Franchise Marketing Review: David Sparks Talks PPC Trends to Watch in 2021 and Beyond

Paid online advertising is changing, and Brand Journalists can lead you through it

At Brand Journalists, we spend a lot of time following the trends and changes in pay-per-click technology and practices, or PPC as it’s called, and I have to tell you, it’s been a year.  Paid online advertising is changing rapidly, and the changes we’re seeing aren’t necessarily the best news for an industry already reeling from the pandemic.

pay per click advertising graphic

After the year franchising had in responding to, coping to, adjusting to, and recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, it almost seems like things are getting back to normal. The challenges our industry faced were staggering on multiple fronts.

Not only did franchisors have to radically transform the manner in which their franchisees delivered goods or services, but they also had to bear tremendous expenses associated with internal responses to the pandemic, and they did this while suffering staggering shortfalls in royalty revenue in almost every franchising sector. All the while, franchising itself became a lynchpin of the economy.

So at a time when PPC advertising is more vital than ever, it’s important that you understand the changes that are happening in it and how you can maximize the impact of the dollars you invest, one mouse click at a time. Here are the big trends I’m seeing in PPC and how they’ll impact your sales.

Google is changing the kinds of data you can get

It used to be that you’d go to Google or Facebook, input some demographic goals and run your campaign. You knew who you were targeting down to their age, their gender, their street address, their income level.

We’ll call those “the good ol’ days” from now on.

That’s because Google made a major change in its privacy and security policies that will tremendously restrict the kind of information you can access from search queries. At the same time, the power of tracking cookies has been nearly wiped out.

That’s the bad news.

The good news, though, is Google has greatly expanded access to data in the Google Ad Hub, and it will still be possible to create targeted ads. But the strategies will have to change, as it will become increasingly difficult to know the browsing habits of the individuals moving from site to site to site.

Diversification will expand your reach – and maybe save you some money

With the changes over at Google, other advertising platforms and the web sites that rely on the revenues they receive from those platforms are trying to fill the gap. Put simply, I think Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook are all about to have a field day.

That means you’ll need to diversify where you’re spending your PPC budget. The changes at Google will mean big opportunities for competing platforms to lower prices, improve engagement and conversions, and place a lot more ads.

Over the coming months, I anticipate we’ll see a lot of discussions about conversion rates and which platform performs the best. And, I expect we’ll notice some significant cost savings in the price per click, too.

A renewed focus on mobile advertising will drive strategy

Don’t get me wrong. Mobile browsing is already the “where it’s at” of online marketing. But in the past, it’s been mostly driven by two PPC channels: Google and Facebook. We’ve already talked about Google and how changes there will mean developing new strategies. But what about Facebook?

You probably read earlier this year about the court case Facebook fought (and lost) against Apple over the proposed “opt out” feature to be built into iOS. Well, that feature went live and is now the standard on more than half of all smart phones in the world, which means Facebook ads won’t generate the targeted, intensely personalized placement of the past.

That’s where audience targets will become a critical component. Previously, PPC ads on social media relied on cross-browser tracking to provide “people interested in hamburger joints” with that hot new ad from the burger franchise. A new focus on developing tightly honed persona marketing identities will be necessary if you want to keep prospects clicking away on those banner ads, especially considering our final big trend of 2021.

Automation strategy is more important than ever before

Remember those “good ol’ days?” The ones with a bunch of data and the ability to build ads for “people interested in hamburger joints?”

When that was the norm, we were able to build a campaign based solely on a few key words and the demographics we hoped to target. We were able to rely on Facebook or the other cross-platform tracking systems to say, “Hey, this person searched for how to start a burger joint. They may like this ad from your franchise. Here it is!”

That’s not going to be the case anymore. The tracking pixel is pretty much dead, thanks in part to Apple and Google. Facebook can’t rely on its app on every mobile phone to track the users, either. This means you’ll need a new PPC strategy that focuses more on bidding strategy and persona marketing than in previous years.

The brave new world is exciting, but it’s not scary

There’s always going to be a give and take between privacy of users and the value of advertising data in the online advertising space. Having a PPC strategy that addresses this flow is vital to saving you time, money, and missed opportunities.

At Brand Journalists, we’re innovating every day to make sure we’re delivering quality leads from ads that work. Whether it’s Facebook, Google, or some other platform that hasn’t been invented yet, we’re on the forefront.

And if all the privacy changes mean our news feed won’t get cluttered with ads for Alpo the next time we say to a friend that food truck taco we just ate tasted like dog food, then the extra time it takes to get the ads right will have been worth it.

The Conversational Marketing Revolution

How conversational marketing is transforming the sales automation process – one customer at a time

As franchise sites increase information density to previously unimaginable levels, it’s now more important than ever to help potential leads to find the information they need quickly. Enter Conversational Marketing, that helpful little chat window that pops up to offer assistance to visitors.

conversational marketing graphic

Whether it’s a live chat agent or an AI-driven chatbot on the other side of that pop-up, this interaction marks the first “real time” experience your customer will have with your brand. It’s also a moment that can make or break their experience.

To understand why conversational marketing is so important to both the sales automation process and to franchise lead generation, you have to first think about the sales process and how technology is changing the way buyers make decisions.

Traditional sales funnels are still important, but so is how customers find information

Sometimes, it’s hard for me to avoid falling into an “old way/new way” mode of thinking. The old way of franchise sales was finding a prospect through a web form, sending them a barrage of information, and then scheduling a phone call to walk them through the information you just sent them.

That information – the sales funnel – provided them with an overview of the franchise concept, a breakdown of basic costs, what resources the franchisor made available to franchisees, franchise support options, and so on. During that initial phone call, it was easy for a good salesperson to hone in on the prospect’s most pertinent questions and to craft answers that overcame any objections.

To be clear, all of the information included in a typical sales funnel is still vital to the sales automation process. However, as any seasoned sales pro will tell you, not every lead has the same questions. What’s important to one individual may well be irrelevant to the next.

Unfortunately, too many franchise concepts still rely on a rigid sales funnel with very little interaction other than to lead a potential buyer through every step, whether that step is relevant or not. Ask yourself how many irrelevant steps you’re willing to go through to get to the information you need to decide you want to pursue a purchase. Two? Three? Five?

Conversational marketing is changing the traditional sales funnel by blowing it up completely. Here’s how it works.

Conversational Marketing can transform the sales funnel into a sales driver

In the traditional franchise sales process, it was the sales associate’s job to divine a potential lead’s questions and then provide answers. This interaction took place on trade show floors and over the phone. Today, that initial job falls almost wholly to the brand’s web site through sales automation.

conversational marketing

But franchise sites are information-dense, and not all potential buyers want to wade through every detail. They want immediate access to the answers they need to assess their decision.

For some sites, a simple search suffices. However, the cold, impersonal search box doesn’t necessarily provide your visitor with the personal touch they are looking for. Conversational marketing tools like live chat can deliver precisely the information they want when they want it.

Think of conversational marketing like a well-organized card catalog of answers to questions, and your friendly chat representative is the knowledgeable reference librarian, ready to pluck the answer out of the ether. Here’s an example of a conversational marketing exchange on a franchise web site:

Chat Agent: Hello! Welcome to our web site. How can I help you find what you’re looking for?

User: I am wondering how much it costs to open a franchise.

Chat Agent: Great. Happy to help. Here is a breakdown of franchise costs. (LINK)

When the user clicks the link, they’re taken to the appropriate page in the research funnel. Here is where the process gets very interesting: they’re not visiting that page alone. The moment it loads, their friendly chat agent is still there to answer any questions.

Chat Agent: Is this the information you’re looking for?

User: Could you tell me the franchise fee?

Chat Agent: Yes. As you can see, the franchise fee is $49,995

Now that your visitor has the specific answer they’re looking for, they’ll move on to their next question. And then the next, and the next. They’re navigating the research funnel, but they’re doing so on their own terms, with a handy guide down there in the bottom of their browser window.

