We all know that in advertising it’s important to define your target before starting any marketing initiatives. The same holds true with digital campaigns for franchise marketing, particularly in how your target market relates to the content presented and where and how it is delivered. Before you launch a franchise marketing campaign, it’s vital to learn how to create a franchisee persona.

Who are you talking to? What problems do they need to solve in their lives? What parts of the franchising and entrepreneur messages resonate with them? How do they like to be communicated with?

With some focused efforts, you’ll be able to reach prospective franchisees that are more likely to convert. Here are five ways to create effective personas:

Start small.

It’s best to select one or two personas initially. Each persona will get its own strategy, content and campaign. Narrowing to a single persona might create fewer leads, but they will be more qualified leads with higher conversion rates.

Provide as many details as possible.

Include demographic information such as age, profession, etc., but also consider more abstract details such as what they value, what audiences they interact with and what platforms they utilize.

Establish how becoming a franchise owner can be attractive to them.

Determine why this persona would want to be a franchisee. A teacher might want to continue to work with students, but outside of the classroom in a way that’s more lucrative. A nurse might want the opportunity to combine a love of healthcare with an interest in starting their own business.

Determine how YOUR franchise opportunity is perfect for them.

What makes your franchise different from all of the others? Define the ways that becoming a franchisee with your business will help your persona achieve his or her goals in a way that no other brand can.

Determine the pain points.

Brainstorm the possible obstacles your persona faces in becoming a franchisee with your company. Find ways to address the needs of those that are afraid of the implications of a career move or the financial risk of starting a business. Help overcome fears right away so that they can move to the next step in the decision-making process.

All of your franchise marketing efforts are going to be directed to your selected persona. It’s important to clearly define and communicate that persona from the beginning. Focused messaging and targeting will involve everything from the copy content in pitch pieces, to the design of downloadable lead magnets, to the platforms where advertisements are displayed. Your efforts will yield big dividends: Strategically approaching a narrower audience will deliver more qualified leads.

Quick Recap:

What are the 5 steps to create a franchisee persona?

1. Start small and build 2 personas at most initially
2. Get granular and add as much details as possible
3. Map out their wants and needs
4. Establish why your franchise is right for each of them
5. Determine each one of their pain points

This blog was written by Curious Jane and previously published on the blog of the International Franchise Association.

Every business seems to be on a quest to please Google and get better search rankings, and organic search traffic is the holy grail. Although some people waste time trying to hack the Google algorithm (please note: they can’t), there are a number of things you can do to boost your franchise business’s SEO. Here are a few content strategy tips for franchises with the most effective being to publish compelling content.

Writing great content takes time and commitment. If you put valuable information on your website or blog, however, people will find it and share it, and you will see an increase in traffic. If it’s compelling and informative, people will stay on your site and read it. Google rewards you when people spend more time on your site.

For your content to have a positive impact on search rankings, it must be relevant, consistent and timely.

Relevant Content

Content on your franchise website should be consumer friendly. The main headline on a page must clearly signal what kind of information can be found there. Readers are skimmers first, and if your headline doesn’t seem relevant, they will leave.

For a retail apparel franchise, content – text and photos – should be about current, in-season fashion. Write about and illustrate styles that your target demographic will be searching for.

Consider the process: If someone searches for a “dress to wear to a summer wedding,” and Google serves up the store’s blog, the headline should include some of those keywords, and so should the meta description (the line that appears beneath the headline on a results page). Likewise, your friendly dress shopper may search for “Images,” so the photo should be current and the “alt text” should include similar keywords, such as “wedding guest’s dress” instead of simply “dress.”

Consistent Posts and Updates

Be consistent about posting to your blog and updating your page. Google rewards pages with new and updated content and likewise, it may penalize a page that goes months without any activity. Additionally, your hard-won audience will drift away if they visit your page several times and don’t see anything new. Commit to a reasonable posting schedule; you can always increase it later if you find that you have time and good material. If you own a pet care franchise, for instance, you could aim for a monthly post on a topic such as pet nutrition or new flea treatments.

