How to decentralize the digital marketing of a franchise network
The post-Covid context has accelerated the need to share local marketing management between headquarters and franchisees. Determining who does what, structuring tools and framing practices become key issues to avoid inconsistencies and streamline local communications. By relying on ready-to-use content and training, brands can decentralize effectively while preserving their image.
This is the second part of our series "How to organize local digital marketing of a franchise network?" in partnership with The Franchise Club.
In this article we will discuss how to organize decentralization between franchisees and franchisors.
A context that makes us rethink the way to organize daily marketing between franchisees and franchisors.
Why organize the decentralization of local digital marketing of a network?
With the arrival of covid, all the brand networks have been faced with a common issue: the lack of resources and time at the headquarters level to manage local marketing and communications of the points of sale.
Since March 2020, the departments responsible for digital marketing of the points of sale of their network must continuously update data for all establishments simultaneously: schedule changes, service availability, communication on health measures, etc ...
In parallel, the people responsible for this type of task are often on partial unemployment or overwhelmed with other urgent tasks and are sometimes unable to handle all these requests and updates on a daily basis.
Given the context, it is interesting to start involving the franchisees in this daily management. Who better than the franchisees to communicate about their local specificities?
The 3 key points to organize decentralization
Each network has its specificities and some already involve franchisees in some of the management of their local marketing and communications. Giving franchisees a free hand can also occasionally generate the respect of the brand image: wording of communications, type of images,... In most cases, establishment managers are not trained in these aspects and need a framework to undertake these actions.
1. Determine the degree of involvement
Le siège doit déterminer le degré de décentralisation de son marketing digital local. Il s'agit de définir de quelles actions les franchisés sont responsables, sur quels canaux et avec quel accompagnement de la part du siège. Par exemple : la mise à jour des horaires et services, la publication de post, la réponse aux avis clients,... sur Google, Facebook, annuaires, gps,...
Afin de faciliter la décentralisation il est important de fournir aux franchisés un kit complet avec tout ce dont ils ont besoin pour leur faciliter les choses et les rendre autonomes.
Management of information on local listings
The head office can provide a tool that centralizes the management of local listings. This way, franchisees can update the information of their points of sale (phone number, hours, addresses, etc.). This is particularly useful for regular and exceptional hours.
Response to customer reviews :
There are several ways to proceed:
- the head office takes care of responding to reviews
- franchisees do it in a personalized way and headquarters subsequently validates these responses
- The head office can also support its franchisees by providing a gallery of standard responses that cannot be customized
Post publication
The franchisor can let the franchisees create their own campaigns to publish on their local pages, or the headquarters can directly create templates for the franchisees to reuse on their pages, depending on local news.
2. Prepare content galleries
The best façon to guarantee respect for the l'brand image is to offer content galleries (images, publications, promotions, réponse to reviews, ...) à its réseau.
In practice, regarding the post publication, the siège can make available a bibliothèque of template réutilisable by its franchisés, or let them have the control so that qu’eux même can créer campaigns linked to l’actualité of each of their établissement.
For the part review management, the platform can provide a library of generic responses to help the person respond easily while respecting the brand's tone of voice and avoiding any awkwardness.
3. Train your network
To ensure the brand's image is respected, while involving its réseau, the siège must train its points of sale, provide them with a complete kit with everything the franchisés need to make things easier for them and make them autonomous. By properly preparing the décentralisation by training its réseau, we s’ensure that the local respects the guidelines and that there is uniformité among all the établissements, especially in communication for example.
In practice: franchisors can organize conférences, webinars, share content and best practices à their réseau daily.
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