We all have a story to tell that defines who we are and what we care most about, and the same rings true for brands – the only difference is, some are better at telling their story than others.
Effective brand storytelling clearly communicates to customers your brand’s history, what you stand for, and what you hope to offer that is of value to the communities you serve. More than anything, brand storytelling puts a personal face on a company, the team that makes your brand unique, and the customers who are at the heart of what you do.
It’s a truth as old as time: stories resonate with people and capture their attention, which is why your brand story must be meaningful, personal, and authentic. In this new digital age, it no longer pays to be a company quietly operating behind the scenes. More than ever, companies need to connect with customers, and brand storytelling is the means in which to establish your identity.
To be sure, there are several reasons why effective brand storytelling is so important. With a constant barrage of marketing and competitors vying for an audience’s attention, it’s increasingly difficult to stand out – products and services are simply not enough. Instead, communicating your brand’s story, simplifying information, and evoking emotions is far and away your best chance to be seen. In fact, one source states messages delivered as stories are up to 22 times more memorable than just stating the facts. Once you’ve built trust and relationships, you are more likely to win loyal customers who will advocate for your brand. “In a crowded marketplace where everyone is focused on doing things faster, more efficiently, and automated, be the brand who dares to be human,” Forbes magazine wrote.
Why Brand Storytelling Makes A Difference
Stop for a minute, and think about all the ads that have attempted to grab your attention today. Then, try to recall how many you actually remember. The honest truth is probably not a lot, if any. Turns out, the average American is exposed to anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 ads every day, and we’ve become incredibly adept at ignoring all those attempts to catch our eyes. Which poses a huge challenge for businesses: How do you actually attract an audience? Our answer: brand storytelling.
People buy franchises because of the stories they’re told. They want to imagine a better life for themselves and their families, they want to feel a part of something bigger than themselves, and they want to design the life they want.
And the best way for prospective buyers to get the story they need is to create emotionally compelling content that speaks directly to them.
A great example is in real estate. Expert realtors know they can’t push a prospective homebuyer into buying any old house. Instead, they must build a narrative in which the potential buyers see themselves living in the home – hosting family gatherings in the dining room and raising children who can play in the yard. Even better realtors will go the extra mile and outfit the empty homes with furniture to make these visions a little more real.
These efforts work: according to franchise home stager Showhomes, buyers spend more than 45 minutes in a staged home, which is proven to sell quicker and for more money. These very principals have the same successful outcome in brand storytelling. Potential franchisees want a glimpse of what their life will be with your brand.
How Brand Journalists Tackle Brand Storytelling
Brand Journalists are the experts in helping franchise systems tell their stories across multiple platforms and media. Our services are no easy task – it takes a special skill set rarely found in franchise marketing departments. We recognize the importance of speaking the same language as potential franchisees. Right now, there could be any number of people considering investing in your franchise system. Brand storytelling is the best chance of generating franchise leads and recruiting quality candidates.
So how do we do it? It used to be that display ads, banner ads, email campaigns, and franchise portal ads were the industry standard, but not so anymore. Prospective investors want to know the culture of a company, the people who make it up, what it’s like to be a franchisee, and what their lives will look like. At Brand Journalists, we use all platforms and media to generate franchise leads from the right audience, through methods such as SEO, social media, franchise portal strategy, paid search, and email campaigns. We also have a seasoned team of graphic designers to assist with web development and video producers on-hand to create quality and engaging content.
At its core, Brand Journalists tell the story of your brand and the people who make up your team and culture. Through the use of journalism-style storytelling, we craft brand stories that are engaging, transparent, informative, and helpful to candidates researching your company. Brand Journalists take an integrated approach to your marketing strategy. The results speak for themselves: Entrepreneur magazine recently recognized Brand Journalists as one of the hottest marketing trends in the industry, and brand storytelling has been shown to substantially generate more leads than traditional methods.
Franchise Development Websites
Brand Journalists’ bread and butter is creating award-winning franchise recruitment websites designed to convert franchise leads. Franchise development websites include written and visual content that tells your brand story. Through our own industry research, we know prospective franchisees typically spend 50-60 minutes researching a brand. Given the short amount of time to win people over, Brand Journalists creates quality, in-depth and structured content to effectively reach a target audience.
But first things first: when you enlist Brand Journalists on your side, we immediately send out a team to your company headquarters to spend quality time with your staff to truly understand your brand’s culture and your business as a whole. At the end of this process, our Brand Journalists team will be able to speak about your brand as if we’re actually stakeholders, thereby creating a stronger and more authentic brand story.
Start A Conversation With Us Today!
If you’re struggling to attract potential franchise leads, it may be time to get your story right. Brand Journalists is a one-stop-shop for franchise development breakthroughs. To start a conversation with our team, fill out our form here.
Power of the Podcast
How podcasting can grow your franchise sales
When podcasting first started in 2006, it wasn’t clear exactly how this new medium might become popular, much less useful. Few people knew what podcasts were, and even fewer had the technical skill or the interest to listen.
My what a difference just 15 years makes! Today, podcasting is one of the top forms of media driving consumer engagement and entertainment. The transformation has been nothing short of revolutionary, as Brand Journalists president David M. Sparks explains.
“Everywhere you go, you hear people talking about this podcast or that one, asking if you caught the latest episode of a mystery or the interview with your favorite celebrity,” David says. “Advertising is focusing on podcasting, and so are a lot of businesses, and with good reason.”
That reason: more than 48% of individuals aged 25-54 listen to podcasts regularly. That includes entrepreneurs and business owners, who turn to podcasts for research and information. So what is podcasting? And how can you unlock the power of the podcast in your franchise?
