ELEMENTS Inc.’s executive team, Jeremy LaDuque (CEO), Michael Boyer (CMO) and Steve Bridge (CFO), participated in six roundtables at this year’s International Franchise  Association’s (IFA) Annual Convention in San Diego. The roundtables covered lead generation, online marketing and optimizing follow-up on online leads.

As we spoke with franchisors we discovered these invaluable strategies for increasing franchise sales:

1. Market within your own franchisee network:

Using what you have at your immediate disposal is always the most efficient and cost effective way of marketing amid an economic downturn.  Contact your franchisees to discuss any possible marketing opportunities that you may have in their respective regions.  This type of marketing can be a sensitive matter as you would need your franchisees’ cooperation and possibly customer lists. Make any campaigns of this nature symbiotic; it is essential to initiate a “win-win” scenario for both the franchisor and the franchisee.

A simple but effective example of this would be to arrange a marketing plan in which you send postcards or coupons to customers of the franchisee.  Your coupon offering could say “Franchise opportunities in your area” on the back. This type of initiative will not only promote the brand, but will provide customers with motivation and incentive to visit the franchise location as well.

A secondary benefit of this type of marketing is that you are establishing an “exit plan” for franchise owners. By courting interested parties looking to purchase franchises you are providing opportunities for franchises looking to exit. This also helps create a level of trust between the franchisor and the franchisee. This method of marketing was brought up time and again at IFA this year as one of the first and foremost ways to increase franchise sales.

2. In Store Advertising:

You can gain great advertising opportunities by harnessing the popularity and frequency of visitors to your franchise locations.  Again, find “win-win” scenarios for you and your franchisees and work with them to expand your lead generation opportunities.

3. Networking:

Networking is still one of the most important marketing solutions available in your arsenal. As the saying goes, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”  There are several ways that you can use this method sell more.  Anything from opening up the old-school rolodex to email marketing, and social networking sites (LinkedIn) are all effective strategies proven to lead to more franchise sales.

4. Local Media:

Local press is an important tool for creating lead generation.  In today’s precarious economical state, any publication of new business is hailed as a positive step for the economy and will be welcomed by all factions of media.  Be sure to announce that your franchise is interested in expanding locally, but emphasize the benefits and positive impact that a franchise will have on local consumers and economy.

5. National Media:

If you have the means, national press will provide your franchise with the highest exposure possible, however this is something that only a few franchises at the IFA convention were able to leverage. One innovative example of this case is the 10 Till 2 Part Time Placement Service company, which was able to attract national attention with their novel idea of providing part time work to people whose family obligations do not allow for a full time position. This type of creative thinking can lead to exciting results.

6. Internet Marketing:

The internet is an obvious and powerful tool which can be used in a myriad of ways to promote your franchise.  In fact, everyone at IFA attested to owning a website while working aggressively to refine their internet marketing strategies.  The majority of internet marketing strategies for franchises involved pay-per-click advertising scenarios. Pay-per-click marketing strategies are favored because advertising with the most popular search engines directly (Google, Yahoo, MSN…etc), still provides faster positive results while also supplying detailed and track-able information to help you optimize your marketing campaigns.

Yet another important aspect of internet marketing is catering to organic or natural search results, and many franchise companies were interested in further developing their organic marketing campaigns.  We introduced our ElementsLocal solution that directly addresses this growing need for organic results. ELEMENTS launched the ElementsLocal software last year to answer the three-fold need franchises have:

• Reduce pay-per-click costs
• Increase leads
• Protect brand identity

Simply put, the ElementsLocal software does all three of these by providing each franchisee with their own unique website. This larger network increases organic search results and provides the franchisor with BrandSecure tools to protect the brand.

7. Portal Websites:

Web portals present information from diverse sources in a unified, streamlined fashion and provide yet another powerful lead generation tool at your disposal.  Portal websites such as Franchise Gator or MatchPoint provide prospective franchises with multitudes of information about franchising as well as powerful search capabilities to further explore potential franchising opportunities.  These systems have been specifically designed to help franchisers, overcome many marketing hurdles.

