It's Time to Democratize Franchise Advertising

Franchisees shouldn't have to call an agency or become a marketing expert to benefit from sophisticated digital marketing.

In a data-driven, digital era, mastering franchise digital advertising is only getting more challenging. Franchisees need to reach local consumers on more channels. To support your franchisees’ local store marketing efforts, sophisticated advertising needs to be democratized for the individual store. 

What does that mean, and why does it matter? Here are the 5 keys to democratize advertising for franchisees.

Make all marketing transparent

Franchisees often lack reporting to see how their Ad Fund contribution is coming back to their market and driving ROI specifically for their store. On the other hand, when franchisees spend on their own for local store marketing, brand teams need to see everything in one place - across all channels. The first step to democratize advertising for franchisees is to execute ad fund advertising with per-location budgets in an equitable way and create dashboards for all parties to see results per location. 

Make local store marketing streamlined

Franchisees who spend their own marketing dollars are often saddled with too many decisions to make, or hoops to jump through. To start their individual marketing, they’re often required to go through an approval process or meet with an approved local agency. Both processes have led franchisees to give up on digital marketing. Franchisees shouldn't have to call an agency or become a marketing expert to benefit from sophisticated digital marketing. Your brand team can now leverage technology to help streamline brand-directed advertising to franchisees.

Make more channels more accessible

Often franchisees aren’t permitted to advertise on specific channels for fear of cannibalization by brand advertising, or frequency capping issues when hitting consumers too many times. Some channels may simply be too expensive, given high spend requirements. However, franchisees need to engage customers on the most powerful channels, whether executed by the brand team or with local budgets. Multi-location marketing platforms can help make sure brand advertising and local advertising don’t compete so you can open up more channels for franchisees.

Make marketing understandable

Franchisees are not marketing experts, in most cases. They typically don’t care about marketing digital marketing metrics like CPMs or even ROAS. Franchisees want to understand what to expect from any given marketing campaign and also understand how it’s helping their business, specifically. Look to provide campaign-specific education and a single dashboard to view results measured by per-location business outcomes (like sales or average check value).

Make marketing affordable

Every franchisee should be able to afford sophisticated local advertising strategies for it to be truly democratized. Oftentimes fees and spend requirements make it unaffordable, and leaves many franchisees to sit on the sidelines when it comes to digital advertising. 

Delivering locally impactful brand marketing will look different from brand to brand. Some franchise brands will leverage technology to ensure Ad Fund marketing is customized per location. Others will rely more heavily on franchisees to spend their own local budgets in their communities. Many rely on both. In all cases, brands that successfully democratize sophisticated digital advertising will put their franchisees, and their entire system, in the best position to win the battle for local customers.

Want to learn more about our platform to help democratize and streamline franchise digital advertising?