Timely and Current Offerings

Finally, sales and offers on your site must be kept up to date, and images should look current and connected to your brand. You may want to build into your website a structure that calls attention to news or upcoming events. A restaurant franchise, for example, should make it easy for website visitors to find information on summer specials or a “kids eat free” promotion.

Producing valuable content is worth the effort it takes. Great content helps you build an audience organically, and Google always ranks that over paid promotion.

This blog was written by Curious Jane and previously published on the blog of the International Franchise Association.

After the Cambridge Analytica fallout in March, the #deletefacebook hashtag ran its course, Mark Zuckerberg answered to Congress and Facebook tightened its privacy settings. What does this mean for franchise advertisers? How does it affect Facebook’s advertising potential?

Truth is, you’re not the only franchise examining next steps after a data breach this great, and especially for a platform so widely used. But, should this concern you as an advertiser? The answer is “no.”

Facebook will continue to be a great advertising platform for your franchise business. Let’s address some of those hesitations and put your mind at ease.

Facebook took steps to further secure its users.

The data breach affected thousands of Facebook users, and the social media giant didn’t waste time in tightening its security and reducing developer access to user information.

In an interview with The New York Times, Zuckerberg explained that his company would do a “full investigation of every app that got access to a large amount of information.” Furthermore, any app with suspicious activity would undergo a full forensic audit.

Facebook has realized it cannot depend solely on artificial intelligence to police and protect user information. By the end of this year, Facebook will double the number of people dedicated to securing user privacy.

Facebook’s ad model isn’t going anywhere.

Facebook is popular among advertisers because of its free consumer access and extremely low advertising rates. The ease of access allows the social media platform to build a community and “bring the entire world closer together.” Like many social platforms, Facebook depends on ad revenue to fund operations. They will continue to work toward a balance between providing a free platform and desirable advertising opportunities.

Because Facebook wants to be valuable to advertisers, it allows hypertargeting in a unique way. This targeting will be more precise as they continue to refine their systems.

Facebook’s advertising potential was not impacted by breach.

Even while the Cambridge Analytica data breach was unfolding publicly, Facebook continued to gain new users. In fact, Facebook added 48 million daily active users in the first quarter of 2018.

Getting your message in front of large, targeted audience will help grow your franchise brand and attract more customers.

There aren’t many alternatives.

Franchisors will be hard pressed to find any other platform that reaches targeted demographics as easily and affordably as Facebook.

Facebook provides measurable metrics that franchisors can immediately act upon. A variety of ad options, including video, is another selling point. Plus, the Facebook pixel allows you to track site visitors and what they do while visiting your site.

Facebook is a powerful tool, and that power wasn’t diminished by the data breach. Facebook still delivers ads to a diverse, global audience, and advertiser hesitancy doesn’t change the ROI.

This blog was written by Curious Jane and previously published on the blog of the International Franchise Association.

One initiative within your overall franchise development plan likely includes a digital campaign to generate leads. Your lead magnet – the downloadable content, online quiz, audit, etc. that users provide their information in exchange for – is a key part of this plan. When it comes to leads, quality always trumps quantity. Generating qualified leads is imperative for your franchise development team’s success. Consider these six tips when implementing magnets into your franchise lead generation strategies.

Single out each persona

Persona development is marketing at its core. Who is your target audience? If you have more than one that’s fine, but pick one — and only one — target for each piece. You can’t easily talk to second-career educators and entrepreneurial millennials in the same magnet.

Consider the format they use

Lead magnets take many forms. Is your target market more likely to take a quiz or download a guide? There are a multitude of options when it comes to lead magnets — tutorials, checklists, infographics, etc. Choose the format that is most likely to attract your target audience.

Make sure your content solves a problem

The primary message in your magnet needs to solve a problem for a potential lead. In franchise development, that might be providing steps to help a person become their own boss or offering a content in the form of a guide on how to gain financial independence by becoming a franchisee with your business. Most users know that if they provide their email address, they will be remarketed to. The more valuable the lead magnet content, the more likely they are to engage and eventually buy from you.

