Right now, thousands of potential customers are searching online for the product or service your franchise offers; everyday more than two billion online searches are made globally.
To ensure you are being found online, especially by local customers, you will need to ensure all the content on your website is current, all your links are active and that you have engaged in the correct Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) program for your business.
SEO will allow you to increase the visibility of your business online and exposure to your customers and the potential customers already searching for what you’re selling.
For social media, a strategic content plan is crucial and allows you to map out the topics, ideas and photos you will use to market your franchise and its offerings across different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. The more interesting the content, the more likely it is to engage and grab the attention of potential customers.
Whether you realise it or not, consumers are looking for recommendations, products and services by searching websites and sourcing information on Facebook. By building a strong Facebook page alone, your franchise has the opportunity to attract referrals and generate new leads.
Facebook has a massive community with over 11.7 million users in Australia currently using the platform to engage with their friends and favourite brands.
Franchise businesses need to leverage the size of this community and invest time and resources into making sure their franchisees’ Facebook pages are linked to the franchise corporate website.
As a franchisee you need to employ keywords that potential customers use to search for the specific product or service you offer.
This communication between Facebook and the franchises corporate page will help to increase your SEO making you visible to potential customers.
Soon Facebook will launch a new function – Graph Search – which is a search engine tool that will provide businesses access to a social interactive database of current or potential customers. It has the capacity to revolutionise the way we do business, because it will allow Facebook users to discover products, services and business pages that their friends have used or recommended.
With a strong and engaging page, business owners will have the opportunity to reach out to a very targeted customer base, targeting them through their location, age or interests, therefore increasing the potential to generate very targeted leads that are likely to convert into sales.
CASE STUDY
An online strategy developed by SponsoredLinX in November 2012 helped the franchise business, Lollypotz, to increase online sales by 22 percent and increased its Facebook fans to more than 3,500 likes in four months. On Valentine’s Day this year, the group experienced a 40 percent increase compared to last year’s 14 February.
The Lollypotz business has experienced a huge ROI, most notably an increase in traffic to its website and further engagement with their customers and potential consumers. Within 10 days SponsoredLinX increased the Facebook ‘likes’ by 1,000.
Ben Bradshaw [pictured] is an online marketer and CEO of SponsoredLinX