For any franchise to succeed, it’s crucial to attract as many high-quality leads as possible. With the right approach to franchise lead generation, you can connect with the right audiences and bring them through the sales funnel.
Here, Ignite Visibility’s Director of Franchisee Sales & Marketing, Mark Hite, will review some of the best franchise lead generation strategies to help your brand stand out and help you grow your business.
What’s Covered
- What Is Franchise Lead Generation?
- Strategy #1: Utilizing LinkedIn’s Advanced Targeting Capabilities
- Strategy #2: Hyperlocal Paid Ads for Regional Targeting
- Strategy #3: Hosting Virtual Franchise Discovery Days
- Strategy #4: SEO-Optimized Lead Magnets for Franchise Investor
- Strategy #5: Using AI and Predictive Analytics for Targeting
Our Expert Insights on Franchise Lead Generation
To succeed in the long term as a franchise, you must know how to generate franchise leads the right way.
Connecting locally with your target franchise prospects is essential. By leveraging platforms like LinkedIn and coordinating your franchise lead generation strategy with your franchisees, you can acquire more qualified leads and effectively grow your network.
Action Item: Implement a combination of highly targeted franchise marketing strategies to connect with potential franchisees at the right time and in the right places. With proper management, these strategies will help you outperform competitors and expand your franchise network on both a national and local level.
What Is Franchise Lead Generation?
Franchise lead generation involves getting more potential customers into the sales funnel to convert. To get the most from these efforts, you must take a targeted approach and understand how to effectively reach audiences who are most likely to convert.
Of course, you may wonder, “Who generates leads in a franchise?” Do franchisees generate their own leads, or do they rely on the support of the franchisor? The answer is a blend of franchisors and franchisees.
While franchisors ensure all marketing strategies are aligned and streamlined to meet the brand’s overarching goals and work to connect with potential franchisees, franchisees will be responsible for helping grow each branch of the franchise in its respective location.
In other words, franchisors often perceive franchisees as leads, while for franchisees, leads are end customers.
Through a collaborative effort, franchisors and franchisees can work together to optimize franchise sales lead generation.
Strategy #1: Utilizing LinkedIn’s Advanced Targeting Capabilities
LinkedIn remains one of the best B2B social media marketing platforms for franchises to connect with franchisee leads. Using LinkedIn for franchise lead generation can be cost-effective and highly targeted to acquire new prospective franchisees at every stage of their journey.
Your LinkedIn franchise lead generation strategies should involve organic posts along with precision-targeted ads. Posts could help you connect with new leads as you promote new locations or opportunities. Cultivate new connections with prospects who fit specific criteria like title, experience, geography, etc., and then create automated messaging to nurture contacts until they are interested in scheduling a call.
You should also be running LinkedIn ads simultaneously, since they are high quality, low volume and high cost. LinkedIn Ads allow you to easily select the audience you want to target based on various attributes, including company, job title, industry, and skillsets. The key is to connect with every lead you generate.
Additionally, you can retarget existing audiences with “Matched Audiences,” which can help you reach people who’ve engaged with your brand without converting. As these prospective franchisees come to recognize and trust your brand, they’ll be more likely to convert with future ads.
The average conversion rate on LinkedIn is particularly high at 3-5%, and audiences on this platform have twice the buying power of the average audience. These and other advantages make LinkedIn a critical opportunity for targeted franchise ad campaigns. Combined with LinkedIn lead gen forms and high-quality ad media, ads on this platform can easily convert more qualified prospects.
Strategy #2: Paid Ads for Regional Targeting
If you want to learn how to generate franchise leads, you need to make effective use of paid media. The pool of potential investors in the franchise development world is already very small. You want to target all states where a franchise can sell and identify target markets to push extra budgets to.
There are different types of paid ads, including:
- Search Ads: These are paid ads that appear as “sponsored” results in search engines, potentially getting more traffic than their organic counterparts while appearing at the top of search engines.
- Display Ads: In addition, platforms like Google Ads allow you to develop visual ads for your franchise lead generation strategy, including images and videos that appear on various websites or in streaming services.
Use AI Tools to Assist With Targeting
To excel with your ads for franchise sales lead generation, consider implementing some of the most popular AI tools available. For example, tools like BrightLocal and Local Falcon use AI to pinpoint specific demographics, locally targeted keywords, and competitive data that can hyper-target your ads.