Conversational marketing means constant access, but it doesn’t mean constant staffing

Few franchises (if any!) could afford to staff a chat function on a web site 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Fortunately, they don’t have to do so thanks to incredible advancements in artificial intelligence systems.

conversational marketing

When you hear “chat bot,” you probably think of an anthropomorphized paperclip harping at you to “Click if this is what you’re looking for.” That’s hardly what I’m speaking of today when I say conversational marketing.

With recent technological developments, “chat bots” are almost indistinguishable from an actual person sitting on the other side of the computer. From the user’s perspective, they’re interacting with a person and personality. The best systems even have senses of humor and empathy and can respond to users’ jokes or comments appropriately.

User: I’m having a really hard time finding out how many franchise locations you have.

Chat Agent: I’m so sorry. Let me help you out.

Chat Agent: Here is a list of current locations from our FDD. (LINK)

User: Thanks!

An interaction as simple as offering an apology and then assistance can transform the potential lead’s experience. Even better, if the chat agent cannot adequately address their question, the agent is prepared to convert them into a sales lead on the spot.

Chat Agent: You know, it might be better if I have one of my sales team reach out to you. Can you give me an email address or phone number where you can be reached?

User: Sure. dsparks@brandj.com

Chat Agent: Great! I’ll have someone get in touch with you soon. Is there anything else I can do to help?

And just like that, you’re on the phone or emailing with a new lead for your franchise company, all thanks to conversational marketing.

Transform your sales into a buying process

Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of conversational marketing and sales automation is that it transforms your company’s marketing experience from a sales process into a buying process. By shifting focus from your franchise opportunity and to your buyer, you’re meeting them where they are, placing them in the driver’s seat of the process, and guiding them to the information they need.

For something as transformative as this technology can be, it’s remarkably affordable, as well. There is a conversational marketing and sales automation process suitable for franchise concepts of any size.

At Brand Journalists, we’ve employed conversational marketing tools for international franchise brands and new startups alike. In each case, these systems have produced remarkable results.

So whether you’re a small, scrappy upstart with a core team bootstrapping the next big thing in franchising or a household name, transform your sales process into a buying process with conversational marketing. You’ll be surprised at the results.

Want to talk about how to incorporate conversational marketing into your franchise development strategy?

If your franchise opportunity is ready to employ conversational marketing tactics on your development site, Brand Journalists can help. Contact us today to see how we can help you employ quality video production to tell your brand story.

Thomas Scott and Brett Larrabee Share the Top 5 Qualities to Expect in a Franchise Recruiter 

 

Check out the full transcript here:

CEO and Founder of Brand Journalists is joined by franchise recruitment expert, Brett Larrabee, on the What The Franchise Podcast to share the top 5 qualities all franchise sales professionals must possess.

Scott and Larrabee share laughs, wisdom and personal experiences explaining why successful franchise recruiters are curious, enthusiastic, positive, urgent, disciplined and natural-born storytellers.

Check out their full conversation below:

Thomas Scott: Brett, thanks for joining us today, it is really good to have you on the call. I enjoy talking to you on a regular basis and I think other people really enjoy listening to you as well.

What is the core problem with recruiters today? Why in our industry is there such a dilemma around finding good recruiters, and why do so many recruiters and so many owners of franchise systems, and CEOs struggle to get recruitment results?

Brett Larrabee: Well, look, there’s a lot of great salespeople out there. But, selling a franchise is not only a high ticket investment, but it’s a lifestyle investment. It’s something that is turning the ship not only for the person who is buying it, but typically their entire family. So, the decision process is one that people are challenged with.

They’re coming to franchise salespeople for a solution in their life, and the franchise salesperson is somehow looking at this as them going through the franchisor’s process or their sales process. Increasingly with COVID and everything that’s gone on over the past, even two years, people are resistant to working within the lines of a brand’s process. The pushback of that would be that this is franchising and there are rules. If somebody’s not willing to work within the lines, maybe they wouldn’t be a great franchisee.

I would argue that buying a franchise has a lot of resistant currents to it. There’s a lot of things that are pushing against people to in fact, not buy. Not just fear of failure, but fear of change. Other voices coming at them for different reasons, and you need to be able to really understand that person’s buying dilemma. Their challenges and what’s in their head. Because at the end of the day, there really isn’t franchise selling. There’s only franchise buying. That’s the only way anything happens in this business.

Somebody that buys may in fact be a great franchisee and will work within your system and work within your lines. But, getting them to the point of buying is a bit of an art and science that’s learned over a period of years. The challenge is that a lot of these sales people come in and force people into a rigid process, or they force them into their sales mantra, giving them their information and really talking over or through the franchise prospect in a way that they lose interest. The franchise prospect is looking to solve an individual problem, and if you’re not willing to get to know that person on the individual basis, and understanding what their needs are and how to solve those needs, you’re never going to be a great franchise development person. In fact, you’re going to burn a lot of money in lead generation, in time, in payroll, and the frustrating thing for franchisors is that they see people following the supposed rules of the franchise sales process, but they are not getting the results that they demand to move their business forward. That just costs a lot of money. It costs a lot of time that you can’t get back.

The best part about this is that there’s a solve for all of this. You can actually do better if you choose to do better. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of legacy people in this business that are resistant to change, and to looking at the franchise development process in a pragmatic way in order to move their business forward.

Thomas Scott: Yeah I would agree. You know if you had 100 qualified candidates come through any kind of franchise recruitment website or through any lead source, we would generally say that 5% or 6% of the 100, are probably closable people. People that could, with the right skill, management and attention to detail, could actually buy the franchise, and buy it for the right reasons. It’s a good fit for them and what their goals are. What we see is that most franchise recruiters kill 90% of their closable deals. Even a good one chews through.

Brett you and I were talking a year or two back, and I needed to make a change in my internal franchise sales staff, and I made a change. Through a lot of conversation we came up with a list of the five really important qualities that really make a difference for franchise recruiters. And we’re going to go through this list one-by-one here. But, I think this is an important list to have if you’re trying to evaluate where you have a breakdown with the person at point on your franchise recruitment. Whether it’s you or somebody that works for you, or you’re trying to recruit somebody new – hire for these five things. These five things are what are an essential piece of what it takes to get a positive result today. If you’re missing any or all of these, that person is going to underperform and you’ll spend $200,000 on advertising and wonder why you don’t have much to show for it. It’s almost never a lead issue. It’s almost always the person on point. Their skills, attitude or their whole orientation to how to recruit somebody and help them make a good decision.

So let’s start with number one. This was just one of your issues, and I want to hear you explain this. The person has to have an innate sense of curiosity. What does that mean when you say that?

Brett Larrabee: Well, if you’ve ever been in a conversation with somebody that knows everything and talks over every piece of the puzzle back and forth, and doesn’t let you add your two cents and, and really is trying to solve for x without any input from you.

Sales is about listening. Oftentimes the less you talk as a salesperson, the more you win. Being able to understand other people is really based in this idea of curiosity. If I’m curious, and I really want to understand why did you come up with the idea of calling me, or coming to our franchise organization as a possibility for changing your business life, that’s a big question. It’s a big question to know, what is it that you enjoy? What is your family into? What do you do? What is it that you’ve done in the past that brings you to this place? Really asked questions not just to build a relationship, but to really understand the prospect. This idea of curiosity is not something everybody’s born with, and I don’t think it’s something that everybody has.

A lot of people are great at talking. But they’re not great at listening, because everybody actually just loves to hear their own voice. The truth is that the more you can get the franchise prospect to talk about themself, the more they’re going to talk themselves into this idea that you have as a franchisor. I find that ultimately nobody wants to be sold. They just don’t. It’s a repugnant idea.

So, you really want this idea to become their idea. That’s your job. Your job as a salesperson is to understand them, and give them the roadmap, so that they can make this their idea and find the finish line for themselves. It’s a much more successful process.

Thomas Scott: I went to school for journalism and was a newspaper person in my early adult career. Curiosity is really important. If you’re going to be a journalist, you have to have an innate sense of curiosity to learn about the world around you.

When it comes to the relationship with a prospect who you’re just meeting for the first time, and  you have a franchise recruiter who walks away from an hour long call, and they really don’t know much about the person, it’s probably because they lack curiosity.

