estate. To receive top rankings in Google a company must play by their rules, expand their offerings and monetizing the marketability of their products or services. Getting traffic is great, but converting traffic into sales or leads is the true goal of the SEO game.

The Google Trends Tool can help your company determine search traffic trends when comparing multiple sets of keywords. For example, the following search comparing Netflix, Block Buster and Hollywood Video shows the dramatic difference in searches for those three businesses:

Google Trends

Social Media

4) Social Signals Effect Rank

Recently both Bing and Google have admitted that mentions of and links to web pages found in public social media postings can positively effect a website’s search engine rankings. The idea behind this is that social media users will share links to websites that they trust and enjoy so the more users sharing these links through social media the more perceived value these websites have. However, not all social media personas carry the same weight. Search engines look at the “social authority” of the user that shared that link and give more value to links shared by users with more credibility.

5) Google +1

At the time of this publication Google +1 is currently in beta testing mode. The idea behind Google +1 is to use one’s social network (Google contacts) for recommendations on which search results they found the most for their own search queries. So if your friend marked a result as valuable, there is good cause for the Google search engine to think that you might like it as well because you both exist within the same social circle.

Today (June 1st), Google has launched their +1 Button which can be added to any website to encourage friend recommendations in the same way that Facebook users can currently “like” a website page. In a way, Google is leveraging its’ entire user-base as quality control staff. While Google states that under the current system recommendations only come from the user’s social network, we can foresee a time when Google will recommend websites from outside of your social circle based on the number of +1’s a website has received and the perceived social authority of the rankee.

Click here for more information on the +1 Button.

6) Google Places Reviews

Earlier we discussed the importance of Google Places to local search. Perhaps the most important factor in getting a Place’s page to rank well is the number of positive reviews a business has in relation to their local competition. The reviews found on Google Places can be drawn from several places. One such place is the social review website Yelp. Google also has its’ own social review system (formally called Hotpot) which has now been integrated directly into Google Places. Both Yelp & Google Places allow users to track reviews and interact with their friends within their social network. According to Google, they now have millions of users rating places more than a million times per month.

7) Google’s Realtime Social Media Search Results

Alongside their Everything and Places search Google has various other search types. One of these variant searches is Google’s Realtime search. Google’s Realtime search results display “up-to-the-second” updates from various social media outlets including news articles, blog posts and Tweets. The search result page is no longer a static listing, but instead updates when a new post relevant to your search query is detected by Google.

These real-time searches can be beneficial for businesses looking to leverage current trends in their marketing efforts or for franchises looking to react quickly to protect their brand when trouble arises.

8) Google’s Algorithmic Changes that Recognize Brands

Social media mentions of a company name will pass along a brand impression for that company. The more mentions of a company’s name Google can find the more likely it is to treat that business as a notable brand. Brands have become an important factor to Google when determining search engine rankings because Google now considers brand name products and services as more trustworthy and therefore ranks brands higher than their non-branded competition.

Franchises can leverage social media to expand their company’s brand impression. Companies should encourage their employees to create personal LinkedIn profiles and link them to their company. Facebook posts & Twitter tweets can now be found in both Google’s Realtime search and its’ Everything search giving more exposure to a company’s brand name than franchises with inactive social media accounts that are not engaging existing or potential customers through those social mediums. Serious and authentic blog commenting with a mention of your company’s brand is just another social media outlet that can garner your brand’s name more exposure.

Aside from social media there are other very useful ways to expose your brand’s name to consumers. Successful offline advertising can have a positive impact on brand recognition. Franchises could even publish an eBook or two about franchising and about their brand which not only will receive mentions from social media and traditional media sources like press releases, but these books can also be found in online libraries like Google Scholar.

Mobile Marketing

9) Google Mobile Location Based Ads

Google AdWords offers location centric mobile advertising to allow local businesses to target leads based on the user’s immediate location. These location based ads offer the interested user an expandable map with turn by directions and a click-to-call phone number. There is some chatter at Google about other new “rich ad units” for mobile coming down the pipe to further leverage the mobile platform, including ads meant specifically for tablet devices.