8. Tradeshows

Tradeshows are a great way for current or prospective franchise owners to learn a great deal about the industry through face to face interactions with many other franchise owners.  Tradeshows also provide a significant opportunity for existing franchise owners to enhance brand and product visibility, promote new and existing products, generate leads, and drive sales.

These strategies and techniques should help you give you some ideas for marketing your franchise and franchisees. Attending the IFA Convention opened our eyes to the exciting opportunities we have to better market your businesses online. We truly enjoyed the time we spent with franchises, discussing what works and what does not work for them. Remember that significant results to your online marketing and advertising takes time and energy, but it’s worth the effort when you can measure that investment and see a return. Employing even a few of these strategies should help decrease your costs and increase your success.

We recently surveyed 100+ franchise companies about local marketing and how they supported their local franchisees with local online marketing programs.

Online Local Marketing Survey Results

01. What’s your greatest challenge in generating local leads for your Franchisees?
(Please rank, 1-4, 1 being most important.)

• ~ 1.3 (average rank) Franchisees have limited time and budget to produce local marketing campaigns
• ~ 1.9 (average rank) Local franchisees have little expertise to effectively implement marketing campaigns.
• ~ 2.9 (average rank) Local marketing solutions rely on the franchisee to implement with little time & few resources.
• ~ 3.9 (average rank) Independent competitors are dominating the local lead generation sources.

02. How do you control your brand at the local Franchisee level?

• ~ 87.5% of surveyed franchisors have implemented a strict process with brand standards and approvals required for any locally generated marketing materials.
• ~ 62.5% of surveyed franchisors said that branding is controlled tightly at the national level with no ability for the Franchisees to customize any aspect of marketing for their local level.
• ~ 37.5% of surveyed franchisors allow franchisees to use approved brand assets, campaign programs and online tools to create customized, online local marketing campaigns.
• ~ 12.5% of surveyed franchisors have not implemented brand standards; franchisees target their own local markets.

03. How would your Franchisees rate their local online presence: 4.88 (average rating between 1 & 10)

• ~ 50% of surveyed franchisors responded that their franchisees were not represented online. (1-4)
• ~ 37.5% of surveyed franchisors responded that their franchisees had some representation online. (5-7)
• ~ 12.5% of surveyed franchisors responded that their franchisees were well-represented online. (8-10)

04. How are your Franchisees represented online now:

• ~ 98.6% of surveyed franchisors give each franchisee a page on the corporate website for local clients to find.
• ~ 28.6% of surveyed franchisors give each franchisees a 2- to 5-page micro-site that we list in the ”sponsored links” section of the search engines and the Franchisees pay for each lead that comes from their micro-site.
• ~ 42.9% of surveyed franchisors said Franchisees have their own website(s), domain(s) and email marketing which complies to brand guidelines, so Google ranks them very high in their local communities.
• ~ 14.3% of surveyed franchisors responded “none of the above.”

Based on these results, franchise companies are not taking full advantage of their national market segment and corporate branding by messaging in their local communities with targeted local online marketing strategies.

Choosing a name for anything is daunting. Your kid, your business or website domain, you want to make a good choice. Your domain name is your internet identity and should be a vital component in your overall business and marketing strategy. How do you figure out what your ultimate domain name is?

I Am What I Am

Ideally, the planets will align so that your website name and business name will come together at the same time. The name that you’ve been using in your marketing and branding efforts is the name you want for your website and domain. It’s the first thing users will try to enter into a browser.

If you already have a well-known name or brand, you should obviously get the domain that matches that name. You put a lot of effort into getting that name and branding established in your community. But what if that name is taken? Don’t change your company name because you couldn’t get the domain name.

Look up the current owner on www.whois.net and contact them to see if they are willing to sell it to you. If they are agreeable to selling the name, they will probably up the fee so you could be paying a higher rate than when you buy a new domain.

If your website and/or company is new, you might want to check out domain names first and find one that suits the name of your business. So, let’s say you find that bitsandbobs.com is available and buy it, it could be a perfect name for your Bits and Bobs business with your website being bitsandbobs.com.

