Franchise Update Magazine Issue II, 2016 | Page 60

GROWING YOUR SYSTEM

Challenge the pros
“HOW DO YOU USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO ATTRACT
PROSPECTS AND VALIDATE CANDIDATES?
Alex Samios
Director of Franchising
Dogtopia
Social media is a regular function of our
franchise development team. We use it to
generate leads, nurture existing prospects,
and validate that the franchise candidate is
right for our brand.
Today’s prospective franchisees want a self-directed
approach; they don’t want to
feel as if a franchisor is trying
to sell them on the concept.
With this in mind, you need
to adopt a softer, more subtle
social media strategy for franchise sales—especially when
posting franchise development-focused messaging on
your brand’s consumer social
media accounts.
At Dogtopia, we keep our corporate
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages
separate from those of our franchise owners,
who all have their own individual accounts
that are updated regularly. Considering the
many parallels between our target pet parent and our ideal franchise candidate, our
consumer social media pages are useful
venues to encourage followers to become
a Dogtopian. While this is the case, we are
very cautious about how we incorporate
franchise development messaging.
Frequently publishing blatant franchise
development-focused posts will turn off consumers, causing your following to dwindle.
The key is to be authentic and refrain from
dropping the “F bomb.” And by F bomb,
I mean Franchise. For example, if you’re
trying to determine which regions to target your franchise development efforts, ask
your Facebook community: “If you could
open a _____ anywhere, where would it
be?” Then promote the post so it shows up
in more newsfeeds. Besides showing where
consumers want your brand, this hints to
fans that your concept is a franchise and
they can open their own location.
Another great way to draw in prospective
franchisees is to share relatable content about
your franchise owners. For Instagram, this

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might be a 16-second video about a franchisee’s career transition, or a photo from
a news article about a franchisee
Traditionally, our ideal franchise candidates are owner-operators, but we’re
shifting toward a more business-minded
investor who would rather work on the
business than in the business.
As we rethink our franchise
sales approach to better reach
this target owner, we also
will be adapting our social
media strategy. For example,
rather than subtle approaches
through consumer pages, we
may begin targeting social
influencers who have highly
engaged followings of multiunit franchisees within the
fast-casual sector.
Like most franchisors, we carefully awar