Among the 3,500 Franchisee websites ElementsLocal supports it is seeing mobile traffic rise, in some cases at a 30% plus increase over the previous year.

For Franchise Marketers mobile marketing is now paramount to a successful online strategy.

The business case has been made! According to a recent study by Web.com Group, Inc., 84% of U.S. small businesses using mobile marketing have seen an increase in new business activity. According to the same study, while early adopters can see a tangible ROI, the majority of small businesses have yet to fully leverage mobile marketing.

Last year comScore reported that out of 234 million U.S. mobile consumers, 82.2 million of them use a smartphone. And with both Google and Facebook announcing significant initiatives to increase their mobile marketing, it’s evident that Franchise marketers need to look to mobile marketing for the future.

Here are the 5 key mobile marketing strategies Franchise Marketers should consider:

1.    Establish the proper foundation – establishing the right mobile website for you will establish the proper foundation from which to deploy all of your strategies. Franchise marketers need to consider whether they need a single website with a location finder on it, which includes some additional webpages for mobile viewers to browse through, or full local mobile websites for each location. You can learn more about what these are from our recorded webinar below.

2.    Create a content strategy – content is still king… even in mobile! Franchises need to create a content strategy that leverages their national brand messaging at the local level. One important factor to consider in developing a content strategy is to leverage ‘Calls-to-Action’ (CTA) in a useful way. A CTA is a way of getting mobile viewers to do something you want them to, such as make a phone call to the local number listed on your mobile website, or fill out a form. According to  eConsultancy 75% of people prefer to receive discount offers over any other form of CTA, so any other CTA on your mobile website , such as a reply option, address, phone number, online form must be used wisely and should include something of value to offer your visitors.

3.    Create an email strategy - Why? According to Exact Target 37% of business people read their email from their mobile devices. So this means that Franchise marketers have several opportunities for engagement. First, they can drive viewers checking email on their mobile devices to mobile-optimized landing pages or to their mobile websites. They can also deliver promotions that drive viewers to their local stores, as well as any other promotion that can be delivered on a mobile device.

4.    Create a mobile search strategy – Searching for businesses on a mobile device can happen in several ways. The most important ways a Franchise system should consider include ‘Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Mobile Search’, ‘Hand Free Mobile Search’ and ‘Proximity Mobile Search’. Each of these types of searches requires s unique strategy. For example with PPC search you should consider leveraging tools such as Google’s ‘Call Now’ button.  With hands free search, which is a voice activated search, as well as proximity mobile search, or built in driving directions, you must ensure that all of your franchise locations are properly submitted to the directories that mobile devices use to obtain address information. Directories such as Google Places and Siri are two of the most important directories to submit to that can ensure your locations will be found in these types of mobile searches.

5.    Create a mobile advertising strategy – just like any form of marketing you should consider an advertising strategy for you mobile websites. The best mobile advertising strategy to look into, other than PPC, would be VIP programs and the iAds network from Apple. Both of these have proven effective for promoting local businesses on mobile devices.
With Facebook claiming that they will expand their mobile advertising in the wake of their IPO and Google announcing that they will be focusing more on mobile marketing, Franchise organizations have to take a critical look at their mobile strategies.
While mobile traffic may still be low for some organizations, the upside of providing a mobile-friendly presence to broaden your audience, getting a boost to your traditional website and social media efforts, and aligning with the inevitability of a mobile-centric world provide benefits that are much too large to ignore for long.

To see a more in depth discussion about these mobile strategies view our recently recorded webinar.

Visit our website to learn more about our ElementsLocal software platform that allows you to take advantage of all of these mobile strategies and more.

We have seen change after change occur, both algorithmically and to the user interface of Google.  All of these changes affect what franchises do to generate leads to at the local franchisee location.  In this article we will explain the impact of Search plus Your World and provide instructions on how to change with the times.

Explanation of Search plus Your World

In January of 2012 Google launched what they called Search plus Your World.  The goal of this algorithm change is to create a very personalized result which they expect will have more value to the user than a more generic general result would.  Google has been offering personalized search results for years, but average users didn’t even know that that they were being provided with personalized search because the difference between them and a generic search result was subtle.  Search plus Your World entirely changes the search results layout and drastically changes the rankings of websites.

In 2010 Google launched a social network called Google+.  What the public didn’t realize at the time is that one of Google’s purposes of this new social media platform was to create a way to authenticate people’s online persona.  By doing so, Google can create rate the value of an individual social persona.  This means that the websites recommended by a recognized industry writer will carry more weight than the recommendations of a faceless IP address.  In the same line of thought, the recommendation from a peer in your circle of friends would be deemed as having more value to you because it is likely that they have the same interests and opinions that you do.

