Expanding Your Business? - Inbound Marketing for FRANCHISE & MULTI-LOCATION BUSINESSES - Umami ...
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Expanding Your Business?
Inbound Marketing for
FRANCHISE & MULTI-LOCATION
BUSINESSES
2 Introduction to Inbound Marketing 3 Inbound Marketing for Franchise & Multi-Location Businesses 4 Website Set-Up 5 Local Search Optimization 7 Search Engine Marketing 10 Building a Community 11 Building Engagement 13 Metrics to Measure 14 Summary 18
3
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing refers to marketing
activities that bring visitors in, rather than
marketers having to go out to get prospects’
attention. It earns the attention of
customers, makes the company easy to be
found, and draws customers to the website
by producing interesting content through
blogs, podcasts, video, eBooks, enewsletters,
whitepapers, SEO, social media marketing and
other content and offers.
Inbound is the new,
most effective
Traditional marketing is dying in this digital age. The days of marketing method
buying printed ad space, mailing out flyers and cold calling for growing your
households during dinner are behind us; inbound is the new, most business online.
effective marketing method for growing your business online.
4 So how can you make Inbound Marketing work for your Franchise or Multi-Location Business? The franchise industry in Canada represents over $100 billion in sales annually and continues to grow, with approximately 1 out of 5 consumer dollars being spent on goods and services at a franchise. As franchise and service area business (SABs) opportunities continue to explode throughout North America, how do you make each of your locations stand out? Besides ensuring marketing consistency between the main brand and each business location, it’s also necessary for franchise and SAB owners to implement localized marketing strategies -- and this is where inbound marketing can help out. If you’re a new or recent owner tapping into this thriving market, then you need to know that the key to franchisee and SAB success lays within an effective inbound marketing strategy. The foundation of this strategy is attracting an audience with targeted content, and building a community of customers who are loyal promoters of your franchise or SAB. This guide will help you understand how to establish your central brand, build upon that with SEO, earn the attention of your customers, and bring customers to your website and to your storefront or business location.
5
Website Set-Up
It’s important to build out a multi-site website structure which includes a centralized main page for the
overall brand, with portal or subdomain access for each individual franchisee or SAB’s website.
// This will be useful for sharing information relating to leads (ie: which search terms led the users
to your site, and each of the franchisee sites) and optimizing customer database information.
// It will also boost each subdomain sites’ SEO ranking, since it will be building off the central site.
While it’s important for each franchisee or SAB site to remain consistent to the overall brand image,
it’s also important for them to have a unique identity that will differentiate their franchise from the
competitor across the street.
// Having an individual website will allow for this opportunity, by giving them a forum to provide
unique content, a blog to attract visitors, and the ability to provide a unique offer for generating
leads.
// However, Franchisors should provide every franchisee with their own “template” website copy
that will be branded consistently to the main brand, but containing its own unique images and
content.
6 Unique SEO: in addition to unique websites, the SEO meta data (H1 headers, meta titles, meta descriptions and URLs) also need to contain unique properties specific to each location. Landing pages should contain your franchise or business location's address, phone number, hours of operation, and all social sharing buttons should link directly to the social accounts set up for that specific location. Mobile Optimization: The number of people using mobile for their browsing and online transactions are growing every day. So every franchise or SAB location needs to ensure their sites are set-up to be mobile-friendly. This isn't only an SEO tactic, but a way to ensure your customers are not frustrated when using your site.
7
Local Search Optimization
Local SEO is the process of optimizing your website to earn higher local search rankings. So when
someone is searching for pizza delivery in Vancouver, your Vancouver-based website should rank higher
on the search engine results page than the
pizza delivery restaurant across the country.
Multi-location or franchise businesses in
particular must master local SEO, in order to
ensure the right audience is finding the right
business location. So on that note: Local
Landing Pages.
Local landing pages are website pages
that display a specific city or geographical
location of a business. This type of landing
page works very well for multi-location
businesses who want to advertise their
different locations, or for service area
businesses (SABs), who want to advertise
that they service a number of areas around
the city in which they are physically located.
8
So now that you know what local landing pages are,
How do you design them, and what type of content do you
fill them with to make sure that they work?
Competitor Research: It's always smart to know what the competitors are up to. So check
out the landing pages of every local competitor that you have, and grade them on what you like and what
you don't like: is their content useful and engaging? Is their page designed with UX in mind? Is there a
clear call-to-action on the page? What keywords are they targeting?
Build Your Visuals: If you're a multi-location brick & mortar business, there may be a certain
element of your business that is different between locations: for example, maybe the pizza shop
downtown has a party room for group events, whereas the pizza shop uptown has a unique bar setup
with a tapas lounge.
// Take advantage of these differences by posting video tours or professional photos of each
location on each landing page. Any element that could be relevant to specific search-groups (for
example: a mom wanting to host a private-room pizza party for her young son vs. a couple on a
romantic first date) should be highly visible and advertised on the local landing page.
// Visuals for an SAB will run along the same thread: a landscaping company servicing the
downtown City all the way out to the Suburbs may want to promote their diversity in all areas.
