Providing quality user experiences online is increasingly important touchpoint to enhance franchise brand. In fact, user experience is expected to surpass price and product as the main brand differentiator by 2020. But signs of that shift already are becoming clear: According to Experience Dynamics, 79 percent of users say they will leave a site and shop elsewhere if the site is not optimized.

Websites that run slowly, require repetitive input from the consumer or are not optimized for mobile devices can frustrate users. With so many options to shop online, 95 percent of consumers agree that creating “good user experience just makes sense.” Franchise marketing teams should recognize the importance of user experience and work to ensure their sites are smooth and easy to browse.

Creating Quality Experiences

User experience encompasses consumers’ entire journeys, from the moment they hear about your company to the moment they make their first purchases and beyond. Consumers want their online experiences to be fast, interactive and tailored to their preferences. When companies fail to provide those experiences, consumers will look for them elsewhere.

Creating personalized and seamless interactions with customers might seem challenging if you haven’t already invested in upgrading your user experience. Here are three techniques to ensure that you’re off to a good start:

1.) Give users unique personas

Create personas for users by having them sign in with emails and passwords. Unique personas allow users to pick up where they left off anytime they visit your site. The customer experience becomes much more convenient when users can skip inputting personal information multiple times throughout the process.

Attributing unique personas to customers also makes it possible to track their journeys and learn about their interests. You can tailor the experience more effectively if you know whether a user prefers visiting your site on a computer or a mobile device, as well as what the user searches for and purchases.

2.) Learn from user interactions.

Pay attention to how users research and buy products on your site. Communicating with consumers about their experiences is a great way to fine-tune your site’s overall user experience. However, consumers don’t always recognize or voice certain issues. In those cases, watching users in action can uncover aspects of the experience that need improvement.

For optimal results, choose a small sample of users to observe. Tracking technology such as heat-map software can highlight the more popular areas of each page, which areas users typically avoid and at what point users stop browsing and leave your site.

3.) Personalize each user’s experience.

Use the information you gather from users to personalize their experiences as much as possible. You might not be able to create a personalized experience for each of the more than 1 billion users online, but it’s possible to customize parts of your site on the basis of information gleaned from consumers’ previous visits.

Sites such as Amazon and Netflix offer excellent examples of personalization. Each of them tailors recommendations and greets users by name using automated software that recognizes online personas. This level of customization creates a unique experience for users, making purchases simpler and encouraging them to visit more often.

Most consumers agree that user experience is the most important reason they stay on or leave a brand’s website. Take steps now to optimize your site’s user experience, and you’ll keep your current customers happy and create a smooth journey for future visitors.

It’s every franchisor’s dream: The business you started out of your home kitchen has turned into a restaurant with multiple locations. You’re now the CEO of your own franchise, and you’re ready to keep your business growing and thriving through a creative franchise marketing campaign on both the local and national levels. So let’s dive into the ways a restaurant franchise digital advertising agency measures progress and asses customer acquisition cost for restaurants.

Tracking Customer Acquisition Cost for Restaurants at Scale

As a franchise grows, it can sometimes be difficult for franchisors to keep up with individual franchisees’ marketing efforts. Nevertheless, it’s important to do — business leaders have to know which are leading to increased success and growth. They need to know for each level including national, regional and local marketing campaigns.

Fortunately, there are a few metrics that will help franchisors measure the progress of a franchisee’s approach to local marketing:

1. Online traffic and number of guests: If franchisees are marketing locally during specific hours, are they seeing an increase in customers or online orders based on local marketing? Implement digital and on-site systems to track conversions.
2. Promotional offers: Are customers redeeming offers that franchisees have distributed through email, texts, direct mail, apps or loyalty programs? Track who is redeeming them, their proximity to a location, what form of offer is they redeem most often and which locations are seeing the most redemptions.
3. Social media growth and online reviews:More likes and followers mean there are more customers to promote the franchise brand, share specials, offer positive reviews and make recommendations. Make sure your posts are being promoted, and consider a clicks-to-website campaign to encourage online ordering.
4. Customer acquisition cost: Constant monitoring of customer acquisition cost for restaurants is critical in the industry. Consider testing across platforms — a promotion on Facebook will produce different results from one on Yelp or Instagram. One way is to look at cost per click for each platform you’re using.