Call to action

The potential franchisee has given you their contact information in exchange for the valuable, free content. Your franchise development team can cultivate leads through remarketing and sales calls, but what do you want the reader/user to do after they have read or viewed your lead magnet? Whether it’s an invitation to request a consultation, a reminder to visit the website for more information or an offer to sign up for a webinar, always include a call to action at the end of any magnet. Also, consider where the lead magnet falls in the sales funnel. If these are top-of-funnel audiences, a “how-to” or “best-tips” guide is probably best because that audience is merely exploring and gathering information. If this is an audience that has already downloaded your magnet or engaged with your company before, a free audit might work better.

Evergreen

It’s always good to provide content that is timely and relevant, but consider creating pieces with a little more staying power. While articles, blogs and social media post calendars range from monthly to hourly, lead magnets can be produced every few months, and only need to be changed when data or offerings change or conversions drop. They can be a big investment, but at least they don’t need to be created every month.

Complete A/B testing

In a matter of seconds, consumers will decide whether to click on your ad or link for your lead magnet. Readers will base their decisions to click on both the visual layout of the ad and the title of the magnet. Run an A/B test to see which ad or link title has the highest conversion rate.

Lead magnets are important pieces of your digital franchise development campaigns. Use these franchise lead generation strategies to develop magnets that convert, and then coordinate with optimized ads, landing pages and follow-up emails to complete the franchise development campaign.

The goal of franchise SEO strategies are to increase organic traffic, which is unpaid traffic going to your franchise website. There are many pieces involved in an effective SEO strategy, but all point back to structuring your website, location sites and user experience to provide relevant and organized content that can be recognized by Google and other search engines so that your business will be served up when someone is doing a search for the services or products you provide.

Some SEO work is done on the front-end (meaning you or the user would be able to see it on your website), while other SEO work is done on the back-end by coders and developers. All of front-end and back-end strategies work together to improve SEO.

If you’d like to implement SEO to enhance franchise marketing on your website:

Clarify Your Site Structure

Do a big picture review of your website. Make sure that the structure and organization of your site is clear. This is so that Google (and other search engines) can understand the purpose of each page and index each of them easily. It’s like making an outline for an essay that indicates hierarchy and relationship. Your site should also follow a similar format. Help clarify the structure by implementing changes, such as listing headings in the correct order. If the whole site seems like it’s disorganized or out-of-date, it might be time for a new website.

Create a Clear Path for the User

Look at your site from the user’s perspective. Be sure that layout, navigation, etc. all point toward a clear path to purchase. Tweak language and design as much as you need to. It need to be easy so that users can quickly find the information they need and respond to the desired call to action.

Perform Proper Maintenance

Confirm all plugins, apps, etc. are up to date. Broken links and out of date content create a frustrating user experience. Frustration like this increases bounce rate, and can even cause Google to remove it form their search results. This is called de-indexed.

Get Backlinks

Create quality backlinks to your site. The easiest way to do this is to include your website is in local directory listings. There are many out there like Yelp, Yellow Pages and Foursquare. It is important to consistently list and correct your franchise locations on each. Your NAP (name, address and phone) must be the same across all platforms.

Follow a Strategic Content Calendar

Establish a content calendar that includes a regularly scheduled blog related to your franchise industry or offerings. Google values websites that continually provide updated and relevant information to users.

Audit Your Content

Examine each page of content individually. You need to make sure that content relates to page titles and that page titles related to user searches. You don’t want Google sending someone looking for something else to land on your page. They will quickly arrive and then leave, increasing your bounce rate. Your goal is to provide accurate content and titles to help Google serve your site to those looking for what you offer.

Pace Your Changes

It’s important to be careful with the speed with which you implement changes. If you make too many modifications at one time, you might run into issues with the way Google is indexing your site, causing your organic search results to decline. There is historical value with your current site, and it’s important to leverage that while making improvements. For example, you might begin adding additional pages before changing content on your homepage.

Keep Up with The Changing Landscape

While SEO continues to evolve as search engines get “smarter” over time. Regardless, the overarching approach you should take remains constant. Do all you can to create an engaging and successful user experience on your franchise website and micro-sites.