Tag: ifa

Franchise Conference Calendar

Tis the season for conferences in the franchise space! Here are some excellent opportunities in the coming months for CEOs, marketing & sales executives, and others to learn about innovations and network with peers:

  

Springboard
FisherZucker / Fishman PR / Entrepreneur
Philadelphia
September 25-27

 

Franchise Leadership and Development Conference
Franchise Update Media
Atlanta
October 11-13

 

Franchise Innovation Conference (aka FranTech)
International Franchise Association
San Diego
October 18-20

 

Franchise Expo West
MFV Expositions
Los Angeles
November 2-4

 

Emerging Franchisor Conference
International Franchise Association
Phoenix
November 6-8

 

Please let me know if you’ll be at any of these great conferences.

I would love to connect!

Jack@Qiigo.com

 

 

Save Local Business

Franchise Action Network

 

I’m looking forward to heading to Capitol Hill next week to join some old friends and new ones in speaking with legislators about issues affecting local businesses.

One of the topics will be the Save Local Business Act which seeks to protect workers and small business owners from recent government overreach and confusion. Here are some links to information about the event and background on the topics:

 

Please let me know if you’re attending – let’s connect!

 

 

Reaching Franchise Candidates on LinkedIn

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More franchisors have asked me about using Social Media for franchise development in the past 6 weeks than in the previous 6 years.

At recent events including FranTech, Franchise Leadership and Development Conference, The Chicago Women’s Franchise Network, and Springboard, my conversations have focused on using Facebook for not only generating new leads from your consumer customer base, but also engaging with candidates further down your franchise development sales funnel using Facebook’s Custom Audience Targeting.

And often, the next question has been: “But what about LinkedIn?”

Franchisors at these events ask about improving their results in finding candidates on LinkedIn. Many tried LinkedIn early in their online marketing journey but got bad results and quickly moved on.

I suggest that LinkedIn may not be appropriate for engaging with some types of potential franchisees, just as Facebook or other channels may not work for other types of prospects.

Recommendation #1: Before jumping into any social media marketing for franchise development, look at who your candidates are and where they spend their time on social media.

 

Facebook LinkedIn Franchising

 

The Facebook Side

If your best franchise candidates are those folks who will be operating their own store or other franchise location day-to-day, Facebook is the best place to engage. They may be customers of a current franchisee who could visualize themselves running their own shop. They have an interest – and hopefully a passion – for your brand’s type of service, work, food, or culture!

At our FLDC panel discussion, Wild Birds Unlimited exemplified this type of brand. Chief Development Officer Paul Pickett shared how individuals on Facebook can engage with a brand that shares their passion and then picture themselves as owning their own store.  I would add that being a great storyteller and sharing appealing images and videos is key in developing these relationships! Facebook is the most important place to spend your development time as this is where such future owners are already spending their time.

 

The LinkedIn Side

If your best franchise candidates are looking for an investment or for their next franchise award, let’s look at LinkedIn. Those candidates are in “the business of business” and invest in a franchise based only on return. LinkedIn is an excellent place to share information about your franchise’s value.

On the same FLDC panel, LinkedIn success was represented by ZIPS Franchising. ZIPS Vice President Aaron Goldberg does a fantastic job communicating on LinkedIn with potential business partners who are multi-unit owners investing in franchises.

At my FranTech Roundtable on Social Media in October, many Franchisors shared with me that they burn through their LinkedIn ad budgets quickly. Unlike Facebook where your boosted posts are easy for the right prospects to consume, LinkedIn puts you in a very competitive position to get a franchise development ad viewed.

 

Recommendation #2: I’m currently recommending not initially buying ads on LinkedIn. Instead, use LinkedIn as the one-to-one communication tool that Twitter was meant to be. There’s no advertising cost to engage with a person as another person!

LinkedIn may not be a great place to generate a completely new lead, but it is the best place to communicate with potential business partners with whom you’re already engaged.

 

Recommendation #3: Use LinkedIn for franchise development via your personal profile, not your company LinkedIn page. People buy from people. The goldmine of LinkedIn for any brand is in its use by company representatives as individuals. Sure, your company page needs to be updated and appealing. But the heavy lifting needs to be done from you as a business leader.

 

Recommendation #4: Use these tactics every day to get to the next level with your franchise prospects on LinkedIn:

*Share relevant business articles and blog posts that would be of interest to your candidates.

*Reach out to them via LinkedIn messages and InMails. Both have a significantly higher response rate than emails.

And remember the most important thing when promoting a business to prospective buyers on social media: even when you’re not engaging with them, they’re watching you!

 

 

 

Reaching Franchise Candidates on Facebook

Facebook Reach

 

Are you using Facebook to sell Franchises?

For nearly all Franchise Development executives with whom I’ve spoken this year, the answer is “Sure!”  Less than 2 two years ago, the answer was, “Why?”

I have recently spoken to several groups about Social Media and Franchising including the International Franchise Association Convention 2016,  FLDC in Atlanta, and IFA’s Women’s Franchise Network in Chicago.  At these events, the subject that attendees keep coming back to is Facebook Custom Audience Targeting for franchise development.

