Franchises are mainly chosen by entrepreneurs who want to avoid the risk that comes with opening a new business. But what does it mean to become a successful entrepreneur? It means that running a “ready” business is not always easier than a new one. Entrepreneurs care a lot about their overall performance on a local level.
In this blog, we’ll share the top mistakes of franchise owners when they’re building their local marketing strategy.
Neglect data checks and create local pages for each franchise company.
In order to share your company’s goods/services on the local market and be visible to all potential customers, you first need to be present in search engines, google maps and some local directories. But be sure to check for fake or duplicate locations of your business. Submit your entire company’s information to any chosen sites: Google Maps, Apple Maps, Facebook Local Pages, etc.
Create the company’s listings plan of action without optimizing it.
After creating your company’s listings, don’t forget to generate in-store traffic online. Which should perform a series of actions that can help your online presence and mission statement at the top in a local search. Your listings should be optimized in the correct business category, with high-quality photos and attributes/answers on FAQ. Make sure you are working with reviews, and that customers share their feedback. Each listing should be correct without any mistakes! All business information should be accurate in the ‘Google My Business’ listing as this is the most effective way to create visibility in Google’s local search engine. All in all, these issues form a great portion of an effective local SEO strategy, which can influence the ranking of your company’s position in the local search along with generating in-store traffic.
Don’t work with reviews and brand reputation.
If your company doesn’t track what people say about you, it can negatively hurt your business’ reputation. It can result in the loss of potential clients and overall profit. Some ways you can work with customer feedback: Work with reviews on all sites where your company is present. Take into account every review, good or bad. Create a special response template for your convenience to be consistent in your response to the reviews across all franchises. Motivate customers to write reviews, answer their questions and show them that you are interested in solving all the possible misunderstandings. Once a business communicates with its customers and is giving constant feedback, it will lead you to higher scores and prevent clients from leaving.
Ignore social networks.
Do you think that your main corporate account is enough? Well expanding reach to other platforms and into more pages can provide more opportunities to attract more customers. The pro of local accounts compared to corporate ones are the content, which is highly targeted and relevant to each local community. Things to do: Identify where your target audience is. Make your content highly localized, and post new and relevant information. Conduct marketing activities along with giving answers and feedback to customers promptly. Lastly, motivate users to leave comments to make your account visible to your potential clients.
Apply only the marketing practice suggested by the head office.
Neglecting to monitor their actions related to local optimization and reputation management is the most common mistake franchises make. By using analytics tools and key metrics from your ‘Google My Business’ account, you will have a better understanding if there is any point or profit to work with. These metrics can give you an understanding of how working with local strategy can affect the franchise company’s rankings in local search.
Take these mistakes into account and avoid them at all costs. Create a successful franchise local marketing strategy that will put your business ahead of your competitors!