Somebody with innate curiosity wants to know the story behind somebody. They’re like “Tell me how did you get here? What do you do for a living? Do you have kids? Where do you live? Where’d you go to school? What’s your career? Walk me through your career.” Then you start talking and you find common ground. You’re not asking those questions, because you have to if you have innate curiosity. It’s a reflexive, innate quality that just happens. You can’t connect with somebody in a real, meaningful and authentic way if you don’t have a sense of curiosity. That just means simply asking questions. You can teach yourself to be more curious by training yourself to ask better questions in a certain sequence in order to really probe and uncover. You know, in journalism, they say you have to ask the same question five different ways to get to the root answer, because people will often tell you a surface answer. Then you ask it again and it gets deeper and deeper, until you get down to the real kind of core of the issue when you ask it.

A franchise recruiter, somebody who’s selling, it’s a very difficult thing to recruit for. It takes years to master. It’s a very long sales cycle. There are 10,000 things that can go wrong to keep a deal from happening, but curiosity is where the real relationship starts.

Brett Larrabee: Absolutely. When you think about the most important people in your life, they’re the ones that are concerned about YOU. They’re the ones that listen to YOU. They’re not the ones that preach at you. They’re the ones that actually help you think through your life strategy by asking you questions, by compelling you to think for yourself, not telling you how to think, but giving you the opportunity to empower yourself to move forward.

Thomas Scott: I mean, yeah. This is a good example, every time I see you, or we talk, I ask how Ulga, your Ukrainian wife is doing, and whether or not you have any plates in your kitchen, because she’s famous for breaking all the plates in your kitchen then she gets mad at you. Which is a fascinating story. I know that because I’ve asked you questions about it. I’m really innately curious about how much chinaware you have in the cabinets at your house, because I find it really entertaining to hear that story.

Brett Larrabee: We’re not quite down to paper plates yet, but we’re getting there.

Thomas Scott: But that’s a good example. If you get that kind of real, meaningful connection with somebody, that’s the basis of a relationship, and that comes from curiosity. What we really mean is that if you have a salesperson who naturally asks a lot of questions, they’re going to be more successful than somebody who doesn’t.

A person who doesn’t innately want to learn more about a person, ask questions, and that is reserved and doesn’t like people asking them questions, that person is not going to be as successful as the person that asks questions. It’s just a fact.

So when you’re looking for someone count the number of questions they asked you in the interview. That is a great place to start and gauge: is this person curious or not. Another is what would they have learned? You can ask them “what did you learn from our meeting? Tell me three things you’ve learned, like unique things about me, my background and my company.

Number two is, (and we’ve worked with so many recruiters who are not good at this), but is positive energy. Like somebody who has a high level of enthusiasm. You have to, have to, have to be a highly enthusiastic person to be successful. For any length of time in franchise recruitment.

Brett Larrabee: Oh, absolutely. Here’s the reality. We all have people in our life that bring energy to our everyday experience. Then we have those people that drain us. And some of those people that drain us, they don’t even need to say a word. Their negativity just just zaps our energy and doesn’t allow us to move forward.

Thomas Scott: Like Eeyore on Winnie the Pooh.

Brett Larrabee: Kind of like Eeyore. But Eeyore is the most positive example of a negative person. There’s much worse than even Eeyore.

Thomas Scott: And the franchise industry is full of them.

Brett Larrabee: Yeah. And I think the reality is that some people are just not into what they do. It’s not their wheelhouse. They’re doing it because it’s a job, or they want to make that next commission. And that is all the wrong reason. A sense of enthusiasm has less to do with an artificial peppiness and more to do with this desire to help people. To actually provide something beneficial to another person, and there’s a lot of books written on this.

One I think is called the “Go Give”, I can’t remember if it is “Go Give” or “Go Getter,” but the reality is you have to give more than you get. In order to build a life and a business successfully, you have to be able to provide other people some benefit. Even if you just give some information, some enthusiasm, a relationship, or a sense of friendship. The way I look at this is over the 35 years I’ve done this, a lot of people communicate with me on an ongoing basis decades later. Not because they have to, but because they want to. There’s something about our relationship that is positively influenced. We’ve positively influenced each other. Maybe that’s the true currency of what we do in franchise development – is that sense of relationship and that sense of community that we build over time.

Thomas Scott: You know, it’s interesting, because the genesis of this list was me trying to add a new salesperson to my staff of outsourced sales people. I ended up hiring a hockey coach. He is a young, 30 year old who coach’s travel hockey. He was very interested in having a career in recruiting and sales, but was really a hockey player. So, he brought this like super high positive enthusiasm to his work, because that’s what a lot of athletes do. They can’t really be a competitive athlete without a high sense of positive outlook. People with negative outlooks lose. People with more positive outlooks have the mental fortitude to win most of the time, and they win because they’re positive. People are attracted to that and it’s a really strong quality. I think I’m just going to hire hockey people from now on, it’s been the best move I’ve ever made from a recruitment standpoint.

You know, the next thing on our list, which also kind of fits in with hockey is a high sense of urgency. You have to have somebody who is moving faster. At a very early point in my career, I was at an IFA super session where I listened to the head of franchise development for Hilton Hotels give a speech. Somebody stood up and said, “What are the qualities you look for when you hire a franchise recruiter or a salesperson?” He goes, “Well, I only asked one question.” Everyone was like “One question? That sounds ridiculous.” He says, “I ask if they have speeding tickets. I won’t hire someone if they don’t have speeding tickets.” People started laughing and he said “No, I’m really serious. Like, if you ask all the top performing salespeople in this room, if they have tickets, they’ll almost all have tickets. Those people are going a little faster than everybody else, and they’re so focused on the end result. They’re more results oriented. They get there quicker. They do more. They have a higher sense of urgency to accomplish the mission, whatever it is. I think that’s been true. I’ve seen salespeople that have no sense of urgency allow candidates to drift, and drift kills deals.

What do you think about that quality?

Brett Larrabee: Well, this is something interesting because a sense of urgency is not the negative connotation of “aggressive behavior.” It’s “assertive behavior.” It’s allowing yourself to move with a sense of purpose. To a certain extent, a lot of great salespeople aren’t even aware of this, because that’s just who they are as human beings. The difference between those that are great, and those that are maybe not as great, is the fact that they don’t understand that today is the day to move things forward, and tomorrow almost never comes.

So, when you have somebody in front of you that allows you to communicate with them, who allows you to enter their life and present a positive change, now is the time to create the roadmap to move forward. Now is the time to create the agenda. Not tomorrow. You may not be able to get back on the phone with this client tomorrow.

You know, hockey is a really good parallel for this. You have to move quickly in hockey in order to be where the puck is. The puck is not gonna come to you. I think this is something that is innate in sales, right? You kind of have to know where this conversation or this franchise development process is going. You need to move the client there. They’re not going to move there by themselves. They don’t know how to move there by themselves. A lot of these people haven’t bought a franchise before. They’re not sure how to navigate a FDD, or, navigate the process of going through the financing or the validation phase of your sales process. You really need to help them manifest that and move that forward. Some people need you to walk them through it step-by-step and side-by-side, and that is done with a sense of urgency. It is not done with a sense “Oh, here’s the process. If you’re willing to take the energy to do it yourself, then that will make you a great franchisee.” This idea of self selection is important, but you also need to be the teacher. The person who is providing that context for them to succeed. I think some of the best relationships I’ve had in life, are those people that reach out and say, “Hey Brett. I’m going to show you how to succeed at that.” I may think arrogantly, “I don’t really need that help.” But, I did and I appreciated it.

Thomas Scott: You know, in terms of a sense of urgency and when we tend to think about systems today, and in the work we do here at Brand Journalist, some systems have a culture of development. Some don’t.

When we say a system has a “culture of a development”, then that system, the whole system, all of the leadership oppositely from Ops, everybody, is committed to grow through development. It’s not an either or. It’s not like we’re going to choose development over driving same store sales and increasing positive franchise relationships. These systems are just committed to growing the brand through adding new units, training and supporting new owners and making them successful.