10) Google Places Offer Mobile Coupons

When customers find a specific local store or service on Google Places through their mobile device, that business can offer digital coupons directly to that device in order to convert that lead into a walk-in customer. Owners of the devices can then show the business their coupon directly on their phone without having to print it out on a piece of paper. One of the best benefits of Google Place’s mobile coupons is that the coupons get distributed for free, unlike many offline paper distribution methods.

Traffic Metrics & Conversion Optimization

11) Google Analytics Traffic & SEO Metrics

Google Analytics is a free traffic reporting tool that allows companies to tunnel deeply into their visitor and website metrics in order to better determine the success of their website. Just some of the valuable visitor and search metrics one can obtain from Google Analytics are the most popular pages on your websites, the keywords that are driving search traffic to your websites, what external websites are sending your website traffic and the level of engagement of your website.

Google Analytics has completely changed how businesses look at their website’s statistics. This free hosted solution makes adding metric tracking to your website a breeze and provides in depth reporting second to none. Along with these valuable benefits, Google Analytics also allows companies to integrate their Google AdWords & Google AdSense campaigns into its reports, to set goals with varying values for conversion tracking and to build custom scheduled statistical reports.

In the franchise space specifically, ELEMENTS has begun using Google Analytics to provide rollup reporting across an entire franchisee network of websites as well as offering franchisees access to their own individual Google Analytics reports.

12) Website Optimizer for Conversion Optimization

The success of a website cannot purely be determined by the number of visitors to a website alone. Most websites have conversion goals like a checkout through their shopping cart or a newsletter sign-up for future targeted marketing. This is where conversion optimization comes into play.

Conversion optimization is the process of altering a page on a website in order to increase the amount achieved goals. Sometimes this can mean changing the call to action text or adding a big green button to the page. Conversion optimization is an art form but with Google’s Website Optimizer almost anyone can learn how to better their conversions on any given page.

In its simplest form, Website Optimizer allows you to create to competing pages and then it splits the traffic between the two pages and determines which page has the best conversion or goal achievement ratio. Website Optimizer also allows a company to alter individual page snippets in order to determine which of these snippets on the page lead to the most conversions.

Social Media Is Important, But So is Local Search

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Social Media Is Important, But So is Local Search

With all the hype about social media and speculation that mobile is where everything’s moving, it’s difficult to determine what is most important to your Internet marketing strategy.

The most important thing you can do is allow your audience to drive your decisions and not the latest and greatest technology. While many businesses may be pushing their brands and establishing themselves in social media, research by the Kelsey Group shows that over 57% of people online are performing local searches. And if you’re curious about where those people are clicking, a research study done by Cornell University showed that the top 3 Google results get 79% of all of the clicks.

So, how do you get to the top 3 in Google?

In order to achieve high local rankings for each of your franchise locations it is important for the search engines to know about each physical location and that each physical location is relevant and popular enough to make the top 3 spots in the search results.

Below are just a few key strategies any franchise can leverage to ensure the localized search results that will produce the most local leads.

Local Websites

Consider having a unique website for each franchisee, with its own domain name and the ability for the franchisee to update it. By giving the franchisee control of a portion of the website allows them to tell their story and is enough information to make that franchise location’s website unique from other franchisee’s websites and stand out from their local competitors.

Domain Names

Also consider having a separate domain name per franchise location. By having its own domain name you can use a ‘keyword rich’ name which will garner you greater search relevance for your top keywords and also allow you to create a ‘back link’ strategy by linking all of franchise location websites to each other. There are several ways of choosing how to optimize your domain name for local search, but doing so is important because Google puts a lot of weight on a domain name when deciding where a website should rank.

Local Optimization

Another essential key to ensure high localized search engine rankings is optimizing the page contents of a website for product, brand and location.  This means that on your franchise location’s website you should include location keywords into appropriate links, titles, meta-tags and images.  Another great tip is to place the address of the franchise location at the top of every web page as it allows search engines to easily find that physical location and give your website higher location relevance because of it.

Off Site Localization

Lastly it helps to have other sites linking to your website and your physical location.  Get your franchise locations reviewed in Yelp.  Submit the franchise location to directories like Google Places, Yahoo Local and Superpages.com.  The more websites linking to your website and physical location the better as those links will help increase your stature as a local business that is both relevant and popular.

