Using Social Media For Marketing Your Franchise

It’s no secret that social media has a powerful sway over many aspects of our lives – including the way that business owners run their business. When used successfully, social media advertising can provide a positive means to increase revenue, bring in new customers, and grow a franchise.

But there’s more to using social media channels as a franchise than creating a business account! After all, you are working in a very competitive landscape, so it’s best to know how to stand out. Here are the best ways to take advantage of social media marketing, and how to use them to form your franchise’s social media marketing strategy.

Connect With the Locals

While your franchisor will have branding and a general marketing strategy set up for already, your franchise should still aim to have a presence on social media, especially since one third of all Google searches are related to location. This means that much of your social media content is going to be consumed by locals. To reach them, you’ll want to create a local business page for your franchise, especially on Facebook, as the company has stated that it would support local content. At the end of the day, local content gets a much better reach not just on Facebook, but Instagram as well. Facebook, in particular allows you to create ads for your franchise, targeting an audience within a set area, allowing you to reach the people who are searching for your services locally.

Be Active On Social Media

A big advantage of social media marketing is that it allows you to engage directly with customer queries and opportunities, which is in stark contrast to traditional marketing mediums such as newspaper and radio. Being active across your social media accounts and talking to potential or existing customers, allows you to build trust and establish your franchise as the go-to for customer’s needs. It also allows you to pick up on any problems, such as complaints, and show that you are listening to what people are saying and working with them to reach a resolution (rather than ignoring them completely!).

Choose the Correct Social Media Channel for Your Franchise

While the purpose of social media is to get people to connect and engage, not every social media has the same audience. For example, if your franchise likes to showcase beautiful product photography, Instagram is your best bet, as users tend to be drawn towards visual content. Facebook can help you to grow your franchise presence, whilst Twitter is a great place to communicate with customers and other brands.

Create Fresh Content (But Don’t Forget the Evergreen Content)

When it comes to creating content for social media, it’s important to have a mix of content that is both eye-catching (fresh), and content that can be used year-round (this is known as “evergreen content”) to establish with customers you are the expert on what you do. For example, if you were creating content for your Sleepy’s franchise, content that explains how to pick out the right mattress is a great form of evergreen content – but, come the shift in the seasons, creating content on bedding for the deep winter or, low-allergen for the spring, will ensure your content remains fresh and accessible.

Understand Buyer Persona

Buyer personas are an important part of social media advertising, as they help you to better understand your target audience. A buyer persona is imaginary to an extent (the person you’re describing doesn’t exist; rather, they are a symbol of your customer base), and is based on local customers who you see every day, including their age, location, interests, intent and problems. Well-developed buyer personas can help you in creating content for social media, which in turn drives more sales for your franchise.

Make Use of Analytics

Many social media channels have their own form of analytics developed to help businesses gain an insight on what’s working for them, and what isn’t. These analytics can show a variety of things, including click-through rates, engagement levels, when your social media posts are most commonly seen, the age and gender of your audience, and more. Looking at these analytics will help you to better create relevant content for potential customers.

As you can see, there is a lot that goes into a successful social media marketing strategy. If you are interested in finding out more, we have a franchisee-based blog that will help you guide your new franchise business as it develops.