Franchise Update Magazine Issue II, 2016 | Page 58

GROWING YOUR SYSTEM
BY KEITH GERSON & TIM JOHNSON

FRANCHISE
DEVELOPMENT2016
YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE IS A CRITICAL COMPONENT OF SUCCESS

56

arketing isn’t what it used to
be. Your once tightly controlled
brand identity is a thing of the
past. We live in an era dominated by social media, where literally everyone can
share their opinion on what your franchise
brand stands for. Supporters, detractors,
activists… like them or loathe them, if you
want to grow your franchise system you
must know how this model works.
One of today’s most critical keys to
growing a franchise system is evolving
into a brand that can honestly demonstrate the answer to the question: “Do
they love you, or just know who you are?”
The difference has proven to be critical in
providing a franchise candidate with the
confidence needed to move to close—as
well as in improving metrics from historically lackluster closing effectiveness rates
(typically about 1.5 percent of total leads
generated) to levels more akin to those
reserved for when a brand has been “referred” (typically at or above 5 percent of
total leads generated).

M

Successful
franchise
development
hinges on
proactive
validation—
what a candidate
discovers before
completing
your lead
generation form.

A case in point
As part of a recent keynote speech on behalf
of an emerging brand in the home services
category, we set out to demonstrate how
traditional content on franchise websites
fails to demonstrate brand superiority (if it
ever could). We took the online language
describing how the brand differentiated
itself from its top competitors and stripped
it of all of its branding and references to
who specifically said it by name. We presented it to the audience, asking executive
management and franchisees alike to identify which was theirs. Among the 50-plus
franchisees, all corporate executives, and
team members in attendance, fewer than
3 in 10 (28 percent) could identify their

brand from the competition in this simulated test. This raises a critical question: If
you can’t identify yourself out of a lineup,
how can you expect your customers and
prospects to do so? This illustrates our
point that it’s no longer who you say you
are, but who they say you are.
The truth is that your brand promise
is no longer owned by corporate marketing. It is instead molded, refreshed, and
propagated daily by your customers and
others. Online reviews, smartphones, and
social media are not passing fads. But can
they be useful to your franchise recruiting
and development efforts? Or are they just
distractions from the true work of sales and
recruiting, and best left to the marketing

department?
We believe that effective management
of your online presence, including social
media, is a critical component of your
franchise development strategy. Why?
Your franchise brand will be made or lost
based on its local and network’s “social
proof.” There also is no better way to illustrate that your organization knows how
to get found and manage customers at the
local level, which is where it really counts.
At the conference mentioned above,
we found a very marketing-savvy CEO
and founder looking to accelerate the
brand’s growth of new licensees, as growth
had stalled in recent years. We offered
to conduct an analysis of the strength of
the brand’s online presence to determine
influencing factors. To that end, we were
offered approximately 10 franchisees to
study the effectiveness of their online
campaigns and social presence. Here’s a
sample of what we discovered.
• Of the online sites where they desired to have a presence (e.g., LinkedIn,
Instagram, Google Maps, Google+, Yelp,
Facebook), they were missing from 20 of
their 30 preferred online social sites and
search engines.
• Significant issues and errors in their
franchise listings, with a rating of 23 percent out of 100.
• Brand inconsistencies from location
to location as franchisees either had their
own websites or multiple sites, given that
the franchisor had provided microsites
in an effort to create brand consistency.
• Keywords that showed very little
symmetry or consistency.
• A search engine share of “voice” versus that of local competitors showed that
they were barely being discussed in social
media circles in their own markets against
keywords they hoped to dominate.

Franchiseupdate ISS U E II, 2 0 1 6

fu2_grow_development(56-57).indd 56

5/9/16 9:57 AM