Tracking and analyzing these metrics will help franchisors monitor their franchisees’ marketing successfully. It will also reveal the areas where franchisees’ efforts aren’t up to par.

Reacting to Strategic Metrics

If data suggests that some franchisees’ campaigns aren’t succeeding or leading to growth, all is not lost. At that point, the franchisor must determine the best path going forward.

Set Priorities

First, franchisors should prioritize marketing channels based on each location’s target audience and market. There are many platforms and channels to choose from, but you don’t want to spread your resources too thin. If so, your ads might not be seen by potential customers. If a franchisee wants to target teens, for example, its focus should be on social media and online marketing.

Allow Flexibility

Franchisors should also remember to give franchisees some breathing room. They need to be able to do what works best for their regions. Marketers must consider differing goals and budgets to determine the best strategy for a specific area. If one location wants to prioritize ads to increase lunchtime traffic while another wants to promote its Tuesday family deal, let them do so. Their marketing strategies will be different, but their goal of increasing business is the same.

Seek Quality

Finally, franchisors should look for quality, not quantity. It is common for a restaurant franchise digital advertising agency to promise or advertise a high click-through rate and low cost per click. But there is often a common overlooked detail. Campaigns that produce those results often target an audience that includes only existing customers. Franchisors’ strategies should aim to pinpoint their target demographics and should also reach new potential clients. The resulting click-through rate might be slightly lower and the cost per click might increase, but connecting with both audiences is key to growth.

As franchises expand, it can be tough to keep up with each franchisee’s efforts. It’s also difficult to ensure every location’s actions are leading to growth. But if franchisors keep track of a few strategic metrics, focus on targeted local marketing, and loosen the reins on franchisees’ individual tactics. Then they’ll likely see a growing customer base and increase their marketing success.

Taziki’s Mediterranean Café is quickly becoming a well-known restaurant chain. The casual eatery has 63 locations in 15 states in the Southeast and Midwest. The restaurant’s story often begins with Keith Richards’ trip to Greece with his wife, Amy, where they say they fell in love with the food and culture. SO let’s take a dive into how to become a household name and how how they did it.

While it’s true that the Greek vacation served as an inspiration for the restaurant’s menu, the work necessary to operate a successful restaurant began decades before that, when 18-year-old Richards first entered the restaurant business. He went on to work in various restaurants before landing at Bottega, the restaurant of the James Beard Award-winning chef Frank Stitt, in 1988. Ten years later, Richards purchased a closed hot dog joint and transformed it into the first Taziki’s Mediterranean Café.

Richards’ business was clearly built on hard work and passion. Similarly, anyone looking to grow a franchise must love what he’s doing and be willing to put in long days and lots of effort to make it work. In addition to passion and hard work, however, there are a few additional steps that emerging franchisors. These steps should be considered if they want to grow quickly and become household names:

1. Define your brand and its values.

The first key to successful growth is clear branding: determining your core values, creating brand guidelines and establishing national and local marketing plans. You also must zero in on what makes your brand different. Use all of these to craft the story of your brand across multiple channels.

Confusing brands are not successful brands. If you don’t define your brand — who you are and who you’re not — from the franchisor level, you won’t be able to expand across national and international markets.

2. Build relationships with top franchisees.

Franchisees need guidance and support, and potential franchisees look for businesses with strong leadership networks. Ask your franchisees what they’re doing locally and learn from their experiences, taking note of what works for each and what doesn’t.

Position your top franchisees as leaders and resources for your entire system. Franchisees can serve as ambassadors for your brand and provide strong leadership, serving as resources for other franchisees.

3. Look at the big picture.

If you want to rapidly expand into multiple markets, you need to consider the logistics. Do your vendors have the capacity to handle your growth? Do your vendors really understand franchises? Can they help you grow nationally and locally? This type of focus on the big picture is a major key to how to become a household name in every industry.

