With seniors considered the fastest-growing population, America is aging, so it’s no surprise that Always Best Care – provider of in-home care and assisted living placements for seniors – is an increasingly successful franchise anticipated to nearly double its growth in 2010.

Increasingly instrumental to the company’s further expansion, however, is its ability to appear local to its potential customers, which is why Always Best Care has teamed up with ElementsLocal™ – an innovative new solution designed specifically for franchises that helps increase web traffic and online leads by creating local web sites for each franchise location.

“We are a relationship-based business, so it is very important for our franchises to have a local presence on the Internet,” said Michael Newman, founder, president and chief executive officer of Always Best Care. “Our clients want to know that we are in their local community and that we are there when they need us.”

Research company eMarketeer recently found that local search is now more popular and relevant than regular search for people looking for a local product or service, so it’s not surprising that a strong, localized search-marketing strategy is now considered one of the most critical components of an overall web marketing approach for companies with franchises in distributed markets.

And according to an article by ElementsLocal CEO Jeremy LaDuque published in the current issue of Franchising World, companies not leveraging a local online presence are fast losing customers to competitors who are.

Before signing on with ElementsLocal in late 2008, Newman became aware that his franchisees were no longer satisfied with having just a location-specific landing page on the franchisor web site. However, in an effort to protect brand integrity, Always Best Care policy prevented franchisees from creating their own, independent sites.

“We were looking for a solution that would empower our franchisees and give them the right tools to reach out to their local markets, yet we also wanted to make sure our company message was the same across the board,” said Newman. “Essentially, we needed a platform that enabled them to have their own web sites that would comply with the national brand.”

ElementsLocal offered just that solution. The San Luis Obispo, CA-based company provided each Always Best Care franchise location with its own web site – fully optimized to get the best results in search engines like Google – that can be regularly updated with content specific to that franchise location while still maintaining the corporate brand.

These location-specific updates, which can range from video testimonials of local clients to the franchise owner’s involvement in various local organizations, increase the company’s organic search engine rankings when potential customers perform local searches.

Consumers put considerably more stock in local and organic search engine listings, so although paid search campaigns such as Pay-Per-Click advertising can still add value, a franchise’s opportunity for greater return on investment really lies in influencing where it shows up in the organic results.

In addition, people better identify with information local to their community and gain peace of mind that the business is run by their neighbor – not a national corporation. Franchisees also benefit by saving on marketing expenditures, not only due to increased organic search rankings, but also because they’re able to target additional marketing efforts, such as paid search, to a smaller, local radius.

Bill Mathis, owner of the San Diego, CA, Always Best Care franchise, could not be happier with the services ElementsLocal has provided.
“It’s perfect. I was able to create a web page that reflected my business in San Diego, not that of the franchisor’s location,” Mathis said. “The site has the look and feel of the corporate office, but also the look and feel of my community.”

Taking advantage of the many ElementsLocal components available, Mathis has uploaded videos to his site, posted emblems of his local Lions Club and Chamber of Commerce, provided link-backs to other local service agencies relevant to the senior population, and even posted pictures of himself and his wife so that clients can see who they’re talking to when they call.

“ElementsLocal has given me so much more of a presence on the Internet, which is increasingly important, because I know that in the very near future, the majority of my business referrals will be generated through this medium,” he said. “I’ve worked with a lot of different web page programs, and this is by far the easiest to operate. After just 15 minutes of training with the ElementsLocal staff, I was ready to go.”

Always Best Care franchisees are also pleased with the fact that the local web sites have helped attract more potential local employees, which keeps application numbers for open positions up and recruitment costs down.

“Across the board, everyone is noticing an improvement,” said Newman. “Signing on with ElementsLocal has been a good move and it’s been the right move. They are one of the few companies that actually get it and understand what we are trying to achieve at a local level without compromising the brand.”