Securing the best Return On Investment for franchise marketing can be difficult. But armed with the right methods and measures, you can make sure that your advertising funds aren't going to waste...
This article shows you how to check and test your franchise's marketing ROI. And how to maximise it to get the best performance.
But first though...
What is ROI in terms of franchise marketing?
Your Return on Investment in the marketing of your franchise is the amount of profit you get from each investment. This sounds simple. But as even a cursory glance at the information you'll need to gather to calculate your return will tell you, there's a lot more to it than there seems to be:
Are you using your total revenue as your return? Or are you using your net profit? Your gross profit? Your Customer Lifetime Value? Are you going to include technical costs in your investment? Elements such as website hosting? Or the costs involved in content creation or management?
Clearly, when it comes to calculating your ROI, there are some important decisions to be made.
So let's start simply:
How do I work out my ROI for franchise marketing?
The formula for measuring your ROI is the same in franchising as in any business:
ROI as a % = (Return - Investment) x 100
Investment
It's choosing which figures to use for your "return" and your "investment" where the difficulty appears. We'll take a look at some helpful tips for calculating ROI below.
Because knowing your Return On Investment is absolutely vital when it comes to spending your marketing funds effectively. How else will you know which campaign, strategy, or channel is wasting your money?
When one campaign's ROI shows you it's giving a return of 6% and the other gives you a return of 60%, it's clear to see where your success is coming from.
Here's how to achieve the best ROI for franchise marketing:
1. Set short term goals which can scale
When measuring your ROI, it's important to know what your campaign is trying to achieve. Your current marketing campaign should always have an overall objective of course - and this should always be a figure which is numerical and measurable - but that objective should then be broken down into short term goals.
These smaller targets act as checkpoints on your way to achieving your larger goal. These can be set to happen over time, but should also be set laterally - that is to say, as part of your A/B testing.
Start small, get a clear figure for how much you're putting in (investment) and the results you're getting out (return). Then you can analyse the figure and expand the campaign if you're getting the results you want. If you're not getting those results, you'll need to repeat it and measure again.
You should consider testing your campaign's effectiveness:
- When you use different headers, content, imagery, calls to action, etc.
- At one franchise location, then in one territory, and then network-wide
2. Track all of your results across your network
Tracking is the most critical aspect of any marketing campaign. How else will you know if you're achieving the best ROI for your franchise marketing?
That's why you need to nail down the measuring tools you're going to use to track your campaign well before you start. And you need to decide on the conversion points during your sales funnel at which you're going to measure (familiar hint: it's all of them):
- Clicks
- Visits
- Subscriptions
There are many other handy techniques you can use to track your online advertising investment too:
- Use coupons with discount codes to track trends
- Use phone numbers or email addresses to track conversions from different locations
- Use your CRM to measure conversions
- Use Google Analytics and other tools to measure how effective your advertising is
All in all, this is one of the many reasons why online marketing is steadily replacing offline techniques:
You can measure your ROI much more easily.
The other advantage of online marketing channels is that they generally offer a better ROI than their offline cousins. Which is why you should...
3. Move online for a higher ROI
Offline marketing methods should never be overlooked. But online marketing for franchises is where you'll start to see some serious pay-off on your advertising investment.
This is partly because of digital marketing's immense reach, and the ability to target your advertising message to different demographics more effectively. But for the purposes of this article it's enough to know that overall, online marketing methods will almost always give you more for your money than offline techniques.
Plus, the ability to measure your investment more accurately is a huge point in internet marketing's favour. This is particularly true when it comes to franchises, where you can have several different "levels" of marketing activity going on (franchisor's marketing, master franchisee's marketing, and individual franchisee marketing) at the same time. Being able to differentiate between the results being achieved by each of these campaigns is only really possible in the online sphere.
Three of the most easy to track online marketing channels for franchise businesses are:
1) Email
Though you can be forgiven for thinking that email's time has passed, what with the huge number of spam email campaigns that once populated any internet user's inbox, the humble email is one again on the rise as a powerful digital marketing tool.
More than 90% of people check their emails every day. And the channel is highly cost effective, with minimal-to-zero investment needed past the original material design and creation. With proper targeting of message and professional design, an email campaign will give you an average of a more than 200% return on your initial investment.
When combined with either of the other two options on this list, you can create joint campaigns which are incredibly easy to track.
2) Social media campaigns
Measure your ROI for franchise marketing with ease with social media campaigns. Many social media platforms have handily already included metrics such as "following" or "liking" for you. Others have specific tools, such as Facebook Insight, which will help you measure your return.
The only problem that may arise is knowing what the actual return you're getting is in terms of a concrete revenue figure. This is why social media campaigns make for great combinations with either of the other options in this shortlist.
More than 70% of adults use some form of social media network, and many are interconnected, further boosting your reach. Quality content creation will result in greater audience engagement here.
3) Tracking coupons and local promotions
Because the numbering system you use will always let you know where your customers acquired your coupon or promotional code from, this marketing method remains one of the most eminently trackable available. This is especially true when combined with your social media campaign, email campaign, or yours or a trusted partner's website advertising.
Fast sharing of good deals means that you can quickly get great value for your marketing money, especially when you incorporate the need for consumers to share into the terms of your deal itself. But do be wary of offering too much of a discount and impacting your bottom line, or of accidentally encouraging competition between your individual franchise locations with a coupon offer.
Properly planned discount coupons and local promotions can be very easy to track, but it's important to make sure you know precisely how many you're giving out. Use the right metrics to track the number of vouchers claimed, and where they are being claimed.
4. Use your franchise network to maximise your ROI
Part of getting a top return on investment from your franchise marketing is assisting your franchisees in conducting their own marketing methods. Depending on the nature of any individual franchisee's personality, you'll either need to encourage or rein back their efforts. One tool which works equally well in both circumstances?
Providing clear rules and guidelines.
Most top brands will provide:
- A branding guide: this clearly laid-out book will contain all of the permissible variations on your visual brand and other key characteristics of your franchise.
- An online dashboard: this phrase sometimes turns people off when it comes to utilisation, but a properly integrated online dashboard or portal will let you and your individual franchisees easily track their advertising success.
- Always-available support: if your franchisee needs help with marketing, you should have an expert standing by ready to supply it. In cases when this level of in-house support isn't possible, always consider having outside professionals conversant with your brand on hand.
- Proper training: if your franchisees are going to be even partially responsible for their own advertising, you need to make sure they've got the skills to do so. Marketing training should be an integral part of your induction process, and a part of any franchisee's ongoing training.
Then, as you should be doing with every single campaign, you'll be measuring the results. Testing to make sure that campaign's gotten you the results that you desired and were expecting.
If not, you can repeat it with an improved message, content, call to action, imagery, or headers. When you do get those results, it's time to expand it to a larger scale, a wider scope...
And really start to get some big return on the investment you've made in your franchise marketing.
Get the Best Return On Investment For Franchise Marketing - The Easy Way
Local Fame are the franchise online marketing specialists. We know how to get you the highest ROI from your initial spend. How?
Because we've got a team made up of SEO marketing, PPC marketing, market analysis, branding, reputation management, and social media marketing experts. They're standing by to measure the current and future effectiveness of your online advertising:
Get a FREE report on that today. Or check out the Top Ten Tracking Techniques for Franchise Online Marketing ROI download you can also get for free right here. Finally, why not chat to a specialist today?
Local Fame has someone ready to start making your advertising work for you now. There's no fee or obligation.
