Franchise Marketing Guide: Social Media Best Practices for Franchisors and Franchisees
According to the International Franchise Association, there are approximately 806,270 franchises in the United States, employing 8.7 million people. It’s a huge part of the US economy, raking in over $800 billion per year.
With franchise organizations making up such a large portion of the economy, it means a ton of businesses need to cut through the noise and get in front of the right customers. That’s why franchise marketing–with social media marketing at the center–is a revenue channel that can’t be overlooked, especially when all parties involved face a unique set of challenges.
For example, franchise owners must protect their brand reputation while franchises need to appeal to the interests of local customers. But how can businesses balance the needs of both the franchisor and franchisees?
To answer that question, we created a guide to teach you everything you need to know about your franchise marketing, from social to email to employee advocacy. Jump to the sections you need the most help with, or dive into the entire guide to turn your franchise organization into a well-oiled marketing machine.
What is a franchise?
A franchise is a business arrangement that enables approved parties to operate under an established name, logo, concept and/or trademark. The owner of the corporation or umbrella business is known as the franchisor and the operator of an individual branch or location is known as the franchisee. Depending on the agreement, the franchisee may pay a percentage of their profits or revenue, to the franchisor in exchange for ongoing support and use of the brand.
To buy into the business, the franchisee will pay fees (e.g. royalties) and maintain guidelines created by the franchisor. These rules can include requirements for branding, marketing and operating procedures. There is usually a one-time fee to the corporate owner to cover onboarding costs and getting the new business set up. For example, McDonald’s is a franchise corporation, and each McDonald’s location is owned by individuals who bought the franchise license. McDonald’s corporate helps the new franchise owners choose a business location, order supplies and market the new location.
What is franchise marketing?
Franchise marketing is the promotional efforts of both the overall franchise branch and individual franchise locations. While franchisors must create a profitable brand and business model that can be easily replicated, franchisees must help maintain brand reputation and bring in new business in order to retain its value.
To build and maintain your franchise organization’s brand reputation, start with social.
The 2023 State of Social Media report shows 96% of business leaders agree that companies must continue to invest in social media marketing to be successful. But how can franchisors and franchisees work together to create a single cohesive social marketing strategy? Let’s dive in.
Use employee advocacy to spotlight franchise locations
Employee advocacy is the practice of empowering your employees, or in this case franchisors and franchisee employees, to share pre-approved content in order to increase your brand awareness on social media (and beyond).
With a formal employee advocacy program, you can expand your franchise’s reach on social media and get in front of your employees’ audience, too. In fact, 72% of engaged social media users would post about their company if content was written for them.
![A general report within Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social. The report includes several metrics including total shares, earned media value and average per active user.](https://media.sproutsocial.com/uploads/2024/03/pi_advocacy_general-report_simplified.webp)
And according to LinkedIn’s Employee Advocacy Guide, employee posts extend your reach and have a higher click-through rate than company content. The right message, posted by a genuinely enthusiastic employee to the right audience, can be a priceless marketing message for an organization.
Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social lets employees share branded content within a few clicks while staying compliant with pre-approved copy. And you can validate the impact of employee posts with data that tells a story about your total reach, engagement and earned media value.
![A general report within Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social. The report includes several metrics include total shares, earned media value and average per active user.](https://media.sproutsocial.com/uploads/2024/03/pi_advocacy_general-report_simplified.webp)
How does advocacy benefit a franchise organization?
For franchises, employee advocacy brings a unique set of challenges and benefits. It can be tough to create a functional framework for employee advocacy across all franchises.
However, on the flip side, franchises stand to benefit dramatically if they implement a thoughtful and strategic employee advocacy program.
1. Employee advocacy saves money
Using the owners, managers and lower-level employees through a structured advocacy program is one way to reallocate marketing expenses. This benefit has significant appeal not only for the company as a whole but for many franchisees who are trying to cut costs by scaling back their marketing efforts. For example, Edgio gained over $126,000 in earned media value by using Employee Advocacy in three months. Simpli.fi also drove 7x ROI in 3 months, along with earning $90,000 in earned media value.
2. Employee advocacy leverages brand knowledge
Whether they’re part-time, full-time or salaried, franchise employees are the people most familiar with your company’s products and services. They know all the nitty-gritty details of the business; that knowledge can be an immense advantage to your marketing efforts.
There’s no huge learning curve for these in-house marketers; with a little direction and motivation, they’re ready to spread the good word about your business.
Three ways to manage advocacy efforts
Three different groups of people could potentially be in charge of your employee advocacy program. The model you select will largely depend on the type of franchise you’re involved in and the level of buy-in you have from your owners.
1. A national marketing board
In this scenario, the company has a marketing board that’s in charge of employee advocacy efforts across all franchises. The word on employee advocacy comes from the top down, and the local franchisees have to implement it as mapped out by the board. This type of scenario could work well for franchisees who aren’t very motivated to take responsibility for their own marketing.
2. A co-op marketing board
In this case, representatives from the franchise owners work with the parent company to craft a marketing strategy that works nationwide. They also determine how employee advocacy efforts are handled (including creating a social media policy, brand messaging guidelines, etc.). This way, the company can still have leadership and a level of marketing control, while the owners have a voice and an interest in the process.