We’ll see systems, and we have seen this with our brands in Home Based Franchise Group, Dryer Vent Squad and Frost Shades, we have deals that close sometimes in three or four weeks from the point of new lead to closed deal. Sometimes it is three or four weeks, sometimes five weeks. I’ve heard you talk about some of the deals you do that are five week deals, even with Little Caesars sometimes. Big, expensive things. It’s the sense of urgency. You really can see, through enough franchise recruitment and enough brands, that there are people who close deals that have very short sales processes. Taheir sales processes are not shoddy. They’re really well thought out. They move people through. They answer questions. People make good decisions. It’s not that the prospects are slow.

Then there are systems where it takes six or nine months. Maybe they will close them, maybe they won’t. They make people hang around on the sidelines for months at a time for no particularly good reason. In that case, everybody lacks that sense of urgency. However, the recruiter is the principal person that drives that.

Brett Larrabee: Right! They are the driver of the bus. So many times the recruiter is placed in a predicament where they have to find, internal alignment, which is elusive, and they need to

get support from different departments, which doesn’t come quickly. Quite honestly, we’ve heard this time and again, that time kills deals. It really does.

Thomas Scott: It does.

Brett Larrabee: Those people that are willing to buy, are really willing to buy now.

Thomas Scott: Now, not tomorrow.

Brett Larrabee: Not later. I’m not saying that you should hurry somebody through the process, or push them through this process. But, you should definitely assertively work to move things forward. Because without that sense of urgency the process lacks energy and it dies on the vine. There’s a lot of competing ideas during a franchise sales process. There’s a lot of personal things that happen in people’s lives that are good, bad and indifferent. You compete with that. Plus, the person that’s looking at your franchise is also looking at a number of other ideas. Your idea has to have the most energy. It has to have the most enthusiasm. It needs to be compelling. It needs to be a life choice of positive association. That is the best way I can explain it. Where you actually want to hang out with these people, because these people are the ones that are most interested in you. That is how you believe in something.

Thomas Scott: You know, you’ll hear people talk about dating and marriage analogies when they’re talking about franchise recruitment to underscore for people to understand the types of relationships that we have.

If you were dating someone, when you were younger, you got excited over the enthusiasm and the positivity of it. You wouldn’t just have one conversation or text a week. You would probably have a couple of conversations the first day, one or two the next day, there would be text messages as it gets its footing. With a franchise it’s not like: Hey, we’re gonna have our first call on this date and I’m going to send you my LinkedIn profile so you could maybe look over it, before we talk next week sometime. That’s ridiculous. Nobody would do that. But that’s the way we handle these people. The truth is, when someone is starting a business, the relationship with their recruiter, if that person is doing a good job, and I see this in my own staff when they get a really good prospect and they get footing, meaning that they’re aligned, and there’s transparency, authenticity, energy and optimism, they’re having four, five or six calls in that week and then another four, five or six and it just moves really fast. It’s not moving fast to your point because they’re pushing them, it is moving fast because it’s a natural progression of human nature. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. Then the next person in the queue, the second salesperson comes along and they’ll have one conversation and I’ll ask them three days later, “what happened with Joe Smith?” And they will say, “Yeah, I need to call him back.” That’s a deal that the salesperson killed.

Brett Larrabee: Yeah. I think there’s this battle between courteous professionalism and those development people who understand the need to get from like, to love quickly.

Thomas Scott: Right!

Brett Larrabee: Those may be corny words to a lot of people. But…

Thomas Scott: You look like the kind of guy that would get to love pretty quickly.

Brett Larrabee: Hahaha. You only want to do business, or you only want to hang out in life with people that you love. You know? Maybe that’s corny, but that’s real.

Thomas Scott: It’s real.

Brett Larrabee: I’m not gonna write a check for $40,000, $50,000 or $100,000 to somebody that I’m not even sure I like. You know, maybe they’re professional. Maybe they have all the great details. But how many times have you gotten all of the facts or the instruction book, but you can’t read it because it’s boring, or it’s not interesting. It doesn’t compel you to comply with its messaging.

Thomas Scott: Right, so messaging is a good segue into the number four kind of thing that we think is mission critical for a recruiter. I would call that storytelling. It is the next thing you would say to somebody to help articulate their future. But the ability of a franchise recruiter to leverage stories and to talk in the form of story format, again coming from a journalism background, stories are the way humans communicate. The stories are the way we make sense of the world around us. They’re how we relate to one another. They’re how you make decisions in life. Stories have a way of helping us orient to ideas. Just like when somebody meets you, and they learn that your wife likes to break all the plates in the kitchen and she yells at you, which is a really humorous story that I can’t really unhear. Now that’s forever part of my whole relationship with you as a person. So, when we see really good recruiters, they’re not selling stuff. They’re just telling enthusiastic stories.

It is like “Let me tell you about our Frost Shades, the window tinting franchise that we’re growing, how it is having a great year.” Let me tell you about “How many windows there are on a typical Street.” Let me tell you about “this franchisee in DC who on their first day went out and did a $20,000 job from the Washington Redskins, just out of the blue.” Then let me share how it happened. You just tell the story. Nothing other than a real, factual story of a day in the life of this business. Tell a story about the founder. Tell a story about franchisees that are similar to the particular person you’re talking with. Stories are what help people see the future and see themselves in that future.

If you listen to a lot of calls, storytelling is not very common. In a lot of sales calls for they’re just reading bullet points and bombarding people with the story in the way that they think it needs to go out.

So, what do you mean by storytelling?

Brett Larrabee: Look, I think people don’t want to be told anything. I think they want something compelling and interesting that creates the context for them to make a great decision. One of the ways that we do this now in the current reality is: we get on our iPhone and we look at the news. The great journalists of today know how to bring people into a story. They know how to create interest. They know how to create an opportunity for somebody to learn perspective.

Regardless of what that story is about, they pull you into another world for a few minutes. Then you see yourself in that context. Great franchise sales people learn how to tell a story that involves the prospect in a way that they could see themself in the context of that business. They might not say that implicitly, but they know how to talk to people in a way that’s genuine and honest, which gives them an idea in their head that says, “Hey! I could do that. I could see myself being a part of this. This makes sense.” It’s always that aha moment that we all have as kids on the beach when we find a treasure, or crab under a rock, or whatever it is that makes us go, “Oh! Well, that’s where it is. That’s, that’s where the fun lies in all this.” Storytelling gets you to that place where you have that aha moment and where you can connect your reality with the franchise development person’s business mindset. You create those connections. That’s what stories do. They take other contexts in life and they give you an opportunity to build a bridge to other people.

Thomas Scott: That’s really all franchise recruitment is. It is a series of conversations full of stories. But a good one. A good, solid, tactical and efficient story. You don’t move people along by pushing them, you pull them along by giving them stories that help them understand what it looks like, what it feels like, and it answers their questions without you selling them as much. To your point, nobody wants to be sold. Nobody wants to talk to a mattress salesperson, or car salesman. When you’re a storyteller, you take yourself out of the equation. It’s not about you. It’s about the story which is about another person. It becomes “Let me share with you. Let me explain kind of how it works.” Then it is “What do you think about that?” And they say  “That’s kind of cool. “I was really amazed when that happened.” Then you can say “Here’s something that happened last week.”

Walls come down when you storytell. It’s the basis of all the lead generation we do with content marketing, conversational marketing and conversational lead generation for Brand Journalist. It is absolutely the way that you should focus on this type of business.

Brett Larrabee: One way I like to explain this to other franchise development people is that: objections are either intentional, or are kind of couched in conversation. Instead of creating a context of arguing why those objections are right or wrong, stories allow you an emotionally intelligent way to connect with people without creating conflict. You’re allowing them to win. What they’re telling you is their reality, and you need to connect with their reality.This is why the Curiosity thing is so important. If you don’t fully understand their reality, how are you going to connect with them? How are you going to tell them the right stories? How are you going to give them the context, the bridge if you will, to move to your position.

Thomas Scott: Yeah, and if you’re curious, and you ask the right questions, they’ll tell you exactly what stories they’re looking for. So, it makes a franchise recruitment process much simpler if you follow these guidelines.

