Franchisors need content online to market effectively, but figuring out what that content should be can be a huge dilemma. Your business and marketing are linked to your brand, and your brand drives the content. Here are a few ways content creation can help your franchises thrive.
Developing Your Brand
According to Widen, your brand should be consistent through all marketing media. This means your franchises must all have a consistent, easily recognizable brand name, logo, and style. Inconsistency will make customers think you’re not affiliated with other franchisees. You want to be able to support local marketing and national marketing as one unit. Your marketing and your products must be consistent between franchises for the consistency to gain the consumer’s trust.
Attracting Franchisees
As a franchisor, you need clean, beautiful content to be created for use by your franchisees, and the ability to distribute this quickly and easily so they can customize it if necessary (with their address or other pertinent information or sales specific to their area) and get this info to your customers.
This has become much simpler with digital media, where content can be created easily in programs such as Canva (I *love* Canva), and files can be sent far and wide for distribution. According to Franchise Gator, one of the ways franchisors support their franchisees is by having a designated marketing department that helps with both national and local marketing efforts.
Allowing Balance and Local Creation
In many instances, a franchisee might need to have their own website and blog, which has pertinent information to a specific area or location. Allowing franchisees to use such tools as individual site pages and blogs, under your brand, is a great idea! You can have someone from your national marketing team offer guidance to them to make sure their work is consistent with your brand image. They might find a technique that works well in their area that you can promote in others, as well.
Your brand is your image, and you must protect it. By hiring excellent individuals who create intelligently written and well-designed content, you promote your intelligence and capabilities. When you share that content with franchisees for their use, your overall brand flourishes. And, when you allow some customization, individual communities flourish as well! Customers love when they can go to multiple locations and find the same great products and services.
Is your brand struggling to grow? Contact me so I can help you develop a plan!