The Role of Social Media in Franchise Marketing

How to Promote Your Franchise Using Social Media Marketing

With billions of users across the five main social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn), Social Media Marketing (SMM) can be incredibly lucrative for franchise businesses looking to modernize their marketing strategies and reach a wider audience online.

It’s a known fact that in a world dominated by social media, SMM plays a pivotal role in franchise marketing and empowers franchisees to build brand awareness, engage with customers, maximize their marketing efforts and stay competitive. However, as a new franchisee that doesn’t have a lot of SMM experience, trying to market your business on social media and generate engagement can feel a bit daunting.

If you’re feeling unsure of where to even start on social media, don’t worry, we have you covered. In this article, we will go over in more detail the importance of leveraging SMM as a franchise business while also providing expert tips for running successful social media campaigns that drive engagement.

The Importance of Social Media When Marketing a Franchise

As with any type of business, social media plays a crucial role when it comes to franchise marketing. Social media provides franchise businesses with an amazing platform for:

Building brand awareness
Generating leads
Promoting products or services
Recruiting franchisees
Nurturing customer loyalty
And more

Social media is also a great way to connect and engage with customers and provide support. For instance, did you know that 40% of customers expect to have support from a business via social media? It’s true! When looking to connect with a business and receive support regarding important matters, more and more consumers prefer to use social media.

4 Tips For Leveraging Social Media When Marketing Your Franchise

Are you a franchisee that is looking to explore the world of SMM but isn’t sure where to start? Keep reading for some expert recommendations on how your franchise can incorporate the power of social media into your marketing strategy.

1. Have a Strategy in Place

It’s so important not to go into your social media journey blindly. Before you start posting, do extensive research and have a plan in place that includes:

What platforms your customers are most active on
What platforms you plan to use
What types of content you’re going to post
How frequently you plan to post
Whether you plan to explore paid ads on social media platforms
Information about your audience targeting.

Hiring a social media manager and content creator or a digital marketing agency that specializes in SMM is also a great idea. A social media professional will have both the time and expertise to develop and execute a strategy that’s tailored to your business goals and audience.

2. Post Regularly

A social media strategy will only be effective if you post consistently. Now, you might be wondering, “How frequently should I be posting?” This is where it gets a bit tricky. There’s no one one-size-fits-all answer to this question as your posting frequency should depend on several factors, such as:

The platform you’re using
Your goals
Your audience

As a general rule of thumb, you should be posting at least once per week. Typically though, posting more frequently than this will garner better results. However, you can do your own tests to see what works best. If posting every day is what gets you the best results, then that’s great. But if you find you experience great results from just posting once or twice per week, you can stick with that formula.

3. Choose the Right Platform

When developing your social media strategy, you will need to decide which social media platforms you want to focus on. In order to determine which platform will work best for your business, do extensive research into your target audience to determine which platforms they are most likely to be active on. Your franchisor may also be able to offer support with this.

If your franchise is B2B, the customers you are looking to target will likely be most active on LinkedIn. If you are looking to target younger, Gen Z customers, creating content and advertising on TikTok or Instagram will get you great results.

4. Create Engaging Content

The only way to build an audience on social media is to create content that customers will enjoy seeing and want to engage with. Again, the type of content that you create will depend on your audience and their interests.

However, short-form video content is very popular right now across all audiences and is great for engagement.

Follow Your Franchisors Branding and Marketing Plan

When running a franchise, you need to ensure that all your social media posts align with the recommendations provided by your franchisor along with the franchise’s official branding.

If you stray from the franchise branding and marketing guidelines, the franchisor may impose a penalty. The severity of the penalty will be outlined in your franchise agreement. To ensure consistency across your social media channels, take advantage of the support provided by the franchisor and ask plenty of questions about what is and isn’t recommended.

Work With a Franchise That Offers Marketing Support

Looking to start your franchise but are concerned about marketing it on social media? Consider franchising with a company like Gorilla Bins that offers extensive marketing support for franchisees.

Gorilla Bins is Ontario’s leading waste management business with several locations across the Greater Toronto Area.

We provide our franchisor operators with the marketing support they need to ensure their franchise is successful so they can focus on day-to-day operations. This includes sales consultations by industry experts.