This brings us to our last kind of key quality of a franchise recruiter that you have to have to be successful. It is just the sense of being disciplined. You have to be able to help somebody move through the process. You need the discipline to make the calls. You need the discipline to be there and be fully present for the person.

What do you mean when you say you have to be disciplined?

Brett Larrabee: You know, a lot of franchise development people are great at getting on the phone, setting up the next call and moving through the process. But they’re not great at being directional. There’s a time that we all have in every franchise development process where we know it’s time to ask the prospect to move forward, and to do it now. Often people don’t pull that trigger. They don’t tell people it’s time to move forward. The prospect is looking for that direction. They’re looking for you to take the wheel and to move this process forward. When you don’t, they will simply wait for that to happen. Oftentimes, it never happens. Because the assumption is that the prospect is going to make that decision.

Maybe that’s the case, but often not often. Often the prospect is buying a franchise because they want people to help them through this process. Your job is to be directional. To have the discipline to create that opportunity to close. Time and again I’ve watched franchise development people just talk right past that opportunity.

Thomas Scott: Oh yeah. They just get in their own mind and they have an agenda, and they don’t realize they totally missed the hook they needed to move someone through.

Discipline also means just being disciplined to make calls. It means to have the structure that it takes to connect with people. It means being able to sift through the leads. We get really frustrated. If you’re a lead generator like we are, we see really good quality deals fall through the cracks because salespeople don’t want to make the calls or they don’t want to be bothered sometimes with the hard work. Some of this business is just plain and simple: hard work.

What do you think about discipline on the front end of the pipeline?

Brett Larrabee: Well, discipline on the front end has a lot to do with the conversation you have as a franchise development person in your head. If you’re telling yourself that the next call you’re going to make is just another waste of time…it’s just another

Thomas Scott: portal lead or Facebook lead

Brett Larrabee: whatever, you know, you’re telling yourself “it’s rainy today,” “it’s too close to Christmas,” “it’s Easter,” “it’s New Year’s,” “it’s Valentine’s Day,” you make the excuse. There’s 1000 reasons not to pick up the phone or communicate with the next prospect. But, some of the best franchise development people just have their time that they are going to make calls. They get in their head that this is what they’re going to do, and they’re going to do it now. They don’t find 1000 reasons to make it not work.

Thomas Scott: No, they’re not listening to records in their head. The stories that franchise recruiters make up about… it’s as if there are 100 people in a room and they all get together and say, “Okay, we’re all going to be franchise portal leads today.” 76 of us are going to go into the witness protection program and never answer the phone or talk to the person, so, we’re going to go to this side of the room. 10 of us are going to say we have a lot of money, but we really don’t.

If you talk to franchise recruiters, that’s the way they view large numbers of leads. It’s like there’s some connection between each person and they have a conspiracy to doom this franchise sales effort. The truth is every single person is a unique person. When you talk to a really fabulous person like yourself, or Lori Osley at Sonic who does an amazing job. She gets 300 or 400 leads a month and she calls every single lead herself. She doesn’t use a lead screener. She does amazing work at that brand because she puts in the effort to see every person. She has amazing results over long periods of time where people that she talks to two years prior come back after they’re financially qualified and end up becoming owners.

That willingness to see each person as a unique person, and the discipline to reach out to them even when you do run into runs where nobody has money or it’s Christmas, or Easter, or New Year’s or whatever, who cares. This is the business we’re in. We are reaching out and talking to people and getting traction with the ones we can, and not really worrying too much about the ones we can’t. Just always having the discipline to stay focused and positive. You just have that kind of sense that the one person you’re talking to is the one person that could buy a franchise and is trying to change their life through business ownership.

Brett Larrabee: Absolutely. Many times, it’s timing. Maybe, you call that person at the wrong time of day. Or it could be the wrong whatever. But having the discipline to go back and give people a second chance, to think through why people may not be reacting positively to you all of the time, in an objective way, allows you as a franchise development person to just kind of be a kinder soul and give people a chance to buy.

Again, I would say most people that are looking to buy a franchise need somebody to be directional and help them through the process. They don’t know what the process is or what it looks like. They’re not sure if you’re a good person or a bad person. They’re looking for you to show them the way, and that only happens through some level of a disciplined approach. Add some curiosity, some positivity and a real sense of allowing people to win. I think that’s really the sum of this.

Thomas Scott: That’s good, because it’s been a great conversation. Just to summarize, we discussed the five qualities we think are essential for someone today and it’s worth evaluating your current recruiters or anybody you would interview for a job. Number one was curiosity with a high sense of enthusiasm, number two was someone with a high level of positivity, someone with a high sense of urgency was number three. Number four is someone who is a form of a natural storyteller, who has the ability to leverage stories to help people understand abstract concepts. Lastly, discipline. Someone who just has the discipline to do this job without excuses or without negative narratives.

Brett, thank you so much for joining us today. Hopefully someone can get some value out of this. This is a core topic that I think anybody in franchise development needs to ponder on and think about because it’s the key to creating a performance breakthrough.

Brett Larrabee: No, thank you.

Thomas Scott: Good deal.

Is Your Visual Storytelling Effective?

Video is an integral part of sales automation

When I first started out in franchising, websites were the hot, new thing and video was not on anyone’s radar. But over the last few years, a titanic shift has moved vast amounts of information and customer engagement to video.franchise recruitment video graphic

We can thank sites like YouTube and Vimeo for this shift. Web surfers today are simply accustomed to seeing and watching videos. In fact, 85% of internet users report watching informational videos while researching products or services.

Franchising is anything but immune from the video phenomenon. Potential franchisees are serious consumers of video content on franchise websites, and they’re viewing increasingly polished, professional, and often award-winning productions.

But when it comes to producing video content, where should you take your company? Brand Journalists knows where franchisors can get the most bang for their video production dollars. Here are three rules to consider when exploring your company’s video options.

Rule #1: Content Quality Matters

When it comes to online video production, the first and most important consideration is quality. That means quality of content as well as production.

When you’re producing videos to represent your brand, it’s vital that you have people who present your brand’s story, your mission, and your culture well. People should look and sound professional, while embodying a more casual tone.

While it’s vital that the content in your videos is delivered professionally, we also tell clients to avoid a tightly scripted video. Instead, your videos should be much more conversational and must fit the culture of your brand.

If you’re a business-to-business services company and your videos feature a lot of informal banter, balloons, or other light-hearted content, they won’t sound authentics. But, if the business is a trampoline park and everyone in the videos are in suits and ties, that’s just as disconcerting for viewers.

So when you’re planning out your videos with a video production company, make sure you are accurately representing your brand and your culture.

Rule #2: Quality video production does not have to break the bank

Think about your most recent foray into internet video. Which ones did you watch through to the end? Chances are you were most engaged with conversational videos that had the same polish and quality of a well-produced documentary or news broadcast.

Video production quality matters to your brand as much as the quality of the content the videos contain. So, as you work to share your brand story through video, provide viewers with professionally produced content.

Be cautions against “video bling.” Just because the production company has the coolest toys, doesn’t mean they produce the best videos.

Yes, quality production requires the right equipment – cameras, lights, microphones, and more, but that’s not where good video stops. The real quality of video content happens in the editing process, where skilled craftsmen take the raw video and make it tell the story you want in a way that connects visually with the audience.

For our clients, the results speak for themselves. Each video our clients receive incorporates best practices from both advertising and filmmaking to create a rich, viewer-centered visual experience that engages potential customers and keeps them engaged.

Rule #3: Your videos should tell your story

The final major rule for online videos is that they need to tell a story – your brand’s story, to be specific. Often, brand videos get bogged down in details about technological innovations, financial benefits, or the sales pitch. That’s the wrong approach.

The videos that connect most, that impact most, that convert to leads, they tell a story that is personal and connects with the viewer. Yes, we’ll include details about support, technology, market size, customer acquisition and CRMs, but we position all of that as tools in the brand’s story. This methodology allows the individual on the other side of the screen to connect with all of those details in a way that putting them in a high pressure sales pitch wouldn’t.