We recently spoke with an emerging fitness franchise with fewer than 25 locations. Its leaders said they wanted to operate their marketing and branding as if they had 100 locations to make sure they were on the right path as they continued to expand rapidly. We know this brand will see long-term success with that mindset. Other times, though, we’ve seen franchisors so focused on expansion that they overlook some of the gritty details of their company’s infrastructure — a recipe for trouble.

4. Think nationally and locally.

As a franchise, your goal is always growth. But that doesn’t mean your marketing focus should just be on national efforts: You should give equal weight to local campaigns, too. Determine what your national brand will handle best and what your franchisees or co-ops would be better at rolling out. As you expand, make sure both corporate and franchise locations are clear on their marketing roles and expectations.

The top complaint we hear from franchisees who pay into national ad funds is they don’t feel the impact locally. The right marketing partners can help structure the campaign to be a win-win for franchisors and franchisees, maintaining brand standards while giving franchisees some local control. Without local success, your national brand will struggle with long-term success.

For franchisors looking to become as successful as Taziki’s, success will be determined by a few factors. These factor range from the strength of a brand’s story to scalable plans to local and national marketing. The task of growing your business and learning how to become a household name might be daunting. That’s why it’s important to keep these four steps in mind, so that you’ll be on the path to becoming a household name.

Consumers increasingly are influenced by social media when making purchasing decisions. It’s imperative that you create and maintain forums for brand discussions about your franchise. So let’s take a dive into what it takes to manage social media for franchises.

Cultivate your online community.

Through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms, you have the opportunity to build brand engagement in a very unique way. By providing creative content, and facilitating discussions, you can develop an engaged base of loyal customers for your franchise. You can also do this by responding to negative and positive feedback in platforms that you manage. Therefore, they’ll know where to go to connect with you, and you’ll get the opportunity to drive the interaction.

Respond to comments in a timely manner.

Next, communication today happens in real time. One bad encounter with customer service and your brand can show up instantly on social media for franchises. Have a strategy and team in place to respond to all comments, good and bad, in a timely matter. (And this usually means within a few hours, or at the most, one day.) Prevent negative feedback from snowballing through cyberspace without your business weighing in at all. Be present, and be part of the discussion.

Respond to negative feedback … positively!

Have a plan in place for responding to potentially damaging feedback. If a negative response by a customer has validity, use this opportunity to show that you care. This opportunity exists even if it is presented in an inoffensive manner. Therefore, no matter the platform, be sure to respond in a timely manner and offer a solution, or at the minimum, an explanation. Honest and timely discussions help promote confidence for brand influencers.

Crunched for time? Consider hiring an outside agency.

Lastly, if you don’t have the time or staff to monitor and leverage your franchise’s social presence, consider hiring an agency. At Curious Jane, we’re experts in managing online communities. Our experienced and certified teams work efficiently and strategically to handle all aspects of online brand management.

Franchise owners who wonder why you need to run facebook ads for franchises should consider reach and engagement.

Facebook changed its algorithm a while back, making it more difficult to reach your fan base. Organic reach now averages 1% to 2% of your fans. To extend reach, businesses must use paid promotion.

Here are five ways that retail franchises can use Facebook to promote their stores:

• Promoting posted content: Post relevant content, creative and most importantly, inventory, and then boost it. A budget of $10 to $20 for two to four days can increase impressions and engagement by 50% to 60%.
• Clicks-to-website ads: These ads are the perfect vehicle to drive traffic to your website or to a ticket outlet. You should budget at least $150.
• Like ads: Likes are important because they validate your store as a reputable business and help you gather analytics. A budget of $150 to $175 per month can add 70 to 230 new likes.
• Creating/promoting an event: Use events to get people excited. Use a strong title and eye-catching imagery, and be sure to include all the basic information, such as date and time. Plan to spend $35 to $50 per week for one or two weeks before the event for an extra 1,000 to 5,000 impressions.
• Instagram ads: If your audience skews younger, you may want to consider advertising on Instagram, where most users are younger than 30. Instagram offers very strong engagement – 4.21% compared with less than 0.1% on Facebook and Twitter. If your running facebook ads for franchises, your budget need to be around $30 to $50 for local ads, or at least $150 for a larger market.

Facebook makes tracking results easy. If you find that a particular boosted post gets really great engagement, don’t hesitate to boost it again!