Guide How to Get More Franchise Leads in 5 Steps: a Playbook

Not generating as many leads as you’d like for your franchise business?

This guide shows you how to reverse this trend through targeted, cohesive digital marketing tuned specifically for franchises looking to grow.

To do so, we’ll pull from best practices and our winning lead generation strategy that helped locations of a national franchise increase marketing-generated revenue by 220.29%.

Prospective franchise customers in the consideration stage

At this stage, buyers already understand their problems and are actively searching for solutions, often online. This means that SEO and PPC are very important at this juncture.

Consider:

For inbound leads generated via your website and ads, do you have a basic sales enablement process in place to make sure the right franchise leads get to the right salespeople/owners?

For example, do you have a system like the following?

1. A required form field where leads can declare their location in order for you to send them to the right franchise owner
2. A CRM that can automatically forward leads to the right owner and send them a notification whenever a new one comes in (alternatively, someone at corporate manually emailing franchises lead information every time a new one is generated)

Is your website set-up with a clear path to conversion and clear next action on every conversion-focused page?

On pages designed to sell, like service pages, do you tell visitors what they can do next to move forward? For example, on a SAS product page, a logical next action for a visitor might be to ask a visitor to fill out a demo form.

Are your lower-funnel landing pages optimized for conversion of in-market buyers?

For example, do your landing pages have the following?

1. A clear headline that communicates the value proposition instantly in a way that appeals to an in-market, low funnel audience
2. Content targeted to address questions and provide information specifically for someone who knows what they want and needs final buying info
3. Standard best practice landing page elements like social proof, reviews, and testimonials
4. A short form and/or other ways to express interest and reach out
5. Customized features that address the location and address local needs or elements of the product/service relevant to that area

Do you have website content that compares your solutions to those offered by competitors?

For example, do you offer a brand comparison guide or page?

Are your PPC landing pages optimized for conversion?

For example, does your form only ask a few questions, or is fairly long? It’s conventional wisdom that shorter forms are better for conversion.

Is your website (or the individual location websites, if they're not all part of the corp site) search engine-optimized—Particularly in the context of local SEO? (See "on-page signals".)

For example, do you have content referencing the location(s) you serve and discussing?

Are you optimizing your Google Business Profile?

This is arguably the second most important local SEO resource after your website. Searchers may see it before they reach your website when searching for your brand and use it to size up your business against others like it in Google Maps.

This is part of the reason why it’s essential that it be claimed, up-to-date, and complete.

Do you have a review generation strategy that brings in a steady stream of reviews to each franchise location?

Reviews not only provide searchers assurance that your business is reputable, but steadily getting new ones can help your SEO.

Is your citation profile in good shape?

Citations are mentions of your business information online, so your citation profile refers to all these mentions across the web, and the picture they paint for potential customers.

Having complete, up-to-date information helps searchers find accurate business information and can help you make a favorable first impression if prospects find your citation before visiting your site or brick and mortar business.

Are you picking low-hanging fruit when it comes to link-building?

Links have been, and still are, essential to your online visibility. Both links from one page of your site to another and sites from outside sites to yours are important.

The practice of link building refers to the latter: external links. In general, the more you get from reputable sites in your industry, the better. Getting them is easier said than done.

Fortunately, there are a few easy asks every business should make. For example, asking sites that already mention your brand to link back to your site, and building your citation profile (see previous point).

What unbranded keywords are used by buyers who already understand they have a problem and are actively looking for solutions you provide? 

Unbranded keywords are simply search terms that do not directly mention your brand. These keywords will likely represent the bulk (or entirety) of both your PPC targets and local microsite/website optimization targets.

Here’s an example: “24-hour emergency vet.” This person knows they need a veterinarian, and they are ready to buy now.

Prospective franchise customers in the awareness stage

At the awareness stage, buyers don’t understand what their problem is, only the symptoms they are experiencing. That’s why this stage is where educational blog and pillar content created at the corporate level can be really helpful.

Consider:

Does your blog content lay out a clear next action for buyers to take once they understand their problems and are ready to start thinking about solutions?

If you want your content to nurture and convert franchise leads, you need to include a relevant, appropriate next action for the reader to take.

For example, a post that lists common symptoms of foundation issues might have a next action like “get a free quote for foundation repair. We’ll explain your options and help you find the best solution.”

Is the blog content you create thorough, authoritative, and optimized for search visibility?

A great blog post is easy to find in search engines, well-researched, ideally written by someone with firsthand experience, and answers all the searcher’s questions without overwhelming them with fluff.

This is the kind of content that helps potential customers move forward in their buying process and earns you credibility.

What keywords are used by people who are exhibiting and researching problems that you can solve? What's the best way to rank for those keywords?

While many of these keywords are too broad to make good PPC targets, some are worth targeting. For example, keywords like “cracked wall repair,” “dirty tile solution”, or “clogged pipe causes”.

You might think it’s pointless to pay to appear in searches that include the names of your brand, product, and services. After all, you’re probably appearing for these already in regular search results.

But, if you don’t pay to appear for branded terms, your competitors probably will.

This may sound like stealing, but it’s actually a very common strategy.

Think about it: You’re a potential customer that’s heard good things about a certain Madison roofing franchise.

You search for that roofing franchise by brand name, thinking you’ll check out their website to learn more, or maybe even get a quote for a copper roof installation.

At the top of search results, the first thing you see is an ad for another franchise. They have a special offer—get 20% off your first copper roof installation.

