Troubleshooting Poor Franchise Local Marketing Performance

Are you stressing over your franchise local marketing performance?

Bad news–youshould be.

Franchise local marketing matters more than ever. According to a Brightlocal study, about 92% of consumers use the internet to find a local business nowadays. And that number is climbing, according to a recent Google report saying the number of searches that include the phrase “near me” have increased by 34-times since 2011, and nearly doubled since last year.

Put simply, if you’re neglecting your franchise local marketing, or feel your current provider isn’t delivering results, you’re losing leads.

Unfortunately, franchise local marketing isn’t as easy as the single-business counterpart. When done improperly, franchise local marketing can force different locations into competition with one another, so that your brand ends up either cannibalizing its sales, or frustrating leads by sending them to the wrong location.

But ClickTecs is here to help.

Today’s post breaks down some common (but critical) problems that could be holding back your franchise local marketing performance.

Top-3 Franchise Local Marketing Mistakes

• Letting website issues undermine your franchise local marketing. The website is the center of your online marketing campaign, so it’s important that you get it right. Without this foundation in place, your entire franchise local marketing campaign will fizzle.So how do you do that?Our first tip is to create “location pages,” which are unique, well-optimized pages with specific content about every business in the franchise family. Do this for every single franchise unit–don’t rely on regional pages, which rarely deliver the specific information searchers will need.

  Compared to creating custom websites for every single franchise unit, location pages are a far superior choice. Multiple websites are expensive to design and maintain, and they end up competing with each other for SERP visibility. On the contrary, location pages allow your individual franchise owners to piggyback off your main website’s authority. And every location page functions as a strong piece of content that will drive people to your main site in turn.

  Treat your location pages like any other. Make sure they’re well-optimized, usable on the phone, fast-loading, and filled with high-quality, unique content. Don’t copy-paste from other location pages, swap out the city names, and think you’re in the clear–that does more harm than good.

• Messing up your Google assets. Setting up and managing a Google My Business account is one of the most important aspects of multi-unit franchise local marketing. Fortunately, it’s not that difficult; Google made public a relatively clear set of guidelines. But that doesn’t mean it’s foolproof–in fact, it’s surprisingly easy to remove yourself from local search listings with overaggressive SEO tactics and a few simple mistakes. The most common problems have to do with marketers trying to crowbar keywords/city names into inappropriate places (make sure you use the exact business name!) or omitting useful details (include your website URL, phone number, address, and don’t forget photos and descriptive copy!). If you need more help with GMB or other Google assets, get in touch with the ClickTecs team–we’re certified Google partners!
• Neglecting local content. Throwing out clear location signals is tricky when you have a dozen members in the same franchise family. That’s where local content comes to the rescue. We recommend loading location-specific content into “silos” within the crawlable architecture of your website. For example, adding a section for location-specific news feeds, social integration, and promotions creates endless opportunities to slip in location signals.

Supercharge your Franchise Local Marketing Performance

Get in touch with our franchise local marketing specialists, book a free consultation, and find out how we can help.