These are just a few tips on how to improve your local search. It can be overwhelming when dealing with hundreds or even thousands of franchisees and websites, but a properly developed local websites program that brings in more leads and provides other value added services such as email messaging and social media, is bound to have an extremely high adoption rate amongst your franchisees.

Using Metro-Pages to Avoid “Territory Conflicts”

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

With over 80% of people searching online to find local businesses prior to purchasing goods and services, more and more franchises are responding by getting local with their franchise online marketing.

One way franchises are getting local is by having websites for each franchise location.  Using localized websites, franchise marketers are driving more and more traffic from local searches directly to the franchise locations their customers prefer.

However, large franchise systems run into “territory conflict” when they have multiple franchise locations in one densely populated metro area. This can cause confusion with consumers when they type in ‘hair cut Austin TX’ and find five locations near them. And what could be worse is if the first listing they find in the search engine is the furthest from them.

Elements, Inc., developers of the ElementsLocal™ software platform for franchise online marketing, has developed a new concept called “Metro Pages” to help avoid territory conflict.  By placing all of the neighboring franchise locations on a “Metro Page”, and placing a Google Map on that page, it allows customers to select the franchise location of their choice.  This drives more online leads to every franchise location, unveils more options   and simplifies the customer experience.

“One of the great things about our Metro Pages is that our system automatically creates the listings based on the pre-defined metro areas, or regions, of a franchise system.  This is just another example of our platform creating automated ways to increase organic, natural listings”, stated Jeremy La Duque, CEO Elements, Inc.  “Ultimately, we’re always looking for new ways to improve the expansion of a brand through online marketing while deepening customer engagement with that brand.”

Metro Pages will be released this month  as another valuable component of the ElementsLocal™ software platform.

The Inbound Advantage: Tips to Evolve Your Franchise’s Marketing Strategy

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

 In a world where marketing messages abound in nearly every aspect of daily life, a new, discerning consumer has evolved – one adept at filtering and tuning out information irrelevant to personal interests. Rightly so, franchise marketing tactics need to also undergo a major shift, since traditional outbound techniques such as advertising and unsolicited email blasts are increasingly becoming blocked or ignored.

                “Franchises should focus the majority of their marketing budget on inbound, not outbound initiatives,” said Jeremy LaDuque, CEO of Elements Inc., creator of ElementsLocal™, a new software solution for franchises that increases company leads through maximized search engine results. “When you push your message out far and wide with little discretion, you’re essentially crossing your fingers that it will resonate with a few individuals. Inbound marketing generates leads that are more abundant and credible, as potential customers seeking your services have been attracted organically through search engines, blogs and social media.”

          

  • Get Local. Instead of relying on just one national web site for the entire franchise network, provide cross-linked autonomous and brand-compliant web sites for each location. As the franchisor, you benefit from:

o    A “network effect” of hundreds of web sites, each displaying relevant content about the company, being seen by search engines, which increases rankings and visibility

o    An ability to leverage each franchise by allowing franchisees to customize (according to franchisor specifications)  their web site with local content and local e-marketing campaigns

  • Get Optimized. Some simple ways to get started with search engine optimization:

1)       Focus the attention of each webpage to just a few keywords

2)       Add relevant content about those select key words to that webpage

3)       Add those keywords to the title and meta tags of that webpage

 

Get Social. Social media is the fastest-growing segment of the Internet, and best of all, it’s much less expensive than most other marketing tactics. Get your franchise on board by:

o    Participating in social media sites such as Facebook and You Tube. Start a corporate Facebook profile and seek out fans or upload informative – or even humorous – videos that have “pass-along” potential, such as an engaging company story or client testimonials. This will help attract more visitors to your web site, increase your exposure within a larger audience and boost your search engine ranking.

o    Using a blog and/or Twitter to publish information about your business. Gaining “followers” or subscribers not only increases the audience for your company message, but also helps you gain valuable insight from the comments consumers leave on your posts.

