One of the best tools that a franchise has for selling more franchise units is their group of successful franchisees. Some franchises focus the majority of their efforts on marketing their franchise and brand to try and generate new franchisees. However, ensuring that your existing franchisees are successful is arguably a better way to generate new franchise sales. The power of word of mouth marketing on social media platforms can help your franchise explode if your franchisees are doing well.
The number one way to help ensure your franchisees are successful is to make sure that they have enough leads to chase. While not necessarily always true, in many cases, more business can fix other business problem. Systems can be dialed in over time, operations perfected, etc, but if there aren’t enough leads coming in to feed the business, it collapses.
Some franchisees will have a harder time getting leads and growing and running their new business than others. One franchisee -who doesn’t perhaps follow the operations manual and guidance provided by the franchise – is all it takes to put a bad word out about your franchise, and slow growth.
For many franchises, especially those in the service sector, most interested buyers are on the Internet, with then large majority on Google. If your franchise sells a service where people search on Google using a city or geographic location – for example: ‘painting company san francisco’ – then it should be a prime goal to position all of your franchisees on the first page of Google in their local markets where they can be found. Having a large presence on Google is typically the best way to generate leads for franchisees in the service sector.
To get to the first page, you can run campaigns with Google Ads, and is a strategy that works. However, it can be expensive. A strategy that positions your franchisees on the first page in the organic search engine results, where about 80% of people click, is typically the more desirable option of the two, but is much harder to achieve.
At Upside Franchise Consulting, we can help with both. One of the many things we do to help franchises get better results is to implement some of our marketing tools that generate leads for the franchisees. This is a trickle-up strategy that helps drive new franchisees through strong testimonials and word-of-mouth advertising, harnessing the power of social media platforms. It is also a strategy that can drive the main franchise to the top of Google for international search traffic, creating an additional stream of traffic that can drive new franchisee sales.
If you have any questions about how to better drive leads to your franchisees, give us a call. We offer a free initial consultation.
