Local Vs. National FranDev Marketing

Today, successful franchise development marketing is about utilizing data and digital assets to create a localized, yet national campaign.

In the past, the national marketing process was centered around buying space in franchise trades and business trades — such as Entrepreneur Magazine — and creating a blanket ad campaign for the whole country. This would hopefully drive awareness and bring prospects from all over the country to the brand’s development website.

Local marketing, on the other hand, used to be more of a hyper-local strategy in which brands would buy local newspaper ads or reach out to a chamber of commerce to help find an ideal buyer in a certain community.

In today’s sophisticated digital world, franchisors can get very specific when it comes to the markets they are trying to expand into. So, they deploy the majority of their franchise development marketing budget into those local markets all across the country. In this way, brands can launch a national marketing campaign that’s localized to specific target markets.

This is especially effective in markets that have already proven to be successful — franchisors can work in concentric circles, taking successful franchisees and maximizing their stories to drive more expansion in that individual market.

Localized marketing strategy

How Brands Can Leverage Local and National Marketing to Win

With this localized-national marketing strategy in mind, franchisors can start building out their digital assets accordingly. For example, in the world of franchise development websites, franchisors can specifically build out a whole landing page centered around the franchise opportunities and territory availability in Chicago. Then, when a prospect in Chicago visits the franchise development website, they will connect personally with the opportunity and feel confident that they are the right person for the job.

While there’s no one equation that works for every brand, a combination of 75% localized marketing and 25% national/credibility-based marketing is a good rule of thumb to follow. That will help guide you in deploying an optimized balance between national and local marketing budgets.

Implementation checklist

Checklist:

• Identify markets where a brand is trying to expand or where a brand has proven to be successful.

• Create digital assets, such as designated landing pages and franchisee validation content, based on those individual markets.

• Deploy 75% of the franchise development marketing budget towards driving awareness in those markets through PR, social media, digital content marketing, etc.

• Deploy the remaining 25% on generating national, credibility-boosting marketing.

• Dig deep into the results of the localized national campaign to gain insights on what stories and methods had the greatest impact.

While the distinction between national and local marketing has become blurred, a combination of 75% localized marketing and 25% national/credibility-based marketing is a solid rule.