Setting Smarter, Measurable Goals for Franchise Marketing

By now everybody knows that quality franchise marketing and SEO is essential for keeping brands visible and profitable. But too many brands sink dollars blindly into their franchise marketing without really knowing what it’s getting them in return.

Today’s post will improve the efficacy of your franchise marketing and keep your agency more accountable by teaching you how to set smarter, measurable goals that produce actual results for your business.

Setting smarter franchise marketing and SEO goals in 2018

When you sit down with your franchise marketing team, it may sound like a good idea to flesh out your SEO goals from the get-go.

Instead, start by talking about your company goals. After all, monthly conversion or budgetary goals will drastically affect how you approach your franchise marketing. Though two companies may have an SEO goal in common – maybe they both want to rank #1 on Google – a Fortune-500 company will approach this very differently than a start-up trying to survive a lean quarter.

Next, dial in on specific franchise marketing goals. Once you’ve figured out your company goals, determine how your franchise marketing will contribute. For example, if your brand intends to increase sales, your franchise marketing could approach that in any number of ways – is their job going to be improving the conversion funnel, or getting more traffic into it in the first place? Though franchise marketing goals will obviously vary from company to company (and indeed, from individual to individual), they should also be tied directly to the company goals you laid out upfront. This is the essence of result-oriented marketing.

Once you’ve got your franchise marketing goals in place, it’s time to determine your SEO goals at last. Let’s say you’ve decided your franchise needs to direct more traffic to the top of your sales funnel. This means your franchise marketing and SEO might want to widen the net and target bigger keywords and shorter queries so that you make more impressions and generate more leads.

Conversely, if you want to improve the performance of your sales funnel, you might narrow the targeting with more specific keywords. Consider using industry jargon and forming long-tail phrases to target niche consumers, or employ modifiers like “best” or “review” to get your website or offer in front of people who intend to buy your product on the day they make their query.

Once you’ve got your SEO goals in place, you can isolate franchise marketing metrics and use them to monitor your progress. Measurable goal metrics include:

• Page rankings (global, national, and local);
• Organic search visits, which is just raw traffic being generated by search engines;
• SERP ownership and reputation;
• Branded search volume, which is the measurement of how many users search directly for your brand name;
• Hyperlinks and link metrics, which refers to the quantity and quality of links other people are sharing to your website;
• Referral traffic, which tells us who referred traffic to your site via links, and whether they were sharing the pages you intended them to.

What are some examples of smart, measurable goals for franchise marketing and SEO?

• Company goal: “I want to grow my online sales.”
• Franchise marketing goal: “Increase the top of funnel website traffic by 35%.”
• SEO goal: “Boost organic search visit by 50%.”

Let’s talk smart franchise marketing and measurable SEO

Give us a call at 866-311-7189 and let’s brainstorm some ideas for your brand.