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Blog, Marketing

7 Signs Your Franchise Recruitment Website is Outdated (and Holding You Back) In today’s competitive franchise recruitment marketing space, your online presence plays a massive role. No matter the industry you serve, your website must speak to the customer and draw them in to learn more. Your franchise recruitment website is no different. Nearly 70 percent of the B2B buying journey happens online—but it isn’t a linear process. Your prospect franchisees often start their journey online and then ping pong back and forth between personal interactions online, something like this:

• Reach out for more information
• Talk to sales
• Go back to do more research online to validate findings
• Start contract discussions
• Return to online data once again to further validate findings

With that in mind, your website should be considered a central hub of your franchise recruitment marketing strategy. If you’re wondering whether or not it’s time for a new website, here are seven signs your website is outdated and keeping you from growing your brand.

1. Security and privacy are an issue

Online attacks and downtime from your website host can rob your franchise business of opportunities and leave you vulnerable to liability issues. Security is an aspect of websites that many companies don’t think about at the onset. Only once you experience an outage with your website host or a hacker threatens you with ransomware does security become a focus for many businesses. But you don’t want to wait until you face an attack or liability to focus on your website’s security. Evaluate the security of your website host and content management system to decide if it’s time to upgrade.

2. It lacks lead generation funnels

Because so much of the buying journey happens online, you need to think about how you turn website visitors into prospects and prospects into customers. Your website should guide visitors to the content that they need to know to learn more about your franchise offering. Franchise recruitment websites should have a variety of ways to get in touch or learn more about you, including:

• Contact forms
• Lead magnet downloads (i.e., whitepapers, ebooks, guides, etc.)
• Newsletter signup

When a visitor has a question, make it easy to find contact information by placing a link to your contact form on every page or along the sidebar. Lead magnets help you learn who is interested in your franchise and collect their contact information to offer more valuable content. And for those who are very early in the buying process, a simple newsletter signup form is ideal to invite visitors to stay in touch in a more passive way.

3. The design is outdated

Website designs shift and change with time. And while you may not need to always have the most modern design, over time your website will become more and more dated. Today’s websites feature edge-to-edge imagery to maximize the space. Even fonts change and need a good refresh. To feel good about choosing to work with your franchise business, a website visitor needs to know that you will adapt and grow with changes in the marketplace. Sometimes franchises update their branding and their B2C website but neglect their franchise recruitment site. Keeping your franchise recruitment webpage consistent with the latest branding helps capitalize on brand recognition while demonstrating franchise marketing capacity.

4. Mobile and tablet optimization is poor

When new devices hit the market, website optimization changes. If your website is not responsive based on the device size that someone is viewing your website from, it’s time to update your website. Websites that render poorly on various devices make it difficult to read the text, interact with content and learn more about your business. Poor mobile optimization will also hurt your SEO and make it harder for potential investors to find you.

5. Load times are slow

As technology improves, expectations for websites also change. If your website is outdated, it likely has slower load times than the industry standard. Those slow load times will hurt your SEO and lead your visitors to abandon your site before getting the content that they came for. Old technology, such as Flash, can slow down your franchise recruitment website immensely. Evaluate your load times using Google’s PageSpeed Insights to learn more about your opportunities for improved load times.

6. SEO is lacking or difficult to manage

Some website platforms lack the necessary tools to manage your SEO to ensure you show up when potential investors search for franchises like yours. You need full access to your website’s functions to ensure maximum optimization. In some cases, your website template, content management system or format don’t meet today’s needs for customization to ensure your website’s SEO is at its best. That’s where a new franchise recruitment website can benefit your business.

7. Your content is lacking or out of date

Just like technology has changed over the years, so has marketing content. New trends feature content that speaks directly to the customer in a friendly and easy-to-read manner. Many franchise recruitment websites also fall short in the quantity and quality of content they provide. Sharing the right information will help turn cold leads into warm leads and warm leads into hot leads while simultaneously helping you identify the most qualified candidates for your brand. While website content might sound like an easy fix, outdated templates and limited tools might make it challenging to format your website content in a modern and simple manner that your website visitors expect. How to modernize your franchise recruitment website iluma Agency offers marketing services tailored to meet the needs of franchise businesses, including franchise recruitment websites that offer the right content, design and security to ensure your success. Contact us to learn how we can help you reach your franchise marketing goals.

Blog, Marketing

Location-based targeting has long been at the forefront of digital innovation, but as franchise marketing steps away from the one-size-fits-all approach, it has grown and evolved as a powerful strategy to create a true one-on-one audience experience.

“Don’t push people to where you want to be; meet them where they are.”

–Meghan Keaney Anderson, VP Marketing, Hubspot

As a franchise brand or location owner, it is in your best interest to reach the right audience at the right time and in the right location rather than advertising to everyone everywhere; it’s a smarter use of valuable marketing dollars.

