If you own a franchise that is part of a large corporation, the corporation is likely to create exposure for your business through traditional marketing channels such as TV and radio. However, exposing your business to an online audience is a task that you may have to perform on your own, especially if you would like to give your privately owned franchise a unique identity that distinguishes it from other franchises in the corporate structure.
Franchise Marketing Services
If your company is in this position, it can benefit from receiving franchise marketing services from Coalition Technologies. Designed to market a business franchise to its online target audience, franchise marketing services can consist of several strategies, four of the most important of which are: search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), web development, and reputation management.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the most well known — and arguably the most effective — online marketing service. This is because it directly addresses the issues that can cause a website to have a lower SERP than it would otherwise. The number of viable SEO strategies could fill the pages of a book, but there is one thing that every franchisee should remember about “organic SEO”, a term that identifies SEO strategies that don’t involve paying for search listings: the process takes time, but the rewards are typically worth the wait.
If your franchise has a separate business website from the corporate website of its parent company, SEO can play a key role in helping you deliver marketing messages to your audience. According to a recent study on internet usage, 88.1% of internet users in the U.S. age 14 and over use the internet to research products online. Even if you don’t sell something online, SEO can help boost your in-store sales by making your business website more accessible.
Pay Per Click
PPC and SEO have the same basic goal: increase the volume of refined web traffic a website receives in order to increase sales. However, unlike organic SEO, PPC involves paid search listings. A company has a search listing positioned at the top of the page or somewhere along the side of the page, where it is easy for search users to see. After the listing is placed, the advertiser pays a minimal fee every time someone clicks on the listing.
Many small and midsize companies favor PPC because it delivers a highly visible search listing whose cost is determined by the number of clicks it receives. This allows companies to “pay as they go” for internet marketing instead of investing a significant amount of capital upfront and waiting for results. However, depending on the characteristics of your target audience, it may be advisable to implement both PPC and organic SEO in your online marketing strategy.
Web Development
Like SEO, web development is an online marketing discipline that is performed on an ongoing basis. In both cases, websites are typically evolved in accordance with Google’s latest list of rules and requirements for creating a top performing website. In addition, A/B testing can be performed to determine which features of your website generate the best results. For example, you may want to test different calls-to-action to see which one stimulates the most action.
If it has been awhile since your franchise’s website has been updated, and the site is not performing as well as expected, implementing new web development strategies may be the answer. As mentioned above, any change in a website can be submitted to A/B testing to see if it delivers better results than the previous strategy. Things that are commonly tested include: calls-to-action, graphics that relate to the marketing effort, and copywriting on the homepage.
Reputation Management
Even the best companies occasionally receive bad press for one reason or another. When the bad news hits the internet, online reputation management can be used to drive the news deep into search results, where search users are unlikely to see it. The process is simple: highly optimized articles and other types of content are written to achieve a high SERP. Consequently, the content pushes the bad reports deep into the abyss of search results, where they remain.
Using optimized content to push bad reports deep into search results is the best-known strategy of online reputation management, but the discipline can consist of more than defensive strategies. Content that portrays your franchise in a favorable light can also be created. Ideally, this is the type of content that you should use to decrease the SERP of bad reports about your franchise.
Need Franchise Marketing Services?
If so, contact the online marketing specialists at Coalition Technologies. Using the franchise marketing services above, among others, we will help you improve the search engine results position (SERP) of your website so that more search users will see your search listing and visit your site. For more information about how our online marketing services can help your business, call us today at (310) 827-3890 to schedule a free consultation, or use our contact form.