As you begin to consider the impact quality video production could have on your sales automation process, ask yourself what your brand story is and how you could use that to help guide potential leads to become your next franchise owner.

See How We Convert Viewers Into Buyers Through Storytelling

Ready to explore video production on your franchise site?

If your franchise opportunity is ready to kick your video up to the next level, Brand Journalists can help. Contact us today to see how we can help you employ quality video production to tell your brand story.

Thomas Scott Named to Titus Board

Scott Named to Titus Center Board of Advisors

Brand Journalists’ CEO Thomas Scott has been appointed to the board of advisors of the Titus Center for Franchising, a center of excellence based at Palm Beach Atlantic University.

The Titus Center provides franchise-oriented academic coursework leading to a bachelor’s degree with a concentration in franchising. The center is housed in the university’s Rinker School for Business, and also offers certificate programs in many areas, including:

The center also offers a franchise internship program, as well as shadowing opportunities at the franchise world headquarters of United Franchise Group. Since its first semester of operation in fall 2017, it has attracted more than 40 students, several of whom have said they plan to become franchise owners and even franchisors.

As part of his board duties, Scott will be contributing content and other resources to help drive the center’s mission, as well as mentoring students and working with faculty to help strengthen and expand the center’s goal of becoming a leading choice for franchise education in the United States and internationally.

“Thomas is one of the leading practitioners in franchising today,” says Dr. John Hayes, Titus Chair for Franchise Leadership and the center’s director. “His insights about the motivation of prospective franchisees, and the tools that franchisors can use to develop relationships with both prospective and existing franchisees, is unparalleled in our profession. For those reasons, along with the quality of his character and his desire to network with professionals, I asked him to join the Titus Center for Franchising Advisory Board. All of our advisory board members, including franchisors, franchisees and suppliers, and students of the Titus Center, will benefit from Thomas’s knowledge and gifts as a thought leader in our profession.

“The Titus Center’s mission of integrating the world of franchising into a business-school setting is an excellent way of creating tomorrow’s franchise leaders, and I am very happy to be a part of that vision,” Scott says. “The advisory board and faculty are an outstanding and very learned group, and I look forward to engaging with them, and the students, and digging into the smart business practices it takes to make a franchisee or franchisor successful.”

Why Franchise Salespeople Miss the Mark with Younger Buyers

As the number of younger franchise buyers surges, franchise salespeople still don’t know how to connect with them

Younger franchise buyers are flooding the market these days, and the franchising conferences – from Franchise Leadership and Development Conference (FLDC) to FranTech — spent some focused time exploring that reality. Smart franchisors see the benefits of recruiting millennial entrepreneurs. They appreciate the statistics — ubiquitous at the FLDC — which say that buyers in their 20s and 30s are on a steep increase and will bring creativity, energy and enthusiasm to their franchise systems.

Franchisors’ efforts to recruit millennials, however, are all wrong. As evidenced by companies’ (like BuzzFeed, Facebook, Google and Amazon) investment into video, we millennials have a preference on how to communicate, and we gobble up video. Even though video on franchise development websites has risen 20% — up to 60% this year — that’s still an extremely low percentage (it’s 2016 people; what are the rest of you doing out there?). Sadly, the way presenters described the video on their sites reeked of corporate misunderstanding.

Authenticity is the key

tony-romasAuthenticity has not only been the catchy phrase of the election cycle; it also represents an idea and skill that we millennials have been prepped to sniff out in an instance. Your corporate videos of half-enthused franchisees make us feel entirely disconnected from your brand. We simply won’t watch those videos and will be ready to move on to the next idea. We want to have a connection with our work. Study after study has shown that millennials want to BELIEVE in what they’re doing and make sure that their life work has meaning and purpose. We’ve been blasted with advertising and constant media since we could understand language, so we don’t want to be sold something; we want to identify with it.

The constant theme when discussing video on websites was “testimonial videos.” Creating these videos usually happens like this: wait for your annual convention, set up a camera and a backdrop with your logo on it, shove as many of your franchisees in front of the camera as possible and force them to say nice things about your brand. If you go to a conference like the FLDC and hear that you need more video to attract more millennial buyers, and you force this type of video onto your website, then you’re actually TURNING AWAY those buyers.

This is why “testimonial” videos will always come up short. We seek out pieces that we can connect with. Empathy drives action, and when you’re communicating with millennials, this needs to be at the forefront of your thinking. Produce videos that are meaningful and allow for actual connections with the video subject’s life. These deeper connections are necessary to franchise buyers, and if you think you’re establishing connections through mere testimonials, you’re fooling yourself.

How do you get video right?

The value of emotionally-relevant video is really starting to bubble to the surface in franchise development. Smart, forward-thinking brands like ChemDry are stuffing their YouTube pages full of relatable, authentic documentaries. We get to know real people (who happen to be franchisees) and the way the brand, to which they’ve dedicated their lives, has shaped who they are. When a company as storied as AAMCO, or a company as new and fresh as Class 101 create videos like this, viewers can picture themselves as franchisees because they empathize with the human qualities of a Lou Fizzarotti or a Karen Feamster. I’m excited that brands like PostNet are not only making quality video the lifeblood of their franchise development web site, but they’re also producing videos that speak to people in a real way.

When you watch these sorts of videos, think about how much more emotionally engaging they are compared to typical content marketing. At the end of the day, emotion triggers action and pieces like these documentaries can be the glue your campaign needs to hold all the numbers together.

There’s an obvious reason the vast majority of franchise development sites lack this kind of video: it’s really hard to produce. But the best franchise developers are already thinking about their candidates in the right way – they get to really know them, make sure the right fit is there, and hold their hand through a massive life decision.

Now, think about that in terms of video. Real franchisee profile videos and documentaries take that kind of dedication – it means getting to know a franchisee, spending TIME with that franchisee and really digging in to see what motivates and inspires them. It’s storytelling on an empathetic level, and it really takes actual filmmakers to pull off such a project.

We love interesting franchisees who are doing amazing things within their franchise system. It’s so inspiring to run into franchisees – from boomers to millennials – and to hear their stories, see their environment and experience the businesses they’ve built. It’s these stories that we 20- and 30-somethings crave when making such an emotional decision like buying a franchise. If you’re looking to improve the way you speak to this exploding group of new franchisees, we’d love to discuss it with you.

Important Takeaways from the 2015 Franchise Leadership and Development Conference

The franchise buyer takes control – are you prepared to meet them where they are?

By Thomas Scott

Franchising is an unusual industry. For an industry that generates more than $25 billion a year in sales and has thousands of competing companies, it remains one of the most transparent. Attend any franchise conference, and you’ll find executives from other companies who will share best practices, give thoughtful advice, and take a genuine interest in the success of brands they have no stake in.

We love Franchise Update’s annual Franchise Leadership and Development Conference. Out of all the events in the franchise industry, this event stands out every year as an important place to learn what is working. This is our 10th year attending, and this was one of the best we’ve attended.

The 17th annual FLDC conference was a record year for the event, with representation from more than 400 franchise professionals from 260 franchise companies. We noticed an aggressive shift in adoption of tactics and some refreshing, forward-thinking advice from presenters. Kudos to the FLDC staff for upgrading content from last year and raising the bar to help make the franchise industry higher-performance.

In 2015, there are record numbers of people considering franchise ownership, franchise brands are prospering, and financing is finally becoming more available. The franchise industry is growing at a steady rate, and according to FRANData, we have been adding one new franchise company a day. Despite the industry’s positive growth, franchise development professionals, VPs, and CEOs are still struggling to recruit enough franchisees and recruit the right franchisees, and the ability to intersect with the right candidates seems just out of reach.

Aaron Goldberg, VP of Franchise Development for ZIPs Dry Cleaning, made a funny analogy during his presentation on “Mastering Sales Fundamentals,” that sums up the key issue franchisors are having in 2015 when it comes to recruiting franchisees:

“When I was young, I had the mistaken impression that if I wanted a date, I could pick the woman I wanted to go out with. I’ve since learned that was totally wrong. Women picked me, and I had absolutely no control over the choice. Likewise, you don’t get to pick your franchisee. Prospective franchisees pick the franchise they want, and as a recruiter, you have no influence over the choice that person makes.”

