How are your franchisee websites set up right now? Does each location have its own website and domain? If your answer to that question is ‘yes’, it’s time to re-evaluate your approach. You might be wondering, “Why can’t franchisees simply build their own websites?” It sounds like an easy solution, but franchisees don’t typically have the digital experience (or time) … Read More
Google My Business Best Practices for Healthcare Organizations
If there is one thing that keeps healthcare marketers awake at night – particularly marketers for multi-location hospitals and clinics – it is the state of their local business listings. Local business listing management, Google My Business (GMB) in particular, is fraught with challenges for larger, distributed healthcare organizations. But the rewards of a well-managed GMB program are undeniable. Search … Read More
PPC Best Practices for Franchises: The Hidden Factors That Can Influence Results
Pay per click (PPC) marketing should be a primary tool in the franchise marketing toolkit. When set up and managed properly, a franchise PPC account allows for easy budget allocation and hyper-targeted ad distribution across the franchise network, ensuring that each location is getting its fair share of its marketing investment. However, just because two locations in similar sized markets … Read More
Branded vs Non-Branded Keyword Performance: Why Does It Matter?
If your PPC and SEO programs include both branded and non-branded keywords, it is critical to analyze performance across these keyword categories separately. Using blended data will lead to inaccurate assumptions that can negatively impact your budget allocation and keep optimization opportunities hidden from view. Branded vs Non-Branded Keywords As the name suggests, branded keywords contain your company’s brand name in … Read More
More Consumers Are Cutting the Cord on Cable. What Does it Mean for Your Brand?
Each year, more and more people opt out of traditional TV services like cable and satellite. As Fortune.com reported, “After companies from cable giant Comcast to satellite TV titan AT&T, which owns DirecTV, reported their fourth quarter results, the total number of pay TV subscribers dropped 3.4% from a year earlier, the highest rate of decline since the trend of … Read More
Digital Marketing, Millennials, and Your Brand
Key Strategies to Use When Marketing to Millennials Millennials (aka people born between 1981 and 1996) are a unique generation. When compared to earlier and later generations, reaching them through digital marketing is an entirely different ballgame. They demand authenticity, they’re quick and efficient online researchers, they operate with skepticism, and they’re keenly aware of traditional marketing tricks and … Read More
CMOs: You Probably Don’t Need Most of Your In-house Staff
Your In-House Digital Marketing Staff Can Hold Back Your Campaign While it may seem logical to hire an in-house team for your digital marketing efforts; most CMOs are surprised and disappointed when confronted with the ongoing time and expense it takes to recruit and maintain a successful department. What’s more, once their interests are tethered to in-house staffs, CMOs … Read More
IGTV: Does It Have a Place in Your Digital Marketing Mix?
What is IGTV, and Can Brands Benefit? Near the end of June 2018, Instagram announced its newest initiative: IGTV. This new feature can be found within the traditional Instagram platform, but it’s also a standalone app that can be downloaded directly. Through IGTV, users can upload videos that are longer than 60 seconds, and the vertically-oriented, mobile-first layout is … Read More
Marketing Isn’t Buying Tools
Successful Marketing Is About Strategy, Not Just Tools These days, there’s a lot of buzz about marketing automation software and other technologies that seem a little too good to be true. If you read half the blog posts about modern marketing tools, you’d start to believe you can magically solve your challenges by paying X amount of dollars for … Read More
How Much Reporting and Transparency Do Your Franchisees Need?
Getting Franchisees to Buy into Your National Marketing Fund Implementing and maintaining an effective national marketing fund together with your franchisees is both an operational and psychological challenge. If franchisees had poor experiences in the past with corporate-level initiatives, marketing or otherwise, they may distrust programs they do not directly control. Given the benefits of well-managed national marketing, it … Read More
If Your Franchise Company Doesn’t Have a National Marketing Fund – You Need One
As modern marketing continues to move toward digital channels, it becomes increasingly important for companies to build frameworks that can efficiently deliver strong marketing results to their networks. Most franchise companies recognize this, and have some form of co-op or national marketing fund. If your franchise company doesn’t, here’s why it should. The Marketing Fund Advantage As part of many … Read More
Tackling Remarketing Visibility Issues
Poorly executed remarketing campaigns look sloppy and can reflect negatively on your brand. Oversaturation, irrelevant messaging and showing ads on inappropriate sites can turn off your prospects and jeopardize your customer acquisition efforts. Remarketing can be a highly effective tool when done properly. To effectively leverage remarketing, it’s important to follow best practices for maximizing performance without turning your audience … Read More
Preparing for Voice Search (Part 2 of 3) – Brick & Mortar Optimization
In part one of this series, we looked at some compelling adoption statistics for voice search as well as fundamental differences between voice and traditional search. In part two, we look at some ways that brick and mortar businesses can maximize their exposure in localized searches – searches with a geographic modifier, such as ‘near me’ or ‘in boulder’ – … Read More
Preparing for Voice Search (Part 1 of 3)
Do you like talking to inanimate objects? I hope so, because voice search is on the rise. Voice-operated platforms like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, as well as voice-activated apps in cars, on mobile phones and just about anywhere else you can imagine, are taking a growing share of all searches performed on a daily basis. Here are just a … Read More
What Successful CMOs Want in Their Marketing Agencies?
When it comes to selecting a marketing agency, successful CMOs want partners – not vendors. This means more than just having expertise with all modern digital marketing channels; it means providing a tailored, results-oriented commitment to a client’s objectives. What Do CMOs Really Want? If you ask elite CMOs what their dream digital agency would look like, most would describe … Read More
The Importance of a Centrally Managed Franchise Website
A website is the hub of any business’s digital efforts. An ineffective website will undermine all other marketing efforts, no matter how much time, money and expertise are applied to campaign development. Yet, many franchisors leave the development and management of franchisee websites to the franchisees. The result? An incohesive, inconsistent, and fragmented Web presence that: Negatively impacts the franchise … Read More
There Are No Digital Marketing Experts
In the digital marketing world, there is no shortage of consultants, agencies and prospective employees who can dazzle you with best practices and channel-specific expertise. In reality, however, most of these so-called experts are largely operating from the same knowledge base. So what should you look for in an agency? One comprised of savvy marketers who incorporate tried-and-true principles that … Read More
Digital Authenticity: What Does it Mean? And, Why Is it Important?
Successful marketing campaigns are about creating connections that promote action and positive word of mouth. To effectively engage modern consumers, businesses need to establish trust by taking a consistent, authentic approach to their digital marketing efforts. What Is Digital Authenticity? From a digital marketer’s perspective, authenticity means being original and genuine, while maintaining a consistent voice, perspective and image throughout … Read More
Your Brand Needs Help. Can You Get Away With A Brand Refresh?
How long has it been since your company really looked at its brand and brand positioning? If not recently, it’s probably about time. With rapidly changing competitive landscapes, it’s critical to be properly branded and positioned relative to your competition. But do you need to start over completely or simply rejuvenate your existing brand identify? A Rebrand or a Refresh? … Read More
The Secrets to Successful Display Advertising for Franchise Businesses
Display advertising is one of the most effective ways to increase awareness for your franchise business online, and it should be an integral part of your digital marketing strategy. It is an inexpensive way for franchise brands to reach their audience at scale. And like traditional outbound advertising such as tv or radio ads, display advertising is an excellent method … Read More