Monitor the Geo-Grid View
Regardless of the platforms you use to run your ad campaigns, be sure to regularly track ad performance based on location. You might discover that there are certain “hot spots” with plenty of franchisee and customer acquisition opportunities, while others might be more difficult to target and require adjustments to your campaigns.
Measure metrics like impressions, views, click-through rates, and conversion rates to gauge your ads’ effectiveness for franchise lead generation. Based on the insights you gather and how they measure against your goals, you can determine how to continually improve your campaigns to perfection.
Strategy #3: Hosting Virtual Franchise Discovery Days
Discovery Days are essential for franchisors to connect with potential franchisees. They’re a great way to help franchisors and franchisees determine if they’re a good fit, and it’s possible to host in-person or virtual meetings.
Virtual Discovery Days are particularly popular among both, as they can give franchisees the introduction they need at their convenience while also saving franchisors a lot of money in the process. In-person Discovery Days could require hotels, airfare, meals, and other costs along with valuable time that you and your team could direct toward other tasks.
The key is knowing how to host the perfect virtual Discovery Day to connect with your franchisees.
The following are some interactive ways to go about this:
- Organize virtual tours that can present prospective franchisees with behind-the-scenes footage of your team and franchise at work.
- Host live Q&A sessions that help answer any questions that a potential franchisee may have.
- Share success stories and highlight testimonials from satisfied franchisees, which can greatly influence franchisees and boost franchise sales lead generation.
Take these opportunities to really put potential franchisees in the shoes of a franchise owner, enabling them to envision themselves as a part of your organization.
Strategy #4: SEO-Optimized Lead Magnets for Franchise Investors
Search engine optimization (SEO) is another critical element of franchise lead generation strategies. In addition to optimizing your website with on-page SEO elements and other tactics, you’ll benefit from optimized lead magnets.
Lead magnets are exactly what they sound like: They’re designed to get the right leads with the right strategy. Some of the most popular lead magnets for franchises include eBooks, checklists, and other long-form content that really gives franchisees a sense of what your company is all about.
These materials will include keyword optimization, links, and other SEO components to appear for broad and local searches on Google, supplementing paid ads and other parts of your franchise lead generation strategy.
Tips for Optimizing Lead Magnets
There are many ways to optimize your lead magnets to appear in search results, such as:
- Including relevant and high-volume industry keywords like “franchising opportunities in [location]” and “how to start as a franchisee”
- Getting backlinks to your lead magnets from other authoritative sites in your industry
- Including links to other content on your website to help with interlinking
- Optimizing images and video content appearing in your lead magnet, including alt text that indicates what’s in the image to appear in search results
With good optimization, your lead magnets will increase organic traffic from Google, Bing, and other search engines while directly bringing people into the sales funnel for follow-up.
Ultimately, if you’re figuring out how to generate leads for a franchise, lead magnets will likely take top priority in your SEO branch.
Strategy #5: Using AI and Predictive Analytics for Targeting
To help hone your targeting, you can use AI and predictive analysis to gain a deeper understanding of your audiences.
AI tools can look at existing franchisee data to determine what makes for a good franchisee in your company or in a certain area. Based on certain characteristics, including sales and overall customer satisfaction, you can see who’s most likely to be a good fit for your brand.
For example, HubSpot, Salesforce, and other platforms can track lead behavior, letting you know which leads are most likely to convert. These tools can also generate content and conversational chatbots that can help you both capture and nurture high-value leads.
Remember, it’s always best to focus on high-intent leads who are most likely to convert, which will help you make the most of your available marketing budget.
High-intent leads tend to:
- Actively engage with your website to learn more about your brand and how your franchise works, often visiting many informational pages
- Download lead magnets like eBooks and other educational content
- Have buying power
- Have a deep understanding of your brand and an appreciation for it
Work With Ignite Visibility for Effective Franchise Lead Generation
Now that you know more about how to generate leads for a franchise with your marketing, you might want some help to drive real success. Ignite Visibility has plenty of experience with franchise development, with 85 franchise clients spread across more than 2,000 locations.
We can work with you to incorporate each of the following items in a comprehensive franchise lead generation strategy:
- LinkedIn advertising and other social media strategies
- Precise geo-targeted paid ads
- SEO-optimized website content and lead magnets
- High-quality videos and other Discovery Day content
- In-depth analytics and reporting to help with future campaigns
If you like this idea, get in touch with us today, and we’ll connect you with one of our franchise marketing experts.