  • Get Efficient. Inbound marketing efforts are highly track-able, so employ various strategies to monitor the efficiency of your efforts. This will allow you to repeat what’s working, discontinue what’s not, and gauge what’s providing you with the best return on investment (ROI). Some helpful hints:

o    First, establish exactly what it is you want to track and make sure you have a way to measure what you want to track

o    Use statistical programs like Google Analytics to monitor web site traffic behavior – from number of pages viewed to length of time on the site

o    Use landing pages to track specific ad campaigns and/or marketing initiatives

o    Track throughout – from campaign to conversion to sale!

                “As franchises start to ‘think inbound’ in their marketing strategies, they’ll attract customers who are appropriate for and receptive to the company message,” said LaDuque. “This competitive advantage will not only save franchises money, but will also help them build lasting and loyal relationships with clients.”

               

LaDuque Leads Internet Power Training

Posted on by Michael Boyer

Recession proof your business at the first Marketing Bootcamp. The Marketing Bootcamp brings together several top nationally known marketing experts and companies to help you stay the course while the economy gets back on its feet as well as stimulate business growth.

Learn how to use the power of the Internet and your website for more than just information exchange with Jeremy LaDuque, CEO of ELEMENTS, Inc. LaDuque will teach you to leverage your website to set and attain your marketing goals, analyze your statistics and tailor key performance indicators (KPIs) to fit your business and objectives.

INTERNET POWER TRAINING 1:50 – 3 PM

MARKETING BOOTCAMP- Learn Everything You Need to Know to Grow Your Business and Brand!
Saturday, May 16, 2009
8:00 am-4:30 pm
The Embassy Suites in San Luis Obispo

THIS EVENT IS SPONSORED BY: Central Coast Magazine, Mission Community Services Corporation, Central Coast Women’s Network, Pacific Coast Business Times, New World of Media, Elements, Inc. and Whizbang Ideas!

10 Ways to Improve Lead Generation and Close More Sales

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

The International Franchise  Association’s (IFA) Annual Convention in San Diego, CA offered a wide variety of very relevant roundtable discussions to attendees. ELEMENTS Inc.’s executive team, Jeremy LaDuque (CEO), Michael Boyer (CMO) and Steve Bridge (CFO), participated in six of them covering topics such as lead generation, online marketing and optimizing follow-up on online leads.

Immediate follow through is one of the most powerful things franchisors said will help generate more leads and create more closed sales from those leads.

1. 24-Hour follow up

The number one most effective strategy is to follow up with in 24 hours of the initial contact with your potential client. Statistics show that the success of following up on a lead increases by 70 percent if you follow up within this critical time. The consensus at the Internet Marketing Roundtable showed that immediate follow up is the most effective way to guarantee positive results from internet leads.

2. Automate your response to customers

Use an auto-responder program. This program or function is usually offered by your email provider and sends an automated response when a specific email address receives an email., You may already use this for an automated reply when you’re on vacation. However, you can employ the same automated response system with your sales force. When a potential client emails sales@yourfranchise.com, they receive an automatic response thanking them for their inquiry. This provides your client with immediate assurance that you are interested in their business and will contact them soon.

3. Use a drip campaign

By putting together a drip campaign, your franchise will send out emails on a predetermined schedule automatically. For example, you may send out an email every two weeks for several months. Your email topics would provide your target audience with more in-depth information about your franchise; then a customer testimonial; followed with news or an update on your products, its use or your community participation. There are several great reasons for a drip campaign:

  • You keep your name fresh with your users, prospects and clients
  • You proactively provide news and updates to your users
  • Your target audience continually sees that good things are happening with your company.

One franchise owner said that he has used drip campaigns for many years and swears by them. He referred to recently closing a deal with a client who had submitted an inquiry on their website four years ago!

4. Spend time on those that matter

In order to use your time efficiently, invest in some type of sales automation software to qualify leads from the internet. Automating the first few steps to qualify prospects is key. For example, if your automated reply asks a question or prompts the user for more information and they respond, you can qualify that person as a more serious prospect than someone who does not follow up with you.