While tongue-in-cheek, his point is serious. We are in the era of self-directed research, and as speakers from Google have stated, 70% of the decision to buy is now made before prospects request information or speak with a salesperson. According to economist Darrell Johnson, President and CEO of FRANData, franchising is gradually growing, but we are not yet seeing a rising tide and we are not close to a boom.

Competition for franchise buyers is intense, and only the brands that do a good job of grabbing market share and earning the connections with prospective owners will grow. Here’s the catch: just like dating, you don’t get to say if you’ve grabbed market share – that is only in the eyes of the candidate.

Here is our list of important takeaways for franchise development teams from this year’s conference:

It’s time to rework your franchise opportunity value proposition.

Smart franchisors are learning to create more-effective value propositions. In one session, Jack Humbert, VP of Franchise Sales and Finance for J.D. Byrider, flipped through the pages of a franchise magazine he held up for the crowd and commented that not a single ad in the publication had an effective value proposition. Is print advertising dead? You wouldn’t know, because there is a serious disconnect in how brands and ad agencies create value propositions. The typical franchise opportunity ads we see are out of sync with how buyers wrap their minds around opportunities.

Here’s what we mean:

Value proposition No. 1: We are the largest cleaning brand in the country. We are top-ranked, and you can be your own boss and enjoy an amazing lifestyle with our franchise.

Sound familiar? Chances are there are parts of the above statement in your public value proposition. Here’s what’s clear: Statements like these fail. They are overused, vague, and totally lack meaning for prospects. This is a good example of what NOT to do with your value statement, and it sums up 90% of the marketing for franchise opportunities.

Paul Pickett, VP of Franchise Development for Wild Birds Unlimited, a retail bird supply franchise that recruits passionate bird lovers, offered an excellent value proposition, which they now have on their website:

Value proposition No. 2: If you love birds, you can make a lot of money selling birdseed.

The second statement works. It is clear to the prospect, and it targets the core candidate WBU is seeking to recruit.

Humbert summed it up: “For me, a successful value proposition creates curiosity. Curiosity is what propels a prospect into the sales process, and curiosity is what propels someone to purchase a franchise.”

He’s right. Recruitment for franchisees is competitive. Only companies that look outside themselves, market in plain language, avoid clever messaging, and tell a clear brand story will earn conversations with buyers. Overlook your value proposition at your own peril: Having lackluster, muddy messaging will kill your ROI. Not getting a good result from portal advertising? Overhaul your ad page. Is your email marketing underperforming? Perhaps your messaging is off-message. The same goes for your recruitment website and any other marketing materials that intersect with a candidate. If your value proposition doesn’t resonate with your target candidate, you’ll miss your opportunity to connect.

Michael Arrowsmith, Senior VP of Development for Captain D’s, talked with candor about how he launched the rework of his brand with what he thought was a perfect value proposition — only to realize that it was totally off. He went back to the drawing board after talking to his most successful owners and ended up with a value proposition that worked:

Captain D’s provides access to the fast-casual segment with a simple operation, and without competing with other brands.

That was what his target buyer was looking for— they were already in food service, wanted to expand, liked simple operations, and wanted something with some blue ocean and little or no competition. Captain D’s is a brand to watch because it is one of the few brands that can deliver those things.

How do you create a better value proposition? Start by talking to your top performers. The franchisees in your system that thrive can tell you in just a few seconds what the value proposition is. It isn’t rocket science, but chances are it isn’t anywhere close to what your marketing department or outside agency thinks it is.

Franchise Opportunity Website more important than ever

Here’s one clear message that came up in almost every session and presentation: Your franchise recruitment website is the single, most-important part of your growth strategy. If you don’t have a high-performance, stand-alone website geared toward educating potential franchisees, you will struggle to recruit the quality and quantity of new franchise owners you need.

Josh Wall, VP of Development for Christian Brothers Automotive, hit this point in his panel on lead generation results by telling the audience that his website created the breakthrough that has given his brand two years of record growth. “It isn’t just that you need content — you need the right kind of content, organized in the right way. You need high-quality video, photos, and other media.” He was proud of his website’s conversion rate — over 7%, which is five times the industry average.

We were pleased to hear Josh give this advice and also happy that three of the top five STAR Awards for top Franchise Recruitment Websites — including Josh’s — were sites we built and maintained.

Here’s the deal: Half of franchise sales in the industry come directly from company recruitment websites. Your website is an extension of your sales team, and it takes the place of the first conversation a candidate has with your brand. The all-critical value proposition we just mentioned? That had better be front and center on your site. How much time do you think franchise buyers spend researching your offering, and how long will they spend on your website? Our data suggests that it is a staggering 52 minutes.

Josh added that before CBA launched their new site, potential buyers were spending a mere two minutes on the website. He realized that he needed serious buyers to spend 45 minutes to one hour to fully understand the opportunity; this is the appetite for information about your brand a serious buyer has. Don’t have enough content to keep someone reading for almost an hour? You’ll lose the recruitment game to brands that do.

Using PR? Spending money on print advertising or radio? A best-in-class website will double or triple your return on non-digital strategies, too.

Companies that are exceeding industry averages invest heavily in the design, brand storytelling, construction, and ongoing upkeep of these sites. Dollar for dollar it has the highest return on investment you’ll make for recruitment.

Sales to existing franchisees increase

One interesting stat from the annual lead generation survey: 40% of new franchise units companies sold in the previous year were to existing franchisees. This is important — if you don’t have a large number of existing franchisees buying new territories or opening new units, you might be missing a development trend that dramatically affects growth.

We love to see brands devote marketing and sales resources to encouraging existing franchisees to grow. Single-unit operators often become high-performance, multi-unit franchisees, and they are a lot easier to nurture than hoping to recruit the next flashy multi-unit owner. Consider incentives, an internal devoted recruiter, CEO blogging to your owners on why to invest in the brand, and teaching the operations support staff how to spot opportunities for internal growth. Set goals for internal expansion, develop a plan, and work it just as hard as your quest for recruiting new franchisees.

Phone leads increased in 2015, and you wouldn’t know it because salespeople struggled with inbound calls

In July, mobile visitors to Google surpassed the number of non-mobile visitors for the first time. According to the FLDC lead generation survey there was a 70% higher response to a web lead from a traditional form than to a lead that came via a phone call. When mobile visits are over 50% on many recruitment websites, this is a problem.

Are phone leads equal to web leads? We think so. Our data suggests that more serious and more qualified buyers prefer to opt in via the phone number on your website. Visitors on mobile devices are also more likely to use your phone number to call than to fill out a web form. It’s simple, and it gives the candidate more control over the process. Most importantly, we are seeing phone leads close at twice the rate of web forms. Twice.

Based on mystery shop results, our industry has a real problem: A receptionist or qualifier answered 35% of the calls. That means we missed 65% of inbound calls for franchise information — calls where the buyer was ready to talk. That makes me cringe, especially when there are proven solutions to handling these calls and ways to design your website so you turn this into an opportunity for recruitment.

Want more bad news about sales team performance? 34% of the leads in the mystery shop received no return call at all. One-third of all leads were never worked. If the average budget for advertising is $150,000 to $250,000, that means that at least $70,000 of your spend is wasted by underperforming salespeople, and you’ve lost deals you would otherwise close. Every year this number has been high. 34% is one of the better years we’ve seen, but it’s still a reason to get hot under the collar. That number should be zero. Every lead should get a return call. They do in other sales-oriented industries, and we don’t have an acceptable excuse for such a screaming lack of professionalism.

Video for recruitment is more important than ever before

Another stat that jumped out: Only 40% of franchise recruitment websites used any video at all.

Have you heard about the large demographic group called the Millennials? It is larger in number than the Baby Boomers and has a staggering 60% aptitude toward entrepreneurship. Every brand we talked to is spending time thinking how to better position themselves for this all-important group. For Millennials, video is critical.