Custom Audience Targeting allows you to upload a database of email addresses and then serve up Facebook ads to only those people. While Facebook won’t open the floodgate of targeting your prospects by name, it will match the person’s email address from your list to a Facebook user profile.

Here are step-by-step instructions on uploading your email list to Facebook Custom Audience Targeting.

 

An Easy Touchpoint for Your Prospects

While consumer marketers have been taking advantage of this capability for nearly as long as there have been ads on Facebook, many franchise marketers have not yet discovered it. Most franchisors are focused on creating awareness with larger audiences based on demographics. They’re missing an easy touchpoint with their leads and candidates who could be engaged in a place where they are easy to reach.

And REACHING them is what it’s really all about! This isn’t about finding people who you never knew existed. It’s about not discovering a whole new species of humanoid who wants to be a franchisee. This is about getting in front of your candidates where they already live.

The average American adult spends nearly 7 hours per week on Facebook. Insert yourself and your brand into those hours among the political memes, game highlights, family photos, and cat videos.

 

Multiple Stages, Multiple Messages

If your email database is updated and well-managed, you can serve messages appropriate for every stage in your sales funnel. One message may be great for an old lead that faded away a while back. A very different message may fit a candidate further along in the pipeline. The more narrowed-down your target audience, the more relevant your message, and the more efficient your ad spend!

 

A Unique Marketing Opportunity for Franchising

Franchise Development is different than other Business-To-Business sales types in that prospects and leads use their home or personal email addresses on whatever submission forms brought those email addresses into your database. This is perfect for Facebook Customer Audience Targeting, as most people sign up with Facebook using their personal email address.  Selling other business services can be challenging using this method, as most B2B sales pros have prospects’ work email addresses, not the ones that match Facebook’s database. In this way, as in many other ways, Fran Dev is much more like B2C selling in the digital world.

Social Media Marketing: Beyond the Basics

IFA Women's Franchise Network

 

Chicago! Social Media! Franchising! 

If you’re a marketing pro in Chicago, join us October 13 for an evening of discussion about building social media marketing campaigns for global brands and local customers.

I’m pleased to be on this panel with some top level local talent including:

 

Thursday, October 13
5:30 – 7:30 PM

No Limit Agency
1 Prudential Plaza
130 East Randolph
Suite 1950
Chicago

Register Now!
Cost: $20

Thanks to Cheng Cohen and The International Franchise Association for organizing this event which is sponsored by No Limit Agency!

No Limit Agecny

 

Social Media Marketing for Franchises Best Practices

SEFFLogoIFA logo

I’m excited about speaking at the Southeast Franchise Forum / IFA Franchise Business Network July 12 in Atlanta. We will be discussing best practices in Social Media Marketing specifically for Franchises.

I’ve been working with franchise systems to help their consumer and franchise development using social media for about as long as social been around. But tactics that worked in the “old days” of 4 or 5 years ago may not cut it this year or next. We’ll explore:

Yesterday v. Tomorrow

National v. Local

Paid v. Earned

What are we doing v. what should we be doing?

 

If you’re near Atlanta, please join us! Save your seat today and I’ll look forward to chatting with you.

 

qiigo-logo-320x132

FranTech 2016

FranTech

 

Digital Marketing … Technology … Franchising … if your business depends on any 2 of these 3, then you should attend FranTech this year. Registration just opened for FranTech2016 October 26-27 in Austin and the agenda looks outstanding.

I am looking forward to moderating a discussion along with my Social Geek Radio co-host Deb Evans on the digital marketing plans of an up & coming franchise system. We’ll be interviewing the marketing pros from SafeWay Driving who will share how their marketing tactics are growing their business (and saving lives along the way!).

Join me and my team from Qiigo in Austin and register for FranTech 2016 today!

qiigo-logo-320x132

 

 

A Twitter Trend for Franchise Brands

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One or Many?

For several years most successful digital marketers with multiple locations or franchises have “gone local with social” and built a social media page or account for each location. This continues to be the winning strategy with Facebook.

But a trend I’m seeing from brand marketers is to merge multiple local Twitter accounts into one account for all brand awareness, news, and customer feedback for the entire brand. The areas where Twitter is currently most useful are increasingly being housed centrally instead of for each individual location.

What about all of the other platforms and channels? Which are best for a local presence versus a national brand voice?  Here’s my recommended number of pages your system should have:

Facebook: 1 brand page + 1 page per location

Google+: 1 brand page + 1 page per location

LinkedIn: 1 company page per brand

Instagram: 1 account per brand

Snapchat: 1 account per brand

YouTube: 1 channel per brand

Twitter: 1 account per brand

 

Why is there a difference for Facebook and Google+? Why should these two – and only these two – have multiple pages? It’s the local or regional presence that is resonating on Facebook with local engagement and converting search results on Google to local store traffic. Think of Facebook and Google+ pages in the same way you would think of websites for each individual location or franchisee. Even for service brands like cleaning and maintenance services without a storefront, conversations and conversions are happening locally through these two platforms. But, the other platforms are skewing to centralized, national brand engagement and conversations.