5. Think like a buyer, not a seller

One of the main issues discussed throughout the IFA convention was that marketers typically think as sellers of their products and services. The consensus solution was by thinking creatively, sales and marketing need to think as buyers of their products and services. This manifests itself in many ways. One primary example is focusing on your benefits instead of your features.

6. Social Media

Social Media…one of the hottest topics everywhere. We discussed obvious heavyweights such as Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn and concepts like blogging (with WordPress or BlogSpot, for example) and micro-blogging with Twitter. Taking the time to participate in this huge and growing phenomenon seems to be universally beneficial, both for your website and for business. Ideas about social media include

  • Starting or investing time in your Linked In profile to connect with others
  • Starting a corporate Facebook account; creating a Myspace account.
  • Upload videos about your company story, or client testimonials to You Tube.

By doing this you can provide links to these rich and engaging videos in your auto-responders and create drip campaigns from any social media sites.  And most importantly was to provide links to your social media and networking accounts on your website, email and any other forms of electronic communications.

7. Start your own blog

One of the easiest ways to get involved with social media that seemed to be prevalent amongst franchises was blogging. There are many services that will allow you to create your own blog. An even easier way to participate without maintaining your own blog is to comment on other blogs and include links back to your site.

8. Per Click Advertising

Pay per click (PPC) advertising is an Internet Marketing strategy that everyone has obviously been using for several years now. The advantages are that you can control it, measure your return and track everything. However, as more and more people use PPC it gets more competitive, thus more costly. The most frequently asked question was ‘how do we continue to use PPC and get the most return from this strategy?’ We had the opportunity to discuss how to optimize marketing dollars with a few franchises and suggested a simple but more effective way of devising pay per click terms.

First, use what are called ‘geographic’ and ‘long tail’ terms. Start with geographic terms. For example, ‘closets san diego.’ This will cost less than ‘closets california’ or ‘closets new york’. Then, as geographic terms become more competitive start to look for ‘long tail’ terms. A long tail term is one that takes advantage of the 80/20 rule. This rule suggests that 80 percent of people look at 20 percent of search terms. This leaves 80 percent of search terms available and the other 20 percent searching them. Another way of putting this is to devise longer keyword phrases, like ‘closest installers san diego’  because they cost less. Research also suggests that the more people think about the terms they type in the more serious they are about buying and not just shopping.

9. Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to the fullest

Research shows that over 70 percent of people on search engines such as Google will chose an organic listing, or one that shows up naturally, that’s not listed under ‘sponsored links’ over paid-for links in the sponsored areas. So, logically getting your website ranked organically using SEO techniques is one of the best methods of online marketing. The challenge most franchises face is understanding SEO is laborious and confusing and often they don’t know where to turn for help. Our ElementsLocal software provides our clients with a solution that helps them take full advantage of natural SEO. Let us know if we can provide you with SEO services.

10. And always track

The saying is ‘you can’t manage what you don’t measure.’ You can rinse and repeat what is working, what’s not and what’s getting you the best return on investment (ROI) if you track your online marketing. There are many different, yet effective, methods of tracking their online marketing. Solutions ranged from: Google Analytics, custom in-house solutions, fully outsourced solution providers who deliver reporting monthly and systems that leverage off-the-shelf software like SalesForce.com.

Use these techniques to boost your marketing campaigns and online marketing strategies. All marketing programs take time and effort, but your work will be rewarded when you can measure that investment and see a return. Employing even a few of these strategies should help decrease your costs and increase your success.

8 Marketing Strategies to Increase Franchise Sales

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

ELEMENTS Inc.’s executive team, Jeremy LaDuque (CEO), Michael Boyer (CMO) and Steve Bridge (CFO), participated in six roundtables at this year’s International Franchise  Association’s (IFA) Annual Convention in San Diego. The roundtables covered lead generation, online marketing and optimizing follow-up on online leads.

As we spoke with franchisors we discovered these invaluable strategies for increasing franchise sales:

1. Market within your own franchisee network:

Using what you have at your immediate disposal is always the most efficient and cost effective way of marketing amid an economic downturn.  Contact your franchisees to discuss any possible marketing opportunities that you may have in their respective regions.  This type of marketing can be a sensitive matter as you would need your franchisees’ cooperation and possibly customer lists. Make any campaigns of this nature symbiotic; it is essential to initiate a “win-win” scenario for both the franchisor and the franchisee.