Programmatic geofencing has revolutionized location-based marketing, as it gives franchises the opportunity to serve digital ads to mobile users within specific locations that data flags as relevant to their business. Through this tactic, prospects meeting your target demographic criteria who physically walk into geofenced areas or event spaces with a GPS enabled device may be shown your ads for up to 30 days. During this period, these display ads appear on unique websites and at different times depending on each prospect’s personal browsing and conversion behaviors.

These 5 uses of geofence ads are making programmatic geofencing increasingly worthwhile within the franchise marketing space:

1. Directly target your competitors’ customers and prospects.

Whether you’re a fitness franchise or beauty business in the health and wellness space or currently trying to expand your youth-focused education franchise, franchise businesses are popping up everywhere, offering consumers more options—and providing franchise brands with tougher competition—than ever before.

Take 10 seconds to note your top 3 to 5 competing brands or local businesses. Now imagine being able to reach and influence every customer or member who walks into those competing locations. Geofencing lets you do this, and you can even track how many of your competitors’ customers visited your business after seeing your competing ad.

If you’re ready to run a competitor-focused geofencing campaign, be sure to leverage an enticing offer that rivals what your competitors are offering to their customers, members, and prospects, creating a sense of urgency to visit your brand’s business location instead.

2. Meet your prospects at their favorite restaurants, stores, concerts, and sporting events.

Popular locations and events serve as prime opportunities to capture possible consumers that will be interested in your product or service.

Has your marketing data shown that most of your customers or members shop at Whole Foods? Use geofencing to target similar qualified prospects who physically walk into a local Whole Foods grocery store.

Does part of your franchise presales campaign include sponsoring a tabling event at a community 5K race? A geofencing campaign can ensure that anyone who is present at the event continues seeing your ads well afterward, until they take action.

Looking to bolster your franchise recruitment efforts and attract more qualified franchise prospects? Geofencing enables physically targeting attendees of franchise conventions like the IFA conference and MUFC as well as trade shows specific to your industry.

3. Increase the lifetime value of current customers and prospects.

Geofencing doesn’t just have to target other business and event areas; you also have the option of fencing your own franchise locations in order to show ads to current customers and prospects who physically entered and purchased or browsed your products or services. This allows you to stay top of mind, build loyalty by thanking them and promoting a rewards program, and encourage repeat visits through a trackable limited-time discount code they can use next time.

4. Win big from an addressable win-back campaign.

From customers who haven’t visited or purchased in a long time to ex-members who cancelled their membership, addressable geofencing allows you to digitally show ads across all their household or business devices by targeting their specific addresses. Be sure to use a compelling offer and message that motivates them to give your business another chance—but sometimes your previous customers just need a reminder that they used to love your product or service.

5. Measure online-to-offline conversions.

In traditional digital marketing, we can use lead forms and landing pages to get some sense of direct ad campaign results—but many prospective customers could see an ad on Facebook, skip filling out a lead form, independently scope out your social media and Yelp reviews, then call or show up at your location if and when they decide to buy. Even though the ad created that customer lead, it’s not tracked as a lead, thus losing some visibility into the overall campaign performance.

Geofencing allows greater lead tracking, even when a prospect takes other actions between seeing your ad and purchasing. Setting your physical location as the “Conversion Zone” enables identifying how many of the individuals who saw your geofencing ad eventually enter your location, thus providing franchisees with a better sense of marketing ROI.

How will your franchise brand benefit?

Hyperlocal geofencing has proven tremendous value as it bridges the physical and digital divide to create unique opportunities for consumers by providing them with relevant ads based on their location, interest and behaviors. In today’s mobile-driven world, there’s no doubt that geofencing will only become more prevalent, with early adapters standing to gain the most from this cutting-edge digital trend.

A franchise-focused digital agency partner can deliver highly effective hyperlocal geofence marketing campaigns that are custom-tailored to your brand and the unique market of every franchise location, so your corporate team and franchise owners can focus on operations. iluma Agency’s comprehensive integrated digital marketing program maximizes reach, engagement, conversions, and profitability for franchise brands.

To learn how iluma Agency can make your brand shine with our proven franchise development services, contact us today.

Blog, Marketing

The digital marketing landscape is continuously evolving, presenting new opportunities for savvy franchise brands to grow at the local level and beyond. Now that we’re well into 2019, it’s time to take a step back and revisit core marketing activities. This doesn’t always mean scrapping the old for the new, but it’s worth examining how we’ve leveraged certain advertising platforms in the past, how we’re applying marketing strategy today, and how we might be better served by shifting our approach in the future.