Remember, the internet is an extremely fast-paced world and your customers want ease of use, so don’t make them work. A domain name that reflects your business and website is one less piece of information for users to remember. When visitors think of your business and website they’ll know it by name and where to go or what to enter into the browser.

The Long and Short of It

It’s true. Shorter domain names are easier to remember (but it’s harder and harder to get meaningful short names that make sense). Short names are also less apt to give users problems with typos. Todayisyourluckyday.com (sort of an average length) is much easier to remember and use than goandconquetheworldtodayisyourluckyday.com.

On the other hand, if a short name seems confusing or random unless the user is very familiar with you, then stick with something longer. So, tiyld.com is short and sweet, but it’s an odd assortment of letters that aren’t even pronounceable as an acronym. Spelling this out is probably easier to remember and use: TodayIsYourLuckyDay.com. Additionally, search engines will probably not pick up on your randomly-lettered domain name.

Word! What’s the Key Here?

Another point to consider is using site keywords in your domain name. Using keywords are likely to boost your site ranking with search engines. It’s not your business name, but the plus side is that search engines gravitate toward keywords that are also found in domain names. However, in order to make keywords in your domain work for you, you’ll need to know what words people are searching for. There are quite a few tools that will can help you figure out the best keywords to use. See Good Things and Do Your Leg Work below for a more detailed discussion.

So being that you can use up to 63 or 67 characters in a domain name, you could use several keywords…go crazy! But, and try to remember that run-on name and type it into a browser! It’s probably a good idea to avoid a horrendously long name…no one will remember it, much less want to type in out. The key to your domain name, long or short, is that it makes sense and doesn’t cause a lot of confusion for your customers or other potential users.

Spell It Like It Is

A correctly-spelled domain name will help your users find your website easily. It might be cool and fun to use z’s for s’s or even add a few zzzz’s to your name, but opt for simple and easy… kewlgurrrlsurferz.com …huh?

To Hyphen or Not to Hyphen

Some things to think about with a hyphenated name:

Not So Good Things:

• ~ You’ll have a hurdle making people aware of the hyphens in your domain and people don’t usually remember to type them in. Most people would type in todayisyourluckyday.com, not today-is-your-lucky-day.com
• ~ Adding hyphens in your name makes for a potential mouthful when users say your name…verbal marketing will sound clumsy. It would be almost more logical to buy clumsyhyphenandhyphenawkward.com because you’ll be saying “clumsy hyphen and hyphen awkward dot com.” If you aren’t clear about the hyphens, when people recommend your fabulous product or service and site, other users will type in clumsyandhyphen.com, not clumsy-and-awkward.com. Take a cue from most corporations and try not to use them.
• ~ Generally, they are a pain to type, especially several of them within one domain.

Good Things:

• ~ Hyphens help search engines identify keywords more easily. Because they distinguish your keywords better, your site will be better ranked in search results for those specific keywords.
• ~ It’s an alternative when the un-hyphenated domain name is already registered to someone else. If you can limit them, you may still be able to get a not-too-awkwardly-hyphenated domain you want.

Happy Medium Thing:

• ~ Buy both your natural and hyphenated domain names…since typing the name is easier without hyphens, this is the one you use for marketing and everywhere else. Since search engines usually like and rank domains with hyphenated names better and better ranking drives more users to your site, you’ll get the benefits of the hyphen.

What’s the Point?

Registering multiple domain names and pointing each one to a specific page or a few to your general website can help generate higher sales and traffic to your site. When you do this, you give users multiple avenues to your site. So, both customers who know the business name will be able to find you and customers who know your product or service will be able to find you.

Consider purchasing domains that are similar to your domain, contain hyphens or are even misspelled: coolcoffeeshop.com, coolcoffeeshoppe.com, koolcoffeeshop.com, cool-coffee-shop.com, coolcofeeshop.com, kewlcafeshop.com…you get the picture. Registering several domains will cast a wider net when users search for you. A word of caution: don’t point too many multiple domains to the same page because most search engines will dump your site.

Dot Wat?