With Search plus Your World, Google brings those recommendations from your circle of friends right to the forefront and it can draw those recommendations from private conversations on their social network.  The changes to the search results can be seen in the screen captures below.  The image on the right shows how even a Google Image search is affected by this recent change.

click image to expand

The problem is that Google is now showing more preference to their Google+ results than it does to other social networks and websites.  Google draws the data for their personalized search results from the Google+ network only, stating that once other social networks will be included when they sign-up for a long-term partnership and offer up their networks worth of data completely to Google.  Obviously Facebook & Twitter, advertising competitors of Google have serious reservations about both of these requirements.

Google is also bumping up the positions from these personalized results right to the top position.  This might be great if your friends happen to be discussing something completely relevant to what you are searching for, but could also be just a text mention of a product or brand rather than a local store or website that can fulfill your needs.  Take a close look at the image above on the left.  The third result is a personalized result pointing me to the Google+ network to find information on ‘search engine help’.  Well, this Google+ post is about a free tool that can show me where my site is listed on Google, but this isn’t really search engine help, is it?  Obviously this is not the most relevant result I could be looking for and is definitely not worthy of a top result.

Taking Advantage of Personalized Search Results

If you are wondering how your franchise can benefit from Google+ and Search plus Your World, the short answer is that every business can.  Recently Google made a change to their search system that obscures the keyword terms that drive visitors to your website if they are logged into Google, whether that is because of Gmail, Google Docs or YouTube.  So, instead of seeing the relevant keywords you will instead see (not provided).  Now Google also creates a Google+ account profile automatically if you have create and account for any of Google’s online products.  From this, we can see that the percentage of results arriving to your website as (not provided), actually have Google+ accounts and are actively logged in when they have made this search.  According to reports from many companies, the current percentage of searches done by people logged into their Google+ account sits between 10-20%.  One of our franchise client’s corporate webpage is showing over 30% of their search visitors are logged into Google+.  That’s a significant percentage of potential leads and leaving them off the table by not optimizing for Search plus Your World makes no sense.

The link graph is dying.  Obtaining links can be easily gamed.  Recommendations from authentic industry experts and friends within a circle are the new most powerful search signals that Google is using to rate websites in their search results.

So How Can Your Franchise Optimize for Google’s New Socially Guided Results?

The first step is to setup a Google+ account for your business. Understandably a franchise may be leery about creating another social media account because they already have Facebook & Twitter accounts that they having difficulty keeping current, but Google+ is a game changer when it comes to  search results and if you don’t grab a Google+ account for your business and begin posting to it now you will be playing catchup.

The first thing you should do is add Google+ badges on your website in conspicuous places on your website, near your companies contact information and in places near where your website’s visitors will be interacting with.  These badges will drive interested users to your Google+ account and hopefully the content you post to your circles is interesting enough to them that they add you to their circles.
Secondly, you need to install a +1.  Similar to a Facebook Like, a +1 button on your website encourages visitors to rate your website positively and these positive ratings will be delivered to others in their social circles.

The key to achieving success in Search plus Your World through your Google+ account is by recognizing your audience.  Finding, growing and pruning potential leads and existing clients into your Google+ social circles is pivotal to ranking success.  This isn’t Twitter.  You don’t need millions of followers.  What you should be targeting is your key demographic, people that are deeply entrenched in the products or services related to what your franchise delivers.  Relevant links or Google+ recommendations –- similar to Facebook likes — from authentic industry experts will do more for your company’s search results than thousands of unrelated mentions from empty profiles will.

What do I share with my users?

Now the goal of this social build-up is to get your Google+ page shared with other users through search or having other users share your website material.  By creating high quality relevant content you can increase the odds of getting users to +1 your website’s content.  With every Google+ update you should keep focused on moving the user from your social profile to your website’s lead generators whether those are a contact form or a newsletter sign-up page.  Track those conversions and the sources that led to them and use those metrics to drive your Google+ campaigns.

Keep in mind that a Like, follow or +1 is great and may be something that you can measure by a simple line chart it is not a conversion.  A conversion is an e-mail, a phone call or a join form that turns a user into a qualified lead.

Many franchises struggle with this issue as there is cross contamination of intended and un-intentional advertising and marketing content for a franchises anchor identity as well as well-meaning franchisees advertising outside of the franchise system.

This contamination causes confusion and noise for consumers in their search for business information through online, mobile, social and email channels thereby

cutting into the number of leads generated by your marketing efforts.

Now, we are all dealing with formerly offline-only media (e.g., newspapers, Yellow Pages) offering online versions, the intermingling of advertising information hascreated even more conflicting data.

Your franchise online marketing ecosystem should follow these best practices to achieve a consistent business identity:

Be cognizant of your online brand identity.  Regardless of the types of media you include in your advertising and marketing programs, incorporate the same standards so your widely accepted corporate identity remains universal.

