Beginner-Friendly Tips for Franchise Development on LinkedIn

The internet has consistently been the leading source of franchise sales, and LinkedIn is a franchise development and B2B goldmine–it’s where entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 decision-makers spend their spare time, according to LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions Blog. As such, LinkedIn has always been a powerful marketing and recruitment tool.

But 2019 promises more franchise development opportunities than ever.

If you need further convincing, check out the following stats:

• LinkedIn audiences are bigger than ever. LinkedIn now has over 500 million members, according to Business Insider Intelligence. That still falls short of CEO Jeff Weiner’s 3-billion user goal, but it’s still a massive audience that your franchise development efforts cannot ignore.
• LinkedIn users are more active and engaged every year. 260 million users log in and comb their LinkedIn feeds for news and opportunities each month, according to a Foundation Incorporated report. Moreover, 40% of monthly active users log in every single day!
• LinkedIn users bring high-value intent to the table. Unlike Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, LinkedIn is a dedicated business networking platform. So while a small percentage of users on alternative platforms will be interested in your offerings, the vast majority of LinkedIn users are actively looking for opportunities.
• LinkedIn users pay attention to content on their feeds. The LinkedIn content feed makes approximately 9-billion impressions every week. That’s about 468-billion impressions per year. If you’re looking for a new advertising platform to shake up your franchise development, LinkedIn is it!

Clearly, LinkedIn marketing is worth the effort–but where do you begin?

Beginner-Friendly Tips for Linkedin Franchise Development

• Build a quality Showcase Page. Showcase Pages are niche pages off of a company page. They allow a company to promote specific products or market to a specific buyer persona without requiring users to follow their specific business page. Following some simple best practices can go a long way towards making your Showcase Page shine. Stick close to 200 characters, link to your main franchise development landing page, request fellow franchisees follow the page, and post semi-regular updates.
• Use competitors’ best practices against them. While much of the magic happens behind the scenes, you can learn a ton of franchise development best practices by simply researching your competitors’ profiles. Take note of their updates, listed specialties, bragging points, and content styles, then consider how you implement some of these tactics into your own franchise development campaign.
• Schedule regular updates. Post educational and information content about your franchise system (location openings, awards and recognitions, testimonials, charitable activities, etc), as well as any positive press that your brand gets. This highlights the value of your opportunity and also keeps your brand prominent in the LinkedIn feed.
• Engage with LinkedIn Groups. Wouldn’t it be great if you could browse millions of candidates arranged by their business interests and intent? Oh wait–you can! Find LinkedIn Groups populated by your target audience and reach out. And in 2019, LinkedIn’s Group recommendation tool makes it easier than ever.
• Don’t forget to add images! It’s shocking how often this simple tip gets brushed aside! We already know that Google crawlers and readers respond best to content that includes multimedia–images, videos, and audio–and the same appears to be true for your LinkedIn profile. In fact, LinkedIn profiles with photos were found to receive 21x more views and 36x more messages, according to Expanded Ramblings research. So before you start reaching out to promising passive candidates, make sure you’ve got a profile picture.

Find more franchise development information at https://clicktecs.com/ or give us a call at 866-311-7189.