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One out of every 12 businesses in the U.S. is a franchise, and many of these franchises operate in competitive and highly segmented local geographic markets. Every day, franchise marketers are faced with the challenge of how to help drive local business to their franchisees spread throughout the country while also leveraging a national brand in these local markets. Although most franchise owners and marketers have a solid handle on how to assist with local marketing for their franchisees, there are 3 common mistakes that franchisee owners and marketers make in their local marketing efforts. Here, we'll discuss the 3 most common local marketing mistakes franchisees make and how to correct them.
MISTAKE #1: Franchisees Not Having Their Own Websites
Making sure your local franchise has a website may seem like a no-brainer, but it doesn't happen often enough. It's surprising to learn how many franchisees lack their own website. Not having a website for your local franchise is like signing a million dollar contract to play baseball for the Boston Red Sox and showing up to your first game without a glove. How would you expect to catch anything? Your manager wouldn't even put you in the game. Without a website that you control, these days, you are doing your business a disservice.
There are rare exceptions to why a local franchise would not have an online presence. Actually, the exceptions are so rare that I can't even think of any!
How to Fix It:
Do yourself a favor and make sure your local franchise in your geographic location has its own website that it can tailor to the needs of your local market. We recommend setting the website up on a sub-domain of the main corporate site, such as www.austin.franchiseA.com or as it's own individual site, like www.austinfranchiseA.com. Also, when setting up the site, make sure to use an easy-to-edit content management system (CMS)! Using a CMS will empower you to make easy updates and changes to your website.
MISTAKE #2: Failing to Register for Free Local Business Directories
Why, you ask? Directories like Google Places can provide your local franchise with trusted inbound links to your website that can improve search engine rankings. In addition, many people search these directories when looking for products and services. Also, it's usually free to register for them. Win-win-win!
How to Fix It:
Go ahead and register your local franchise for the four following directories ASAP:
1. Google Places
2. Bing
3. Yahoo!
4. Yelp
For more directories, check out this blog article, which lists 46 additional local business directories that you can register for as well. Go get your local franchise registered in these free online directories today!
MISTAKE #3. Not Effectively Leveraging National Marketing Dollars
If you are a franchisee and you're not taking FULL advantage of any corporate marketing dollars available to you, you are missing a huge opportunity to grow your local franchise. Why? Because this is essentially free money that franchisors give to their franchisees in order to market and grow their business in their local area. Don't leave these dollars on the table.
How to Fix It:
If you have not done so already, use these dollars to invest in a website with a good content management system and advance your local marketing initiatives so you can fix the top two mistakes above.
What other ways can franchisees leverage local marketing techniques?
Photo Credit: Kevin Hutchinson
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