Be sure to monitor your identity on search sites that are important to you for traffic. As an example, franchises should track how franchisees come up on their local and vertically-focused sites. If something doesn’t look right on the results, contact the site. Identifying the root data source is vital to fixing these errors.

Additionally, give your Franchisee the tools they need to build the franchise brand locally by using local advertising campaigns that are brand consistent.  This solidifies the franchises anchor identity. Tether your ads to existing correct identities. There are helpful tools for querying the common data sources to retrieve the identity of record.  Also, ensure that you conform to standards for the company’s brand identity by using the proper local business name, a standardized business address and the commonly accepted main phone number.

ElementsLocal software, gives the franchise a tool to protect brand integrity with BrandProtect™ included in our franchise online marketing software platform.  The software platform contains controls that allow the franchise to have control of the brand through work flow for content and protect the integrity of the brand with standard content across franchisee websites.

The digital age has forced the intermingling of online marketing and user-generated content sometimes to the detriment of the sanctity of the franchises true identity.  As the search for local information continues to rise so does the need for a consistent identity across all platforms.

Brand consistently- Brand locally - Brand protect.

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.

The easily embeddable widget lets users either +1 a webpage or add that page to their Google+ circles. The widget also displays the faces of other users who have +1ed the webpage. It doesn’t have Facebook’s ability to display your friends’ faces first  though.

The launch of Google+ Badges coincides with Monday’s launch of Google+ Brand Pages, finally giving businesses the ability to create a presence on Google’s growing social network.

The Google+ Badge has a few other tricks. The Google+ badge also contains a snippet of code that connects your website to your Google+ page. And In addition to helping Google better index your Google+ page, this snippet will help you show more personal recommendations around the web by linking your +1’s on sites, your Google+ page, search and display ads.

Google also revealed that the badge is a requirement for inclusion in Google Direct Connect, a feature that makes it possible for users to find a Google+ Page from Google Search. Users type in the “+” operator, followed by the name of a brand participating in Direct Connect. The search result will lead users directly to the company’s Google+ brand page.

The widget was a necessary component for Google+, given the success of its Facebook counterpart. While it doesn’t have the same benefits  Facebook enjoys with Open Graph, the Google+ Badge gets the job done. Google still has a long, uphill battle to convince both brands and users that its social network is an ideal place to do business.

Stay tuned as ElementsLocal keeps track of the impact Google+ has on your Franchise Online Marketing.

Here are some marketing and business trends that are important to Franchises:

The Cloud – Although social media and mobile get more buzz, the great change-maker for franchises comes from the cloud. Using Internet-based applications to run your business rather than locating those applications on your servers or hard drives sounds pretty liberating, doesn’t it?

Going to the cloud is transformative. You gain powerful functionality, you can spend more of your time on your business and less on your infrastructure.  Now that YOU are mobile, you can access your applications and data from virtually anywhere.  Having your customer contact management, email marketing and document storage is essential.

Social media – Social media is hot.  With good reason, Franchises are entranced with the idea of it. Social media offers the possibility of inexpensive ways to reach and interact with customers, but it seems like it takes up a lot of time with a very uncertain return on that investment.

Keep watching because this year will see the emergence of more easy-to-use tools that help you reach highly targeted customers. More franchises will embrace a wide variety of social media platforms, and Google+ will become a significant player.

Mobile -The mobile juggernaut continues in 2012, both for running your business and reaching customers. Look for greater embrace of mobile marketing, such as offering deals when people check in via Mobile.

Smart Franchises increasingly will use mobile solutions for a raft of business functions. One technology that will explode: accepting payments on smartphones, with tools such as Square (squareup.com).
More companies will embrace the power of being untethered from an office, being mobile and able to run operations on the go, especially when using cloud-based applications and tools.

Hiring – The past couple of years, workers have been “on sale” because of high unemployment, making it possible for franchisees to land great employees at lower costs.  As the workforce recovers, consider college graduates from the past three years who have been underemployed.  They can make great entry-level employees, and big corporations focus mostly on current graduates. Anticipate your needs for expanding your work force.

Credit – Credit for franchisees has been tough for years now. But it will get slightly better this year, making it a bit easier for healthy companies with strong customer demand to expand. Work with community banks that are receptive to local businesses.

Analytics – Knowledge, as they say, is power. One of the great things about cloud applications is they not only give you data, they give you reports.  You can see response in real time to actions you take. For example at ElementsLocal,  we send  monthly newsletters. From our E-Marketing Manager analytics, I am able see exactly how many people opened it, which articles they read, which products interested them and more.

Global – You may not be a global franchise yet, but I’m guessing you may be soon. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to meet many American franchises  who have grown their businesses by going international. I’ve even heard of someone who exports miniature golf courses.  ElementsLocal represents CurvesME,  the middle eastern franchise of the mega company Curves.  Think outside the box by thinking outside your borders.

