Online Methods to Attract Potential Franchisees

Written on the 6 February 2017

Online Methods to Attract Potential Franchisees
How these internet marketing methods can help you sell your franchise

By Rick Grossman

The internet has become a pillar of franchise marketing, leveling the playing field for new franchisors because the barriers of entry are lower, giving creativity and not big marketing budgets, the advantage. Consider the following ways you can grow your internet marketing efforts:

Websites
Having a professional-looking website is a must these days. Here are some tips for creating a strong franchise website:

• Your site should have simple content and a clear call to action that's on the first page, visible without having to scroll down.
• Your site should be built on a search engine optimization (SEO)-friendly platform. Some of the older platforms can hurt your SEO rankings

Email
Email is now commonplace and allows you to communicate much faster than traditional mail. The following are some tips for your email efforts:

• Your email addresses should be connected to a dedicated URL. Rick@XYZautorepairfranchise.com is much better than XYZautorepairfranchise@freeemail.com.
• Include a "professional signature." It should contain your picture, logo, contact information and social media links along with your name.
• Include a legal disclosure that specifies that your correspondence does not imply an offer to sell a franchise. Have a competent, experienced franchise attorney provide you with this language.
• Be sure to comply with the email rules when sending "email blast" campaigns, including opt-out options and approved recipients.
• Always return emails within 24 hours of receipt. Sooner is better.
• Have all company email messages proofread to ensure correct spelling, grammar and punctuation are used.

Blogs
Apply the following tips for your blog efforts:

• Research your industry niche to find the top blog sites.
• Choose a specific keyword phrase for each article. Use it once in the title and once per 100 words. If you use it too many times in the article, though, it may be penalized by the search engines; 350 to 450 words is a good length for a blog article.
• Insert a link to your franchise website in each article.
• Make every article educational and newsworthy.
• Change at least 30 percent of the articles if you intend to submit them to more than one blog. The search engines will "de-dupe" or remove duplicate articles from rankings if they are exactly the same.

Social media
Consider the following when you create your social media campaigns:

• Hire a professional to help you with this effort unless you're very familiar with social media. You'll want to appoint someone within your company to focus on this to ensure consistency. Once you build a group of fans or followers, you must provide good information on a regular basis or you'll lose them.
• Include great content to keep your audience engaged. Avoid posting "the fact of the day" type of postings just for the sake of posting something.
• Allow potential franchisees the ability to ask questions and get to know your company culture.
• Monitor the content carefully to make sure that it remains positive and professional.