Their local downtown Vancouver page could promote their skills in landscaping smaller plots
of land or unique rooftop patios, while their local Suburb page could showcase larger jobs on
acreages or wrap-around yards.
9
Build Your Content: Once you know the visual theme you want to go with for each local
landing page, you'll need to create your content around it. Remember what you learned from scoping
out your competitor's pages, and build off of it to create your own unique introduction to your location's
products or services.
Some examples of what you might include:
// Every major city or area served // Warranties or service guarantees
// Every service offered to every type of offered
client (ie: landscaping for downtown // Showcase any well-known clients (ie:
patios vs. landscaping for suburb "We're proud of the landscaping job we
acreage properties) did for Mayor John's house")
// Tips or Advice specific to each city // Partnerships or support of local
// Special offers or coupons specific to charities, organizations or sports teams
each location // Target keywords
Start with a unique introduction to your business, what you do, your specific location, and services/
products specific to that location. Add in any project or customer testimonials, which may tie into the
visuals you've already pulled together; brick & mortar businesses can also use this space to link to third-
party review site profiles, like Yelp, Google, Foursquare, etc., as well as all social media site profiles.
Remember to include calls-to-action throughout your content, such as sidebar form submissions to
"Request an estimate now!", "Contact us for more information" or "Join our mailing list for 10% off your
next purchase!" And don't forget to optimize for your target keywords throughout all content, to help
with your overall SEO.10
Search Engine Marketing
PPC and SEO will both help drive qualified traffic to your franchisee or SAB’s local pages. While it can take
time to move up in organic search rankings via SEO, pay per click advertising on the search engines can
help bring immediate visibility for each of your locations.
Visitors searching for your products or services will find your targeted ads and be taken to your localized
landing pages -- making them more likely to convert.11
Building a Community
One of the purest methods of marketing is also one of the simplest: keep your customers happy! As
noted above, inbound marketing is all about attracting and building a community of customers who are
loyal promoters of your business. Satisfied customers lead to positive word of mouth which leads to
further lead generation...which obviously means more business.
After SEO and PPC drive traffic to your site, you’ll
want to find a way to collect their contact details
to continue building a relationship with them.
// Give your audience an incentive to
opt in to your emailing list or like or
follow you on social media. A discount
promotion for your specific franchise or
SAB location, for example, is an easy way
to get this started (ie: “Sign up for our
newsletter and receive 10% off your first
purchase at the 55 King Street location”).12
Build online authority with social profiles for the central brand, as well as each individual franchise or
SAB to continue to build community.
// Create guidelines to ensure that social content adheres to the overall brand’s voice and image,
and be active on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, or whatever platforms make
sense for your specific business.
// Each franchise should be promoting contests, special offers or coupons, or local events, and
really building into the community in which they are a part.
// Turn your customers into promoters as well, by setting up a referral system. Use your current
customers to bring you new customers, by offering free periods of service or a product incentive.13
Building Engagement
In addition to promotions or sweepstakes offers to incentivize your audience to join your mailing lists or
follow you on social media, reward your followers in other ways. Being part of your local ‘community’ can
give them access to deals that they won’t have anywhere else, and sending out special offers through
Facebook posts or email newsletters will help your customers see value in continuing to follow you or
receive (and open!) your communications.
As they say: “no publicity is bad publicity”.
// Encourage online reviews and testimonials from your customer base -- even the negative ones.
Reviews are so important for local franchise businesses because they show consumers other
consumers’ experiences with specific products or services at specific locations.
// These reviews can be on Yelp, Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc., and someone on your team should
be assigned the task of monitoring each and every one, and responding to those that require a
response.
// Negative reviews offer a great chance for you to publicly respond and show your audience your
commitment to customer service and how you handle issues or complaints.
Consumers trust other consumers’ reviews and recommendations, so in addition to encouraging online
reviews, also try to collect as many testimonials as possible to post on your website or on social media fees.14
Metrics to Measure
Not all metrics are created equal -- especially for
different types of businesses. In particular, owners of
franchise businesses need to be tracking a specific set
of key metrics relevant to multi-location operations. If
Google Analytics has been set up for your franchise’s
website, your data collection is already being done. All
that’s left to do is analyze that data, and understand how
it is affecting your business, your lead generation, and
your revenue sales.
Once you get a good handle on the following basic key
metrics, you can then expand your data analysis to other
stats that may be more relevant to your specific industry,
rather than just franchises in general.
Unique Visitors: The unique visitors count is the number of people who visited your website
during a specific period (yesterday, last Monday, last month...). Unique visitors are only tracked by the
number of individual visits to your website -- and not a cumulative count of how many times that visitor15 re-visits your site. For example, if John visits your site once, and then Paul comes along and visits it, and then Paul returns 3 more times throughout the day, your unique visitor count is still 2 (while your overall visit count is 5 total). Your unique visitors are important as they show you your audience reach, and any changes in that reach based on different marketing efforts. For example, if you increase your ad campaign budget for a month, you should ideally see a corresponding spike in your unique visitors; if you don’t, then perhaps you need to come up with an alternate marketing campaign to better reach more relevant users. New vs. Returning Visitors: Furthermore, what percentage of your visitors are new vs. returning? A great website and great marketing should give you a good mix of both: both brand new visitors coming to your site (which means your marketing and referrals are working well to bring in new traffic), and old visitors who keep returning time after time to enjoy more of what you have to offer. Being able to get return visitors means that your content, products or services are compelling and providing value to your audience...getting you closer than ever to those conversions. Bounce Rate: A website bounce occurs when someone visits your site and then immediately clicks the back button, or closes the web browser, most likely meaning they made it to your site by accident, or they weren’t able to find what they were looking on your site.