ElementsLocal is your answer to adaptive Franchise Online Marketing software: Comprehensive and easy to use.

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.

Here are some things to consider when looking at creating an adaptive marketing platform:

1. Don’t wait. There is no question that the ramp up time to evaluate and adopt new technologies and trends is expensive. You do not have to play the waiting game by buying expensive technologies. Look for industry specific solutions that are agile, quick to adapt and focused on your exact needs.
2. Buy best of breed. Look for companies who have forged partnerships with other ‘Best of Breed’ providers to bring you a comprehensive solution. This shows a focus and determination to deliver quality solutions.
3. Look for partners who share knowledge. Ensure partners are in tune to trends and data and that they will share that with you so you can more efficiently evolve and innovate at greater speed.
4. Don’t stop.  A key philosophical insight is to not stop when you think you’re at the top or you’ll go the way of the Sony Walkman as the IPod become the norm.
5. Data is the new creative outlet. As search transforms the amount of data needing analysis will multiply tremendously. Find solutions to transform mounds of data into creative content, solutions and insight tomorrow.  Data will move from advantage to basic necessity. Data is something the smartest marketers will leverage again, as a necessity, not a luxury.
6. Never underestimate the power of trying something. What data can you point to that says social media will help you boost your sales or increase your online exposure?  Better yet, what data can you point to that states it will not be an undue risk for your company?  Do not let the rush to data powered marketing trends handcuff you.
7. Personalized = Profitable. The more search results become personal the more the potential for leads.
8. Mobile search will greatly outpace PC Searches. Do not ignore the growth in the popularity of mobile applications and prevalence of local search results.  We ask you, are you optimized for mobile?
9. Lets Franchisees market too. One website will not dominate in search.  In an effort to create competition, variety and a better user experience, search engines will do what they can to ensure your site does not dominate. You can use this to your advantage by delivering truly unique and locally driven websites by giving Franchisees the power to update their own websites.
10. Searchers will continue to gravitate towards content they find useful. What marks the difference between insight and obviousness is the amount of people actually following through.  You have to dedicate marketing efforts to sharing value through search or social channels, rather than simply promotional materials.
11. Search will be about how many times you show up, not whether you’re first. The key to an adaptive approach to online marketing is that you’ll have a multi-pronged approach to showing up in organic search, pay-per-click advertising, directories, mobile, social and more. Are you mobile friendly, local readily optimized, social savvy?

Imagine how many more changes there will be in technology as well as with consumer behaviors in the coming year.

Take a look into 2012 by attending our ElementsLocal Franchise Online Marketing Bootcamp 2012, January 18th, 2012 12:00 p.m. CST.  Sign up by clicking: Franchise Online Marketing Webinar

10 Things Franchises Can Do to More Effectively Leverage Google Tools
Tuesday June 21st, 2011 at 9:00 AM PST

Click Here to Sign Up Now

This webinar will cover Google’s tools for better productivity, improved local search results, mobile tools, analytics products and more.  This webinar will also discuss Google’s new ‘+1′ button which is brand new and a hot topic in SEO.

Sign-up now because there is limited seating and spots are filling up quickly.  For more information on this free webinar, please visit our webinar information page.

Each website utilizes Google Maps technology, multilingual English and Arabic versions as well as powerful email marketing tools targeted at increasing custom loyalty and retention.

Curves is the first fitness and weight-loss facility designed for women, offering a supportive environment where women are empowered to “change their lives 30 minutes at a time.” ELEMENTS is proud to support Curves as it expands its offerings to women throughout the Middle East.

“This was a unique project that allowed ElementsLocal to expand its expertise and understanding of delivering localized marketing tools internationally,” says Jeremy LaDuque, President & CEO of ElementsLocal™. LaDuque continued that “Understanding how search engine optimization works in the Middle East and the various definitions of words was a unique and fun challenge for our team. We couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to work with Curves as they grow.”

David Ramadan, President of Curves – Middle East, commented that, “these websites will be a great addition to the marketing plan we have in place to support our Franchisees. It provides us with the tools to market as well as allow our Franchisees to add fresh and relevant content as well.”

About Curves

With nearly 10,000 locations worldwide, Curves is the largest fitness franchise in the world. Curves combines an innovative 30-minute fitness program with nutritional information, and supports its members in reaching their goals. Curves franchise locations serve over four million women, in more than 85 countries.

About ElementsLocal

ElementsLocal™ provides online marketing solutions to franchise companies looking to leverage local franchise websites, email campaigns and social media marketing.  The ElementsLocal™ platform can be seen at www.elementslocal.com which includes a virtual tour of the franchise solution software. Based in San Luis Obispo, CA, and founded in 1999, Elements clients include Glass Doctor, Sport Clips, MAACO, Jiffy Lube, and Curves.

Click here to see all of the current Curves ME Franchise Locations.