“You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better.” -Elon Musk

Business is increasingly competitive. Whether your franchise is a gym, spa, tutoring center, or health food store, your franchisees depend on differentiation and data-backed marketing decisions to help them stand out from the crowd and focus on their bottom line. To retain and attract customers in 2019 and beyond, franchise brands are gravitating toward an omni-channel approach, focusing on providing a seamless customer experience as the backbone to their integrated, multiple marketing channel communication.

Here are 10 of the most relevant omni-channel trends we expect to help excel franchise growth this year:

1. Geofencing: Through GPS technology, we can draw a virtual boundary to define a location where we want to serve digital ads to smartphone users, such as a competing franchise, a store where qualified leads are likely to shop, or an event like a Marathon or Convention that they’re likely to attend. Once a target prospect physically enters that zone, we can continue to show them ads for up to 30 days. In addition to linking to a lead-focused landing page for conversion, this hyperlocal targeting even allows us to set a “conversion zone” so we can track if someone who saw the ad eventually visits one of your franchise locations.

2. Programmatic video: “Cable cutters” and “cable nevers” represent a generational shift—turning to video streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube instead of cable TV. These platforms present a cost-effective opportunity for franchise locations to deliver localized video ad content to their target audience

3. Second screen content recognition: We live in an era of mobile multi-tasking, casually scrolling through Instagram on our mobile devices while checking work emails on a laptop in front of your TV. Ads can be served to a smart phone based on recognition of content being watched on a separate TV screen. While it may be overly expensive and impossible to advertise on popular prime time shows, marketing through a separate device during shows popular with your prospects can be quite cost efficient and effective.

4. Artificial intelligence: Machine learning about audience, behavior, and results helps us systematically lower cost per lead for a more efficient and effective marketing campaign, meaning franchisees can get more for bang for their buck.

5. Voice search: Products like Alexa have become a household staple. When customers ask for a local product or service recommendation (“What’s the best gym near me?”), will your franchise location be mentioned? Boosting online presence through local listings, search engine optimized blog content, and community engagement via Yelp reviews and social media comments are contributing factors that can help improve voice search rankings.

6. Chat bots: The modern consumer expects instant gratification. They want information when and where they need it. With so many platforms to manage, it can be difficult for the staff of a local franchise business to be responsive on all platforms in a timely manner. Thoughtfully programmed chat bots can automatically respond to customers and prospects in a way that considers their behaviors and needs. These should be used as a supplement—not a replacement—to live customer service.

“Instead of using technology to automate processes, think about using technology to enhance human interaction.” -Tony Zambito

7. Email marketing: Email marketing is by no means new, but instead of using email to sell, franchise brands should move toward email as a nurturing device. Focus on making customers feel good about being customers. Showcase the experience with the brand. Potential new customers won’t want to miss out; your brand will sell itself.

8. Employee advocacy: Not only are employees’ part of what make a brand and each franchise location special, most employees also have their own network of social media followers. Are your franchisees’ employees equipped to effectively communicate your brand?

9. Social media metrics: Paid lead-gen campaigns can be measured in terms of direct ROI. What about organic social media content? We can spend an unlimited amount of time creating, curating, and publishing content, but how valuable is your Facebook profile? Are your Instagram posts working? Social media analytics can reveal top performing posts, trends in engagement, viral impressions through shares and extended networking, audience demographics, hash tag performance, Instagram Stories interactions, and more. In addition to enhancing future content, social media metrics can help you gain an emotional understanding of your customers and prospects that can help inform success of marketing on all other platforms.

“People spend money when and where they feel good.” -Walt Disney

10. Honesty and authenticity: In light of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and increasing public debate regarding Facebook’s use of personal data, franchise brands should strive for honesty. When using landing pages or lead forms to capture contact information, be clear about how their information will be used. Today’s consumer knows they are being marketed to, so there’s no need to hide your intent. That being said, in a world full of ads (and customers who have learned to ignore ads), bringing a more authentic look and feel to your digital marketing campaigns can help your brand stand out from the crowd.

Your 2019 Franchise Marketing Checklist

Are you ready for your franchise brand to shine?

• Platforms: Robust but integrated online presence. Continue using paid ads and organic social media content while incorporating new technology like programmatic video ads and chat bots.
• Targeting: Hyperlocal growth through geofencing for big-scale growth.
• Content: Be authentic and honest. Leverage real customers and staff.
• Data: Beyond cost per lead, use social media metrics to gain valuable emotional insight.
• Management: Collaborate with an agency partner for consistent success across hundreds of individual franchise locations.

Iluma Agency’s team of franchise marketing experts help franchisees execute global branding at the hyperlocal level. We’re excited to help brands take advantage of the digital marketing tools and trends that will directly benefit your unique needs and goals. Please contact us or book a call for more information about working with us.