A simple but effective example of this would be to arrange a marketing plan in which you send postcards or coupons to customers of the franchisee.  Your coupon offering could say “Franchise opportunities in your area” on the back. This type of initiative will not only promote the brand, but will provide customers with motivation and incentive to visit the franchise location as well.

A secondary benefit of this type of marketing is that you are establishing an “exit plan” for franchise owners. By courting interested parties looking to purchase franchises you are providing opportunities for franchises looking to exit. This also helps create a level of trust between the franchisor and the franchisee. This method of marketing was brought up time and again at IFA this year as one of the first and foremost ways to increase franchise sales.

2. In Store Advertising:

You can gain great advertising opportunities by harnessing the popularity and frequency of visitors to your franchise locations.  Again, find “win-win” scenarios for you and your franchisees and work with them to expand your lead generation opportunities.

3. Networking:

Networking is still one of the most important marketing solutions available in your arsenal. As the saying goes, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”  There are several ways that you can use this method sell more.  Anything from opening up the old-school rolodex to email marketing, and social networking sites (LinkedIn) are all effective strategies proven to lead to more franchise sales.

4. Local Media:

Local press is an important tool for creating lead generation.  In today’s precarious economical state, any publication of new business is hailed as a positive step for the economy and will be welcomed by all factions of media.  Be sure to announce that your franchise is interested in expanding locally, but emphasize the benefits and positive impact that a franchise will have on local consumers and economy.

5. National Media:

If you have the means, national press will provide your franchise with the highest exposure possible, however this is something that only a few franchises at the IFA convention were able to leverage. One innovative example of this case is the 10 Till 2 Part Time Placement Service company, which was able to attract national attention with their novel idea of providing part time work to people whose family obligations do not allow for a full time position. This type of creative thinking can lead to exciting results.

6. Internet Marketing:

The internet is an obvious and powerful tool which can be used in a myriad of ways to promote your franchise.  In fact, everyone at IFA attested to owning a website while working aggressively to refine their internet marketing strategies.  The majority of internet marketing strategies for franchises involved pay-per-click advertising scenarios. Pay-per-click marketing strategies are favored because advertising with the most popular search engines directly (Google, Yahoo, MSN…etc), still provides faster positive results while also supplying detailed and track-able information to help you optimize your marketing campaigns.

Yet another important aspect of internet marketing is catering to organic or natural search results, and many franchise companies were interested in further developing their organic marketing campaigns.  We introduced our ElementsLocal solution that directly addresses this growing need for organic results. ELEMENTS launched the ElementsLocal software last year to answer the three-fold need franchises have:

  • Reduce pay-per-click costs
  • Increase leads
  • Protect brand identity

Simply put, the ElementsLocal software does all three of these by providing each franchisee with their own unique website. This larger network increases organic search results and provides the franchisor with BrandSecure tools to protect the brand.

7. Portal Websites:

Web portals present information from diverse sources in a unified, streamlined fashion and provide yet another powerful lead generation tool at your disposal.  Portal websites such as Franchise Gator or MatchPoint provide prospective franchises with multitudes of information about franchising as well as powerful search capabilities to further explore potential franchising opportunities.  These systems have been specifically designed to help franchisers, overcome many marketing hurdles.

8. Tradeshows

Tradeshows are a great way for current or prospective franchise owners to learn a great deal about the industry through face to face interactions with many other franchise owners.  Tradeshows also provide a significant opportunity for existing franchise owners to enhance brand and product visibility, promote new and existing products, generate leads, and drive sales.

These strategies and techniques should help you give you some ideas for marketing your franchise and franchisees. Attending the IFA Convention opened our eyes to the exciting opportunities we have to better market your businesses online. We truly enjoyed the time we spent with franchises, discussing what works and what does not work for them. Remember that significant results to your online marketing and advertising takes time and energy, but it’s worth the effort when you can measure that investment and see a return. Employing even a few of these strategies should help decrease your costs and increase your success.