That sounds pretty good. Might as well check them out now, right?

The ad doesn’t have the first franchise’s copyrighted brand name anywhere in it, but when this competitor set up their campaign, they paid to appear for that term when it was searched.

This is how competitors eat your lunch.

You have no control over what keywords they bid on, but you can elbow your way in next to their ads by bidding on your own branded terms.

Let’s replay this scenario, but now our Madison roofing franchise is bidding on its own brand terms.

This time, when the searcher goes to learn more about them, their ad appears right next to their competitor’s.

Now the playing field is more level.

Track your results

It may sound obvious, but keeping a close eye on the performance of your campaigns provides you with the data you need to decide whether to invest more or pull the plug.

It also helps you present key takeaways to your management team so you can get the budget you need to generate more revenue.

Write ads for keywords with commercial/buying intent

Terms people search for when they’re ready to make a purchase or visit a business are low-hanging fruit.

For example, our term “copper roof installation madison” is probably one of these.

Why?

“Copper roof” suggests a person who knows what they want already. “Installation madison” suggests a person who’s ready to have a copper roof installed and is looking for a local vendor.

Contrast this with “copper roof installation” without the addition of “madison”, which could be someone earlier in the buying process researching copper roof installations as an option.

Paying to appear for terms used by those ready to buy makes it easier to attract searchers who are ready to convert into franchise leads.

Start small

We often recommend our clients start small with PPC: start with a limited, targeted campaign and invest a modest amount of money.

This helps you gather baseline data about your search ad performance. For example, you can see which ads performed better than others and whether your results met your ROI goals for the campaign or fell short.

These results can help you gauge whether PPC is likely to be a worthwhile channel for you and iterate on what worked.

Social media advertising for franchises

Social media sites are also great online platforms for paid ads.

Facebook and LinkedIn for example both offer powerful targeted advertising that places ads where they can be seen without being overly interruptive.

Social media ad tips for franchises

Here are a few pointers from Neil Patel, LinkedIn, and Hootsuite.

Create better offers than your competitors

Craft the most compelling offer you can devise. As Patel points out, this may be even more important than the wording of the ad.

How do you do that? It has to speak to the needs, wants, and feelings of your target audience. Empathy is the key.

Consider:

• What problem does your product or service solve for your audience?
• If your audience is trying to identify the problem, what resource of yours could help them figure it out?
• How does the problem or symptoms of the problem make your audience feel?
• If your audience is weighing potential solutions or vendors, what can you offer to assist in that process?
• What objections does the audience have about choosing your solution, and how can you address/mitigate them?
• What are your competitors offering, and how can you do better

Target the right people

Ad platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook offer countless ways to target specific groups of people based on factors such as location, time of day, demographics, industry, job title, and more.

Take advantage of these options to show your ad to the people most likely to become good customers.

Test your ads to pinpoint what is most effective

A/B or “split testing” where you create two identical ads but change one aspect, is incredibly helpful for identifying what works and what doesn’t in an advertising campaign.

Experimentation, in general, creating multiple ad variants per ad group, is helpful. However, to really pinpoint what causes one ad to perform better than another, the more you limit the differences between them, the better.

Create multiple ad groups to cluster similar ads together based on a shared characteristic, such as a topic.

Experiment with different images, ad copy, and audience targeting settings to find the goldilocks zone.

Track sales, not clicks

While it may be tempting to measure ad performance in terms of clicks and views, remember that it’s actually the resulting sales that matters most. Make sure you have revenue attribution set up so that you can determine the ROI you’re getting from your ads.

If you find that you’re spending more than you’re getting back on ads, even if they seem to be getting a lot of engagement, pause the campaign and diagnose what’s going wrong so that you don’t continue losing money.

Hint: sometimes it’s your landing page.

Gone are the days when salespeople had to send every email manually and individually.

Today, you can set up automation to respond to franchise queries automatically, follow up, reach out when an individual takes a certain action on your site, deliver resources, and even include personalized touches pulled from a subscriber’s contact record, such as their company name.

This is only one example of how digital marketing automation can take busywork off your sales team’s plate.

Step 5: Measuring results—franchise marketing metrics

Reporting on campaign metrics is critical for demonstrating to the C-suite the effects of your franchise marketing efforts—and why you should get next year’s budget amount.

Here are three metrics you definitely want to keep track of.

Marketing percent of franchisee acquisition cost

This metric tracks what percentage of the money you spend acquiring a franchisee can be attributed to marketing. If it’s high, and increases over time, this is a sign you need to adjust your marketing strategy.

Here’s how to calculate it:

First, figure out how much you spend to get a new franchisee:

Franchise acquisition cost = (sales cost + marketing cost) ÷ number of new franchisees over a specific time period

Then, calculate how much of this is from marketing:

Marketing % of franchise acquisition cost = marketing cost ÷ (sales cost + marketing cost)

Marketing originated customer percent

This metric tracks how many of your customers started out as marketing generated franchise leads. Obviously, this is a great number to show leaders when justifying marketing spend.

Here’s how to find it:

New buyers who started as marketing leads ÷ the total amount of new franchisees in a given span of time = the marketing-originated customer percent

Marketing influenced customer percent

This metric helps you quantify how your marketing efforts might have influenced customers who originated as leads outside of your marketing campaigns.

For example, if a future customer read one of your lead nurturing blog posts, that might have helped move them closer to becoming a customer.

Here’s how to calculate it:

Number of new franchisees in a given time ÷ the number of those who interacted with your marketing team.