16
Every lost visitor is a potential lost lead, so understanding why visitors are leaving your site is an
important task to take on. Perhaps your landing pages need better flow or navigation, or you’re
missing some enticing content to keep users interested.
Referrals: Referrals help you to understand where your visitors are coming from: did they click on
your site from a search engine results page? Are they finding you from a reference on a blog posting or
link directory? From social media posts?
Knowing where your traffic is coming from will tell you where you should be focusing on your business
promotion: if you get great traffic from other blogger’s posts, maybe you should focus on building out
your content marketing and blogging community/blogger relationships. If you’re getting good traction
from Facebook posts, maybe you should put more energy into your social media marketing.
Top Pages: We’re going to split this metric into two parts: top visited pages, and top exited pages.
// Top Visited: review your top 10 pages report from Google Analytics. This will show you a
list of your most popular and most viewed pages. This report is extremely helpful for you to
understand where you should focus on building out your content marketing: if a specific blog
post topic is very popular, maybe it’s time to write a re-vamped version of it, or write some new
posts on the same thread. If you have a busy landing page for an offer, maybe it’s time to invest
in some more advertising to get even more traffic on that landing page, or it’s time to design a
new, similar offer to advertise.
Whatever the case is, this report will show you which of your pages are working best for your audience.17
// Top Exited: Not to be confused with a bounce, a website “exit” is when a visitor leaves your
website after visiting a number of pages. It’s very important to know which pages on your site
have the highest exit rates (besides, for example, an order confirmation page). Perhaps you have
a broken link somewhere, or a page that isn’t loading correctly. Examining a highly exited page
from all device types (mobile included!) may tell you that something is broken, or that a page
needs a format refresh.
Goal Conversions: The goal conversion rate might be the most important metric of the ones
we’ve listed today. Goal conversions track the number of visitors who achieve a predefined “goal” on
your website -- for example, filling out a form, submitting a ‘contact us’ request, or making a purchase.
So basically, this rate tracks how successful your website is in getting your visitors to do what you are
wanting them to do.
Your goal conversion rate requires constant review; if you notice a sudden decline in your conversion
rate, it might be a good indication that there is a broken page in your goal path, or that something is
wrong with your checkout process.
How many of these key metrics are you already monitoring or tracking? If you see any new ones that are missing
from your lead generation plan for 2016, take time to review your current results in your analytics tracking tool, and
understand your baseline or starting point. Then you can work to incorporate goal metrics into your overall inbound
marketing plan and forecast the changes you want to see over the next fiscal year.
It’s also important to capture each of these metrics for each franchise location, so that you can compare the results
against each other. Is one location doing better than another in terms of unique visitors? What are the reasons that
could be happening? Maybe a top page for one franchise website could work on another franchise website as well,
and help to drive their traffic up.18
Summary
Inbound marketing campaigns for franchise or multi-location businesses must be designed to stand out
from the competition and appeal to local audiences. Maintaining brand consistency along with a good
mix of unique, individualized content will help with the challenges of franchise or multi-location business
building, and help business owners attract, engage and build loyalty with localized clientele.
However, the success of these initiatives will only be fully realized if all franchisees and SABs under the
main brand are on-board and on the same page about the benefits of inbound marketing. The goal of
every location should be to increase the consumer communities and audience reach and engagement --
which will in turn increase the overall success of the franchisor or SAB business.19
Learn More
If you’re still hungry for more information about inbound marketing for franchises or multi-location
businesses, check out these additional resources:
Mistakes to Avoid in Marketing your Franchise or Multi-Location Business [Video]
http://blog.umamimarketing.com/mistakes-to-avoid-in-marketing-your-multi-location-business-video
Marketing 101 for your Franchise or Multi-Location Business
http://blog.umamimarketing.com/topic/franchise-marketing
5 Ways to Gain Trust During the Sales Process
http://blog.umamimarketing.com/5-ways-to-gain-trust-during-the-sales-process
Gut Feelings...or Just Heartburn? Why You Need Analytics
http://blog.umamimarketing.com/gut-feelings...or-just-heartburn-why-you-need-analyticsUmami Marketing is a results-driven inbound marketing agency based out of Vancouver,
BC, Canada. We are a one-stop shop for small to medium-sized businesses’ marketing
needs, including search engine optimization, social media marketing, content creation,
Google Adwords and other paid marketing campaigns, and also Wordpress design and
development. We’re passionate about marketing and excited to partner with you in
elevating your web presence and reaching your inbound marketing goals.
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