Marketing advice for your franchise by Coconut Creatives

Coconut Creatives logo franchise marketing Franchise marketing | Maximise Your Website

Almost every franchisor will be utilising online technologies and channels to attract leads from prospective franchisees. In many cases this results in prospects visiting your own website to ‘check you out’, so make sure your own website is current and up-to-date, says Sarah Cook, franchise marketing specialist from Coconut Creatives.

What, where, when?

Long gone are the days where companies rushed out, registered their domain name, published an online version of their printed collateral and sat back feeling satisfied that they have ticked the online marketing box.

Especially in the franchise industry, your website needs to be fresh, current with up-to-date content and this requires a little more effort.

Your website should evolve with your business and franchise package. In the current economic climate it is important to work with a web company that will work flexibly with you. We always recommend having a CMS (content management system) built into your site. This allows you to make changes yourself and thus you will be less reliant on your developer every time you want to update some text.

 

Tracking ROI

Utilising Google Analytics is just the first step in establishing what visitors are doing with your website, where they have come from and why they leave. More importantly, consider the pages that they leave the site from and consider why this maybe.

The companies and individuals who realise that their website is an evolving communication and business transaction tool will be the ones to steal market share and heighten brand awareness whatever the economic climate.

Get ‘Sticky’
The term “sticky” is used to describe how long for and how often a user will visit your site. You want them to return time and time again and you need to factor in reasons for them to do this in the creative and technical design of your website. Downloads, free e-bulletins, newsletters, competitions, anything that will add value for free to your customers, it will keep your name at the front of their mind and gives them a reason to come back to your site repeatedly. It is what your competitors will be doing aside of email marketing campaigns after capturing their details. If you're not already using these tactics, perhaps it’s time you did.

Consider their decision making process
In so many cases, franchisors will simply upload their franchise prospectus to the franchise section of the website. But why should they enquire directly if you’ve already given them all the information? The job of the franchise information on the website is to entice the visitor to enquire, once they have enquired they progress to the next stage and so on. Think of your website as a drip feed mechanism that leads to an enquiry but don’t give too much away too soon!
 
Take them on a journey  
Your website needs to take your audience on a journey that’s informed, accurate, promotional, enables them to interact, has the answers they need and the functions displayed that allows them to help themselves gain what they are looking for.

Where are you today and where do you want to be?
How much involvement with managing your site do you want and how much time do you have to do this?

These are just some of the questions that you need to ask yourself as these will affect the cost.
Typical costs can vary from £2k to £40k depending on the complexities, features and bespoke programming purchased. You can even buy off-the-shelf sites for well under the £2k mark. We always recommend writing a web brief or website specification that lists all the functionality that is important to you and everyone who will be using the website.

So whether you have a website, are embarking on overhauling your current one or are perhaps about to commission one from scratch for a new business venture or an additional project for a specific target audience, firstly ensure that you work with a web partner that understands your needs.
 
For more information or to get some help planning your campaigns for the next year, contact sarah@coconutcreatives.co.uk or call 01963 31030 (five digits!)