3. The local franchise
For some businesses, the best way to ensure full owner buy-in is to give franchisees the freedom to get creative and set up their own employee advocacy strategy. To keep this permissive model from backfiring, it’s important to offer training and help to franchisees. They need to know best practices and understand specific brand guidelines before they jump into employee advocacy, particularly on social media.
How franchise organizations can use advocacy
Experts suggest you begin your advocacy efforts in phases; it all starts with finding the most enthusiastic and engaged employees at each franchise location.
1. Find the storytellers
You can find these folks by sending out a survey with a few questions about company products, or by encouraging employees at each franchise location to share something about their favorite product on a social media network. Ask your franchise owners to approach their most dedicated, enthusiastic and verbally skilled employees about becoming advocates.
2. Make it easy for them
Your company needs to make it easy for busy employees to share content as they’re on the go. Today that means using employee advocacy software with a mobile app (or optimized for mobile browsers). Investing in an employee advocacy tool that makes sharing easy increases the likelihood of teammates using it. For instance, when using Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social, Medallia saw a 45% increase in employee adoption rate two weeks after launching the program.
Curate relevant company and industry news, product updates, job openings and more. Whether you’re part of a nationwide company marketing group, a co-op initiative or a franchise-level marketing effort, you’ll see better success when you supply your employee advocates with highly shareable content.
3. Maintain the momentum
Consider offering small incentives for employees who continue sharing your brand message effectively. Benefits like gift cards, parking spots, and useful branded merchandise don’t take much from your marketing budget, and they’ll be much appreciated by your employee advocates.
Advocacy-related KPIs for franchise organizations
So how do you know who deserves those little incentives and rewards? Is your advocacy program really working? Here’s how to find out.
- Mentions and engagement. Look at the number of times your company and product and/or services are mentioned over time to help determine success. Consider engagement around your brand online as well. Are there comments and discussions going on? Did your sales team experience a noticeable uptick? Have you noticed more shares of updates and images? More positive activity and involvement typically indicates that you and your advocates are doing something right.
- Leads. You also need to track social leads to determine if your employee advocacy strategy is resonating. You can track leads through website analytics, comments on social media about requesting a follow-up, along other methods. Keep records of inquiries by phone, email or text. Note whether new leads use specific phrases and keywords associated with a recent employee advocacy initiative.
How does employee advocacy help franchise organizations like yours?
Even with a broader understanding of the benefits and some ideas for getting started, you may feel unprepared to begin your own employee advocacy program. What if there were an easy way to jump-start the process and get employees involved?
Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social gives franchise owners and employees a simple way to share carefully selected content across their social networks. From amplifying social media reach to improving internal communications to boosting social selling, this platform does it all. It unifies fragmented messaging, provides essential metrics and KPIs and enables your employees to effortlessly transition to intentional brand ambassadors.
Watch as your franchise advocates amplify your messages and report on the success of your advocacy program.
Drive additional visits and conversions with reviews
It doesn’t matter how many franchisees are in your company: you need to integrate local reviews into your marketing strategy to attract customers. Let’s explore how your franchises can center locality.
The impact of online reviews
Online review management is one of the main ways to create a local online presence to get customers into your stores.
People rely on reviews to make purchase decisions. A survey from BrightLocal shows 76% of consumers regularly read online reviews when browsing for local businesses. And 46% of consumers feel that online business reviews are as trustworthy as personal recommendations from friends or family.
Which review website has the most impact?
Although BrightLocal research shows 98% of customers read online reviews for local businesses on Google, other review sites can also impact your brand reputation. Some of the most popular review sites (in terms of search volume) include Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook Pages and Glassdoor. Sprout Social offers integrations these top review networks, along with the app stores (Google Play and Apple App Store) so you can review and replay to feedback in one platform.
How review management works alongside local marketing
Reviews can influence your franchise’s SEO rankings, too. Online reviews are one of the top factors that determine where a business shows up in local search results, according to Moz. Specifically, the pace at which you receive new reviews and the amount of online reviews you have for each franchise location contribute to where your franchise locations rank in search results. That’s why review management across multiple review platforms and locations is necessary for franchises to be found.
How should online review management be shared between franchisors and franchisees?
There are several things to consider when deciding on the workflow and responsibilities of online review management.
The first decision is whether or not you want the franchisee to manage their own review site pages. If the answer is yes, then you can provide educational tools to the franchisees to manage their reviews. If you choose to have the franchisees manage their own reviews, then you could host a webinar explaining how to respond to negative or positive reviews, for example.
You can also provide an incentive program for your franchisees–like offering awards for the franchisee that responds to the most reviews in a year.
If you don’t feel comfortable having franchisees take control of their online reviews, you have to make sure you still have online review pages claimed for each franchise—this includes Google My Business and Facebook Pages. You then should create a process to manage all franchisee reviews. Be sure the process includes a response strategy, incentives for generating new customer reviews consistently and recommendations for analysis.
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