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Why Your Franchise Brand Needs A
Franchise Marketing Operating System
like, yesterday…
When an entrepreneur chooses to buy a franchise instead of simply starting their own business concept from scratch, they choose the franchise route for a number of reasons. A proven business model, franchisor provided training and support and developed technologies that are already in place, are some of the benefits that come with buying a franchise.
An often overlooked, yet essential part of developed technologies and that is expected of you by your franchisees, is digital marketing. Perhaps it is because many franchisors aren’t very knowledgeable about it themselves, don't realize the importance of it, may have tried a number of different things that had poor results, or they haven’t been able to find a solution for digital marketing that addresses all the challenges they face, but, it seems that too often, digital marketing gets pushed to the wayside, which isn’t a good idea.
A franchise brand's online presence is something that cannot be ignored and must be addressed in a scalable and repeatable fashion just like the rest of a franchise system. Franchisors have to deliver on the promise made to franchisees to offer a mature, proven and fully developed marketing system in return for their investment.
However, most franchisors fall short of this. They lack a Franchise Marketing Operating System.
The "Laissez-faire" or Do Nothing Option
At the most basic level, a number of franchisors decide to offer next to nothing to their franchisees when it comes to digital marketing.
Left to their own devices, your franchisees will either do nothing at all because they didn’t sign up to be digital marketers, or they do actually attempt it themselves, but don’t adhere to brand guidelines, or hire third party vendors to do it and, before you know it, you’ve got a big mess and unhappy franchisees.
The Hodgepodge Option
Franchisors concerned by offering a suitable digital marketing answer to their franchisees usually start next trying to piece together a solution through several different providers.
This is the most common situation we encounter. Not being digital experts themselves, franchisors leave it to their agency of record to recommend software point solutions for each of the numerous pieces of a full-fledged digital presence.
In our experience, this can get messy in a hurry and can become pretty confusing for everyone, nevermind that it probably still doesn’t solve as many problems as it creates; Piling up run-of-the-mill solutions create a vast amount of complexity and inefficiencies.
Franchise marketing agencies will usually recommend a social marketing platform like Hootsuite, a review management platform like BirdEye, a CRM software like SalesForce, a marketing automation platform, like Hubspot, a lead tracking platform like Callrail, a local listing SEO service like Yext, and then attempt to patch it together into something coherent. The end-result is usually;
- Expensive integration and opportunity cost to the franchisor and franchisees, often to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars as everything is pieced together by expert consultants;
- Expensive cumulated licensing costs for each of the software component, we're talking five to thirty times the cost of an integrated solution like SeoSamba FMOS;
- Underwhelming results as these solutions live in silo's and do not foster a comprehensive picture of the state of your digital marketing situation, neither does it make readily available to franchisees to benchmark their activities and results against others franchisees that are part of your brand system, nor is it in fact built to provide the flexibility required to manage franchise systems;
If that all sounds a little too familiar, it's because it is a common problem among franchise brands. There is hope, though, and a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe you’ve heard about it, maybe you haven’t, but there is a solution that has emerged for franchise brands to solve their digital marketing roadblocks.
The Elusive All-In-One Franchise Marketing Platform
Franchisors who have experienced issues with their hodgepodge approach tend to gravitate towards all-one franchise solutions due to its effectiveness in solving digital marketing challenges. By utilizing a purpose-built platform like FMOS, franchisors can provide adequate support to their franchisees, foster benchmarking activities and results against other franchisees, and save costs compared to piecing together several solutions from various providers.
While there are a handful of marketing platforms that were built for the franchise business model that claim to be be all-in-one marketing solutions for franchises, we find that they only capable of handling select facets of the digital marketing landscape; some handle email marketing, some handle social marketing, and/or reputation management and some handle websites production and marketing, but simply none match the scope and depth found in SeoSamba's Marketing Operating System.
SeoSamba's Franchise Marketing Operating System, or FMOS, is a centralized, flexible, distributed sales and marketing toolset in a single interface with features such as centralized blogging, hyper-local newsletter distribution and agnostic, system-wide KPI reporting. It was built from the ground up specifically for multi-location and franchise business models.
All SeoSamba software including mobile Apps, like our CRM app is built to support single, multi-unit franchisees and franchisors alike.
Simply put, what all that means is that, through the SeoSamba FMOS platform, you have complete control over your online presence for your entire network through one centralized dashboard. Through the FMOS you can create and post AI enhanced blogs for each of your franchisees’ websites, distribute social updates to their social pages, design a social marketing strategy with planned posts using the social calendar, send localized newsletter emails on their behalf, manage their online reputations for Google, Facebook, Yelp and view analytics network-wide, shared approved assets to be immediately usable, benchmark your entire franchise network for all digital marketing activities in one convenient place.
SeoSamba's Franchise Marketing Operating System help franchisors save time, money and brain damage, and to provide a digital marketing solution that streamlines your marketing efforts, and that is efficient, with a user-friendly interface. What’s even better, is that you choose how much or how little you wishes to have your franchisees participate. Offer a full access to the toolset for the most sophisticated franchisee cohort, while keeping it very simple for the others, in all cases, you are best able to keep them engaged and on message in your brand marketing efforts.
But don’t take our word for it, instead watch what some of SeoSamba’s FMOS clients say about it:
Secure a no-cost seat for your franchise in the next FMOS pilot
Your brand’s size can either be a hindrance, or it can give you an unfair advantage (with the right set of tools). Before signing up for a franchise solution, kick SeoSamba's FMOS tyres. Apply for one of the limited FMOS pilot program seat now and enroll five lucky franchisees to find out how FMOS can impact your franchise brand in a matter of weeks not months.
AGILIZE YOUR FRANCHISE
Teaming Up With SeoSamba Has HUGE Benefits
✔ Plug SeoSamba's Franchise Marketing Operating System, improve performances, and deliver new digital marketing support services to your franchisees in 30 days.
✔ Get clarity in your digital marketing Key Performance Indicators instantly, across agency partners and technology platforms.
- ✔ Communicate a comprehensive digital marketing roadmap to your franchisees
✔ Gain more and better visibility for your franchise recruitment program as your network scales
✔ Protect your brand and your franchisees from ADA related lawsuits.
Franchisors must prioritize digital marketing to ensure their online presence remains competitive. By utilizing purpose-built franchise marketing platforms like FMOS, they can provide the necessary support to their franchisees, manage digital marketing in a scalable and repeatable way, and achieve better results.