I asked Michael Ackley, one of our franchise writers and my go-to source for an accurate perspective on how Millennials think,  why video was important for Millennials. Here is what he said without a moment’s pause:

“Video is the gateway to accessibility and authenticity. I want to know that the leadership team is accessible, trustworthy, and authentic. Video is an instant way to achieve those goals because it’s the closest thing to looking someone in the eye.”

Franchise development is a people business. Good, authentic, documentary-style video is rare on recruitment websites. It makes the value proposition stick in a meaningful way and works amazingly well on mobile devices.

For the MTV Cribs generation, video allows instant access into the day-to-day operations of your franchise and a seat at the table next to your CEO. It’s critical.

We do extensive documentary video work on all of our website and brand storytelling projects. Projects that have well-thought-out video simply perform better. Video adds the emotional edge to your brand story that creates relevance and curiosity. Want to see examples of what we are talking about? Visit our portfolio page and look at the brand stories and day in the life videos.

Summary

What to do with this information? Start by taking a step back and talking to your top performers. How do they explain your brand’s value proposition? Look at your recruitment website. Is it organized like the STAR award winners from this year?

Get someone from the outside to give you feedback. Look hard at your performance on mobile devices and pay attention to how you handle inbound phone leads. Most importantly, start doing a much better job of telling your brand story and work on your value proposition so you can earn more market share for your opportunity.

If you need help with any of the above, start a conversation with us.

Podcamp Nashville 2011 Review

Podcamp Nashville 2011 Review

Podcamp Nashville 2011

The crowded first floor of Cadillac Ranch during Podcamp Nashville 2011

Podcamp Nashville, a free and interactive ‘un-conference’ – a forum for bloggers, marketers, content creators, social media experts, educators, podcasters and the like to gather, network and learn about the latest trends, tricks and technologies in the interactive world  – marked its fourth year in the music city with a simple theme:

Express Yourself.

With social media, individuals and companies have tremendous opportunities to broadcast thoughts, perspectives and in the case of a company, tell stories. Expressing yourself can help influence the way others perceive you or your company and in today’s social media world, if you can’t get started expressing yourself, you’ll have a hard time making use of social technology.

If you have never attended a Podcamp, you should. Many thanks to the organizers of this free event – it was full of awesomeness and very helpful information.

@brandjournalist@faithfulPR and @mackvong from Brand Journalists attended this year and here are our thoughts and take aways from podcamp Nashville 2011:

Forget keywords for SEO and start thinking about Key Phrases. Expressing yourself is not just about getting your thoughts out; its about communicating your thoughts in a way others can access. We see this in our client work daily – people are inundated with information and rarely do people find what they are looking for with a one or two word search. What we’ve found and what I heard several presenters mention was how important longer phrases are. If you are shooting a video about a macbook upgrade, think “macbook unibody 8gig upgrade review’ rather than just ‘macbook.’ People use keyword phrases to find very specific content and as a marketer or content creator, you’ll need to create content to cover a wide range of what people are looking for. This holds true for blogs, webpages and videos.

QR Codes have come of age. We LOVE QR codes! There were several sessions on QR codes. @irenewilliams did a great job of explaining how to use QR codes to help with customer engagement. In particular, QR codes let customers experience digital content in the moment. QR code faux pas #1 – don’t use one to send customers to your website home page. DO create them to send to blog and web pages with content that is helpful for a customer in a specific situation such as standing in a store trying to make a buying decision. Use web and blog pages formatted for mobile viewing (the only users of QR codes are on smart phones) and create content specifically for QR code use. Our favorite tactic: use QR codes to gather facebook fans. QR code stats:Use increased over 1200% in the last half of 2010. Best tip of the day: use the bit.ly link shortener to create automatic QR codes with free analytics.

Youtube videos are an essential component of expressing yourself. Best stat of the day: Google owns Youtube and Youtube now gets 2 Billion searches a day. Because of the relationship between Google and Youtube, videos get preferential ranking. If you are not creating and posting videos to Youtube, start now. It greatly increases your reach and search-ability. Use key phrases in your titles and use the description to post the same content you would in a blog. Embed videos on web pages and blogs. Sometimes, video content sticks better with readers than text. Favorite camera: Kodak zi8 (better than flip) with a 20’ wired lapel mic and an inexpensive tabletop tripod. Total cost for kit: $150. Best tip: use a white board as a background and write items on the board as you talk for an effective video blog.

Blogging is still the cornerstone of expressing yourself. There were no sessions dedicated to blogging but it was clear from almost every session that to express yourself, you need a home base and more often than not, that means a blog. WordPress is still king. Best tip: Tumblr is an easy place to start. Tumblr has made a range of improvements making SEO better and for someone who has never blogged Tumblr is a really good first step. Serious blogging is better done on hosted, custom wordpress installs. Blog for yourself, for your company and for clients.

Digital Stalking is Cool – Just do it. Most amusing session of the day was from @courtenayrogers on digital stalking. In her words, Google is made for digital stalking and with the wide range of data on people and companies at your fingertips, you should get in the habit of digital stalking people you want to do business with, people you want to network with and especially those you might want to date. Stalking  – or researching – a company online gives you a much better idea of how to jump into a conversation and makes a cold call a warm and friendly call. To demonstrate, Courtenay ‘stalked’ the pre-registered attendees. “What, you are still on myspace? Really?” Stalking helps you express yourself by helping you better understand your target audience. Go on, get your stalk on.

Authenticity and transparency are not just important for individuals, they are essential for businesses. Several sessions focused on how to be more authentic – social media is, after all, a conversation and people crave dialog and relationships with ‘real’ people. Put it all out there and be as transparent as possible. Be a real person and don’t be afraid to show yourself. In the case of a company, the more information you publish, the better. Trust is earned over time and the more ‘real’ information you get in front of potential readers and customers, the richer your interactions will be.

Mobile marketing via SMS is a powerhouse if used properly. @lcguttery did a great job tackling the tidal-wave of QR mania to make the point that mobile, SMS marketing packs a powerful punch. QR code marketing is all about letting customers tap into digital content in specific places whereas SMS marketing is broader in reach and focus. Best SMS marketing tip: long form SMS marketing is cheaper and more flexible than the more expensive short form marketing. Use a trusted and experienced vendor for services if you foray into this and be very sensitive to how customers perceive SMS marketing as somewhat invasive.

Just Do It. Expressing yourself takes motivation and cadence.Several sessions addressed something we see daily – how do I get started and once I get started how do I keep it up? Fellow colab coworker and SEO expert @kateo gave one of the more thought provoking sessions at the end of the day titled ‘Cathartic Content: how a blog can help you grow.” Her point: sometimes, just the act of expressing yourself via a blog helps you define your story. It helps you get in the habit of producing work and helps you sort out issues and focus on what is important. For her it lead to the foundation of her company MetaMarketer. For companies, it can help tap into better and far richer relationships with customers. Success at expressing yourself takes practice – readers are attracted to the regular cadence of thought and if you really want to succeed, build up your skills over time.

What was missing from Podcamp Nashville

As amazing as some of the trends were above, we were surprised at what was missing. Namely, sessions on facebook, blogging, SEO and Twitter. We make a living expressing ourselves and helping a wide range of clients express their company stories and we’d be hard pressed to get results without them.

Podcamp Nashville uses a random drawing for the volunteer presentations and as a result, many were duplicates. We’ll be sure to put our names in the hat next year for a range of presentation topics. Might be helpful if organizers could put out requests for specific topics to make the day more valuable than it already was to attendees. There was no shortage of experienced presenters in the room. Coolest trend: ipad2 users using the ipad to connect to the projector and an iphone to change slides.

Thanks to everyone who presented and especially to the volunteers who orchestrated this event. We learned a lot and everyone came away energized.

See you next year!

Thomas Scott is the CEO of Brand Journalists, a Nashville based digital PR, blogging and social media firm that serves the franchise industry.

(Source: brandj.com)

The New Information Food Chain

Pam Coyle, 
April 20, 2010

Thomas Scott, a friend and former colleague at The Times-Picayune, recently asked me to help punch up a press release. He’s vice president of marketing at Showhomes, a home staging franchise business, frequent blogger and social media thinker.

I got a great up-close lesson in the new ways of the information world. (more…)

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