.com is the most common and widely known extension. Like a good short name, finding your .com domain can be challenging. Most people now recognize .biz, .edu, .org, .net…but these also have certain implications. Be aware that .biz is generally recognized for businesses; .edu is intended for educational institutions; .org is widely used by non-profit and similar organizations; .net was originally for network providers, but it has a general use like .com now. However, there is nothing wrong with buying your domain name with several of these extensions.

iCUGOT12?

Numbers can present a similar problem as hyphens, especially with vocal marketing: is shineything4you.com – 4you or foryou or fouryou or 4u…..?

Shock Value

Using profanity in your domain name is unprofessional and gives you a negative image. Done.

Do Your Leg Work

Getting back to using a keyword or words in your domain name…this will help optimize search engine results, but to make your choices meaningful, you have to know what people are searching for.

• ~ Word Search – www.wordtracker.com is one of the many tools that can help you find good keywords. Enter the words or phrase/phrases you think people would use to search and the program shows you which words are most popular. You can use this information to optimize our website content, generate more keywords and improve your organic or pay-per-click searches. This site gives you a free 7-day tour, beyond that it’s a paid membership. If you search for “keyword tool,” you’ll find other tools to use as cross-reference.
• ~ Trademarks – If you have any question about your domain name being trademarked, do some research to verify you aren’t violating the law. However, if you register domain name and then a company trademarks it, you’re probably safe.
• ~ www.whois.net – You can do various searches on this site, obviously finding out if the domain you want already has a current owner. You can search by domain name, keyword and owner. Using the domain search will help you with trademark research. You can find deleted domains as well.
• ~ www.deleteddomains.com – The name says it all! Do a primary search for deleted and on-hold domains here. The site has a great feature that allows you to choose search parameters like character length or domains that contain specific words. You’ll need to register to get the full benefits of their services.
• ~ www.nameboy.com – This is a playful generator site. You search for words and let the program know if you want your domain to use hyphens or rhyming words. It also has a “who is” search. A cool feature is that you can submit your domain name and they will appraise the words for things like search frequency, terms and keyword advertising values, popularity. Using this tool will help you evaluate your domain relative to keywords.

Because your domain name is part of your image and branding, use all the resources available to make a good choice. Sometimes domains come easy and are a logical fit AND are available—the planets aligned for you! It gets tricky when your first choice isn’t available or you can’t find a good combination of words. Your domain should represent your company and product or service in order to better integrate your website into your marketing strategy.

The ultimate domain name does not make an ultimate site…you still need to put some work and effort into great content and design. Go the extra mile with keywords and some SEO work. Otherwise, your website will be all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Franchise companies have many challenges, one of which is local marketing. Traditionally, it has been difficult to produce consistent local marketing campaigns that drive leads to the local office. These campaigns normally consist of some sort of direct mail, “yellow pages” or print advertising, all of which are becoming much less effective in these techno-savvy times.

A new recipe for local marketing includes 2 cups website, 1/2 cup email, 1 cup search engine and a dash of tracking. Mixed well to make a successful local marketing campaign.

2 cups Website – A website is made of visual imagery and textual content. When mixing up your website, please choose only natural and relevant text for your content. This will allow the search engine and website to blend well together and produce a better tasting (more leads) dish. Use the combination of visual imagery and text to produce the fragrant smell (call to action) that entices your guests (site visitors) heads toward the kitchen (your contact information)

1/2 cup Email – An email is one page of your website delivered to your contact’s email box. It’s a combination of problem-solving and education. If you can brew these two items together to create interest and anticipation then you have succeeded in stirring up interest in your website. Email should never outwardly sell your services, but should educate your customer.

1 cup Search Engine – Search engine is the final and most often forgotten ingredient to your successful local marketing campaign. Search engine is only effective if it is incorporated well with website. If your website and search engine have similar content then customers will find website in their search engine queries.

A dash of Tracking – To realize success is to measure success. Use Google analytics to track your website and your traffic sources to understand if these ingredients are producing an increase in customers coming to your website. This tool will also show you the increase the number of customers who contact you.