Multiple Departments?

What about multiple Twitter accounts for multiple departments or functions within a brand? No – not even a separate account for “customer service.” Your brand on Twitter is your entire brand. Customers don’t care about your fiefdoms!

The multiple Facebook and Google+ pages should only be location-specific and nothing else. From a national level there should only be one page. Far too many franchisors still employ separate Facebook pages for consumer marketing and franchise sales marketing. As discussed at this year’s IFA convention in the Facebook for Franchise Sales session, don’t have a separate page for Fran Dev!  Use targeted ads and boosted posts to hit candidates with specific messages about owning a franchise.

 

Telling Your Business Story on Facebook

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Facebook released the news that it now has 3 Million advertisers and has 50 Million businesses using Facebook pages. Or, as Facebook might see this, 47 Million businesses who have pages but have not yet purchased an ad!

2 of the top 3 business verticals using Facebook pages are services and local commerce; both are common industry types using the franchise model. The third, ecommerce, applies to all models. We don’t know how many franchise brands are a part of that 3 Million advertisers. However, based on the boom in ads we discussed at the IFA Convention summit on Facebook and Franchising, it’s safe to assume that a large number of the million new advertisers in the past year are in franchising.

As part of this milestone, or as a good excuse to roll out something new, Facebook has launched a new tool called Your Business Story.  

 

Telling Your Business Story

This new format is video that Facebook has made very easy to use. In fact, it’s so simple, you don’t even have to make an actual video! All you have to do is select 8 photos that are already on your timeline, select a piece of music, add a little text, and you’re done!  Get started here.

You can create as many of these short videos as you want. You can share them with your fans and you can also boost them, bringing us full circle back to why Facebook has rolled out this cool tool.

We saw a bit of a preview of these business stories at FranTech 2015 last October in Dallas.  But now that I’m actually hands-on, here are 3 things that jump out at me:

1. Video: Everyone talks about how the only thing thing that matters in online marketing is video. But a large number of business owners have no experience or knowledge in how to make a video let alone how to distribute videos in an efficient way. Facebook just made it easy.

2. Content Marketing: The other thing everyone talks about is story telling to attract customers. Again, Facebook just made it easy.

3. A micro elevator pitch: The text that businesses can include answers the question: “What’s your story? We’re in the business of ____________.” This short answer forces business owners to think about they do for customers in simple terms. No one will have the space or opportunity to drone on about customer service, being people persons, finding solutions, or other corporate dribble.

 

Telling Franchising’s Story

One of the key takeaways for me at The 2016 IFA Convention was incoming IFA Chairman Aziz Hashim’s speech.  Not only did Aziz mention social media (a first for any IFA Chair or CEO’s speech), but he also compelled the members to tell franchising’s story.

I think Facebook just made it easy for all franchisors and franchisees to tell Franchising’s story!

Tweet about Aziz

 

 

Don’t Just Tweet Your Booth Number

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Tweeting your booth number = Junk Content

You know it’s getting close to the big annual conference in your industry when every supplier starts Tweeting their booth number.

My team, colleagues, and friends are gearing up for #IFA2016 from the International Franchise Association and we’re seeing it all over the place.

These companies don’t share anything all year then suddenly think, “Hey it’s nearly convention time. Now what was that Twitter password…?”

They’ll log into Twitter to let the world know they’ll be at booth #123.  Oh and they’re giving away an iPad, because everyone will flock to the booth for that. And then they’ll go silent for another 11½ months.

Twitter is dying my friends. And it’s mostly because of junk content like that.

 

If Not The Booth Number, Then What?  

A few weeks ago, my Social Geek Radio co-host Deb Evans and I discussed some other things to share on social that might give some more value to your fellow conference-goers. Here are a few from our podcast:

  • Share details on a speaker you’re looking forward to hearing.
  • Post about a topic that’s on the agenda and get an engaging conversation going ahead of time. (This is what I like to do most)
  • Ask who else is en route and suggest meeting for coffee and chat. (This is what I need to do more of myself!)
  • If you’re familiar with the location, share items about the history, food, entertainment, transportation, or anything else out-of-towners might find interesting. (Deb is great at this)

 

But What About That Booth We’re Paying For?

Can you slide in a mention or two of your promotion? Absolutely! But I always suggest your social content be at least 80% about OTHERS and at most 20% about YOU. So after 4 or 5 updates on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook about the conference or other people participating, go ahead and share something about your promotion, contest, giveaway, or trade show activity. As long as this isn’t the only thing you’re pushing out, it’s cool.

 

I’ll be Tweeting a couple of booth numbers later this week for the IFA Convention myself, to let anyone interested in the Social Geek Radio podcast know where they can join us live. In fact, I’ll post it now! We’ll be at the Manalto booth (#461) on Sunday 2/21 and at the 1851 Franchise booth (#134) on Monday 2/22. Now that that’s done, it’s back to more posts about Others. See you at the show!

 

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