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 cycle "How to organize local digital marketing for 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 retail chains faced a common problem: the lack of resources and time at headquarters to manage local marketing and communications for points of sale.
Since March 2020, departments in charge of digital marketing for points of sale in their network have had to continuously update data for all establishments simultaneously: changes in hours, availability of services, 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 franchisees in this daily management. Who better than franchisees to communicate on 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
The headquarters must determine the degree of decentralization of its local digital marketing. This involves defining which actions franchisees are responsible for, on which channels and with what support from the headquarters. For example: updating hours and services, posting, responding to customer reviews,... on Google, Facebook, directories, GPS,...
In order to facilitate decentralization, it is essential to provide franchisees with a complete kit with everything they need to make things easier for them and make them autonomous.
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 way to ensure that the brand image is respected is to offer content galleries (images, publications, promotions, responses to reviews, ...) to its network.
In practice, with regard to posting, headquarters can make available a library of reusable templates for its franchisees, or let them have the freedom to create campaigns related to the current events of each of their establishments.
For the review management part, headquarters 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
In order to ensure respect for the brand image, while involving its network, the headquarters must train its points of sale, provide them with a complete kit with everything franchisees need to make things easier for them and make them autonomous. By properly preparing decentralization by training its network, we ensure that the local respects the guidelines and that there is uniformity among all establishments, particularly in communication, for example.
In practice: franchisors can organize conferences, webinars, share content and best practices with their network on a daily basis.
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