What Does a Content Marketing Strategy Look Like For Franchises?

In today’s world, franchise content marketing is an essential component of your business. Gone are the days when the only way of advertising was to hang a sign outside of your establishment and knowing that word of mouth for exemplary service would bring in more customers. Now, businesses must use a multifaceted approach to increase awareness and promote themselves. A large part of this, especially for franchises, is finding the best practices for creating a content marketing strategy.

The reason to be tactical when developing franchise marketing has to do with the very nature of the franchise model. Brand consistency is key, and it is important to have a strong plan that avoids duplication. Here is some essential information to help you devise a solid franchise content marketing strategy for your business.

Understand How Content Marketing Works

In order to get the most out of content marketing, it is critical to thoroughly understand exactly what it is, how it works, and why it is important. Focusing on this helps enable you to keep a goal in the forefront of your mind and aids with the development of your strategy.

Content marketing is a technique for distributing information that is useful to a particular industry, even though it is not a direct advertisement of a company’s product or services. It zeroes in on a topic that is of substantial magnitude to a particular demographic. This becomes an invaluable tool when people are researching a specific topic online or seeking a service in their area since they want the ability to find exactly what they are seeking without being bombarded with unnecessary information.

With much competition out there, it is imperative to have a strategic content marketing plan that sets you apart from your competitors. Focusing on producing and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract your readers is imperative to the success of the campaign. 

Realize Why Content Marketing Is Important

The reason it is vital to develop a successful content marketing plan can be explained by thinking about attraction and retention. With strong competition today, this provides an opportunity to attract new customers without having to aim a direct sales pitch at them. By gaining interest in what you are saying and developing the impression that you are distributing honest and reliable content, a trust relationship is also being established here.

Think about how your company inspires loyalty among your existing clients and why those clients return to do business again and again. It basically comes down to trust in what you are providing as well as satisfaction in your services. By implementing a solid content marketing strategy for your franchise, you stay relevant in the industry and can position your business as a thought leader amongst your competitors.

Determine Your Goals for the Plan

Before trying to implement franchise content marketing, be sure that you have clearly defined what your goals are. Part of this involves making the determination as to whether franchises should operate solo when it comes to franchise content marketing or whether there will be independent efforts with one directive for all.

Then, consider how to best organize your team, delegate responsibility, and follow through with the plan. Sometimes a company fears they do not have the necessary time, resources or expertise to get into franchise content marketing. Many people have found it beneficial to hire a dedicated outside agency to produce this content for them under the rationale that some things are better left to professionals. Using technology and human capital, a streamlined content strategy will be tailored just for your company.

Designate a Team for Implementation

One important aspect of organizing your company’s franchise content marketing is deciding who is going to implement and carry out these duties. This serves the purpose of avoiding repetition and duplication of efforts. Depending upon the size of your business, you may choose just a point person or a collated team to do this for your company. If there is more than one person, the team should be divided so those specific duties can be distributed.

The entire team may have regular meetings to brainstorm about ideas for content, or this can be delegated to just one or two people. Someone with strong organizational skills can be the organizer who is responsible for making sure that the content gets shared on a regular basis. There also needs to be a person who tracks and analyzes how the content is performing with data and analytics so that the team knows when it’s time to switch gears.

Devise Compelling Content To Draw Customers

The best way to attract and retain customers is to come up with content that people are seeking and actually want to read. Develop interesting, relevant content that can be incorporated into blogs and articles. Be sure to present it in a variety of ways, such as written copy and graphics, as people process content differently; some like to read information while those who are more visual prefer charts, graphs or pictures.

Here are some do and don’ts for composing compelling content. The best way to be mindful of this is by writing a checklist and refer to it before each distribution. Some suggestions you may incorporate into a checklist are:

• Do create unique content for each franchise
• Do ask yourself whether this content is relevant, valuable and interesting
• Do use appropriate keywords to maximize SEO
• Do have a call to action each time

Likewise, it is important to not make the following missteps:

• Do not create duplicate content
• Do not rely solely on broad keywords
• Do not share conflicting information on social media or printed marketing collateral
• Do not have multiple people repeating the same effort

Establish Publishing Frequency for Consistency

Once your team is in place with a plan to develop captivating and relevant content, the next decision is how often you should distribute the content. It is important to strike the right balance between staying visible and useful versus overloading and annoying. This is another reason why is it beneficial to hire a professional agency for your franchise marketing efforts. By hiring an agency to own your content marketing campaign, you can rest easy knowing you will be provided with a data-driven strategy, that creates consistency in your messaging throughout the entire campaign and across multiple platforms for your franchise.

Contact V Digital Services for Your Franchise Marketing Needs

Employing best practices for creating a content marketing strategy is essential to the health and development of your franchise and individual locations. Feeling unsure or getting overwhelmed about your franchise content marketing is common. That is why partnering with a professional agency such as V Digital Services for assistance takes the weight off your shoulders while keeping up with the competition.

Our experience and depth of knowledge combine to provide an invaluable asset to your franchise company. Our goal is to provide your business with the very best digital marketing services and growth potential. Contact V Digital Services today so we can help you create a franchise marketing plan to develop and distribute relevant, interesting, and streamlined content.