We hope you enjoy this new recipe! If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

Cultivating users and customers who return to your site is no easy task. What? Your business doesn’t offer a product that you can advertise as “special clearance!” or “for a limited time only!” that will entice users back? Well, developing repeat customers the “write” way can keep you connected to them as well as build your reputation as an industry leader, grow your brand awareness and spark interest from prospective clients.

First Things, First

Unless you have a way to capture your users’ contact information, you won’t be able to send out an online marketing campaign. You’ll need an online marketing manager that includes a database to store your client information list.

That in place, include a “join us” or “sign up” call to action prominently on your website, in multiple places (tastefully). Whether the user visits your site once or several times, or visits one page or explores your entire site, that call to action should always be available.

Special E-livery

For any company, e-newsletters and/or e-mail campaigns are a logical start. Make no mistake, however, compelling and successful campaigns take work

• ~ Share your knowledge and choose a topic relevant to your client base to focus on. Whether it’s an intro or advanced level topic for a service, clear and direct copywriting will always inspire learning. Include tips and advice – builds trust and shows your expertise.
• ~ Providing an in-depth view of a product or service may also introduce clients to something new. Emphasizing benefits rather than features encourages the customer to view you as a solution-provider. How are you leaps and bounds in front of your competitors? Leading with benefits inspire confidence in your company, your brand and your product.
• ~ If your clients experience a Success Story, write about it. Testimonials about your product or service increase your credibility. Real life stories also give your campaign another dimension and human touch – your customers relate to each other.
• ~ Q&As and interviews are a creative way to break up the content of the newsletter while offering quick nuggets of information. Generate participation by inviting your clients to submit questions and choose a few to answer. Or, a more interesting approach is to interview another expert in the field answering the question. Your partner should offer a product or service that complements your own.
• ~ If you do offer a product for sale online, sending an e-mail campaign featuring products often encourages return visits. Whether it’s seasonally, monthly or weekly, schedule the email consistently so that your customers look forward to “what’s next?”

What Can New Do For You?

“New” and “free” and “Improved”…but especially “new” and “free” attract us like…well, you know. They are probably the most attractive and potent words product and service providers can use in marketing and advertising. There are studies that show that something in “new” activates a reward center in our brain. And whether the reward is to be the first to get the newest, shiniest widget, or to learn something new, it’s a great tool for online marketing as well.

Advertising new products on your site and in your e-marketing campaigns is a no-brainer, the novelty is built in.

If your company doesn’t offer a product? This “new” does not necessarily involve developing a new service each month…it’s you “new” content. Keep your site content (articles and images) updated regularly. Your users will return often to see what’s “new.” If your content doesn’t change for months and months, your web analytics return rate will probably reflect that.

An excellent source of new content is your own company news – New and Press, Press Releases, Media, Press Center. Give your news some prominence on your home page, include a spot for it in your main navigation and make it easy to find. More importantly, keep on top of issuing your news – being diligent about this takes commitment and dedication. Sending out monthly news is good; sending out weekly news is great!

It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It

• ~ Your writing should paint a picture in your client’s head: write in the active voice (who did what, rather than what was done by whom.
• ~ Be persuasive and clear: avoid the $25 paragraph to say 25-cents worth of message.
• ~ Be engaging in your approach: clever writing balanced with professionalism in a tone that is appropriate to your message: urgent-action needed; helpful; warm-fuzzy; fun.
• ~ Write to inspire action: think about radio spots or movie reviews – they’re quick and evocative, and they make you want to see the movie.

One-on-One

Write as if you were talking to your best user or client. Your ONE best user or client. Writing as if you were presenting your widget or widget service to your entire client list takes away from the personalization of your message. Writing on a personal level, like a one-on-one conversation addresses your client’s individual needs…just the way he or she receives your e-mail or e-newsletter – as an individual.

Journalism 101

Learn the upside-down paragraph used in journalistic writing. Write general to specific. Remember to lead with benefits, so start with that in your headline. Repeat that benefit early on in first paragraph and include a few more benefits as well. Detail the features and logistics of how your company delivers your benefits in the following paragraphs. Learn it, use it, live it!