Podcasting 101: What a podcast is and isn’t
Understanding a podcast’s power starts with understanding what a podcast isn’t. Podcasts are not just long infomercials for your brand. They’re informative, engaging conversations that invite listeners to learn more, as David explains.
“At Brand Journalists, our goal in everything we do is to get entrepreneurs to engage with your brand’s story on an emotional, gut level, and there’s no better tool for that than a podcast,” David says. “Podcasts allow subject matter experts, brand presidents, or even enthusiastic franchisees to share their experiences in a personal, relatable manner.”
Audiences connect with the stories they hear, whether it’s about someone wrongfully convicted of a crime or the next big thing in franchising.
Podcasting is big…really big
It’s hard to imagine how big podcasting became in such a short period of time. But by the numbers, there are more than two million podcasts produced worldwide with 48 million individual episodes available. At the same time, more than half the individuals in America have listened to a podcast!1
“The numbers are just staggering,” David says. “And they’re climbing. We constantly hear from people about the things they’ve heard on the Brand Journalists podcasts, and when we look at the data, at the statistics, it’s easy to see why.”
Perhaps the most important aspect of podcasting for franchise owners are the demographics of the audience. Listeners are evenly divided between men and women, and they’re distributed widely across all age brackets. Perhaps most importantly, for individuals in the ages “sweet spot” of 25 to 54, almost half listen to podcasts weekly.
The most impressive demographic of podcasting is the affluence of the audience. More than 75% of listeners live in homes with an annual income of more than $75,000. Combine this income level with the age range of podcast listeners and an audience penetration pushing 50% and the picture is clear: you want your brand in front of podcast audiences, because that’s where the audiences and the money are.
How can podcasting help your franchise system?
Podcasts can connect you to potential franchise owners in a powerful manner unlike virtually any other form of engagement available. That connection is important for two reasons.
First, a brand’s story connects to potential franchise owners on a gut level, and the more compelling that story is, the stronger the connection they’ll feel to your brand, the products and services you provide, and the culture you’ve created, as David explains it.
“While online advertising is important, with a web site, a Facebook ad, or a Google search, your brand is competing with a flood of other brands for their attention,” David says. “The fight to stand out can be challenging, especially when you’re trying to connect with that prospect on an almost instinctual level.”
But with podcasts? David notes a podcast enjoys a specific advantage that no other form of media has – how the consumer consumes them.
“Most listeners tune into podcasts through headphones or earbuds, directly into their brains while they’re shopping, working out, or cleaning the house,” David says. “No other medium offers you this much power to share your story. You’re literally the voice in their head.”
Interested in learning how Brand Journalists can help you with podcasting?
Brand Journalists is the premier franchise marketing and lead generation agency. If you’d like to learn more about how Brand Journalists can assist you in growing your brand through podcasting, reach out to one of our team today. We look forward to helping you share your brand’s story.
Why Women are Rocking Franchise Sales
What This is About – Read This:
According to Forbes magazine, more women are buying franchises than ever before and at the same time, women are making huge inroads into franchise development and company leadership.
Many of our role models in the franchise space are women and we see increasing numbers of younger women turning to entrepreneurship and franchising in particular. To discuss this topic, we invited two recruiters we admire to join us: Jennifer Benjamin, VP of Development for Lennys Grill and Subs and Kim Robinson, VP of Development for Aamco Transmissions and Hybrid Repair. We’ve worked with both of these top performers at several brands and have a lot of respect for the way they approach their work.
David Sparks, our CDO, is fond of saying ‘The best way to sell is simply not to sell’ to explain why so many, mostly male, salespeople oversell and push too hard. As franchise buyers have changed dramatically, getting younger and bringing with them new expectations of the sales process and the salespeople, we believe these two guests have some valuable insight into what drives franchise sales results.
Listen in!
Franchise Sales Hack – Why You Should Hide Lead Source From Your Salespeople
What This is About:
If you manage franchise salespeople who handle organic, non-broker leads, how often do you hear passionate feedback from them that leads from a particular source are poor quality? That leads from a particular source have no money, are not qualified, are just kicking tires, ect?
Is this feedback REALLY accurate or is it a narrative the salesperson builds to rationalize their behavior and results in the process. Tracking and managing lead sources, costs and sales progression is critical. What isn’t critical is sharing this information with salespeople real-time.
“Hiding the Lead Source stops salespeople from introducing a negative narrative into sales conversations and forces them to work every lead the same way, increasing sales performance” – Thomas Scott, CEO Brand Journalists
Want to jumpstart lagging sales? Consider hiding the lead source from the notification the salesperson gets. This does two things:
1. Forces the salesperson to respond to each lead in a uniform way – there is no way for them to cherry pick leads and they give the same level of attention to each person, regardless of lead source.
2. It keeps the salesperson from sabotaging their own results by dragging in mental baggage about the lead source into the conversation. Baggage that keeps them from responding quickly, shortens the conversations, limits followup and positions them poorly to get maximum results in the sales process.
Listen in as David Sparks, CDO of Brand Journalists and I talk about how to use this controversial sales management tool. David hides his own lead sources and as a result, produces 2-3 times the sales results from the same number of leads other recruiters use.
Enjoy!
How Content Marketing is Changing for Franchise Development
Content marketing is not just writing, it is a lot more complex than ever before and it is changing rapidly
Creating a real, contextual connection with your franchise buyer prospect requires more content and different styles of content than ever before. Listen in as we discuss the challenges and talk about strategies for winning at franchise development today:
Read the Transcript:
Welcome to what the FRANCHISE, the regular podcast about franchise development, tips and best practices and strategies for growth. My name is Thomas Scott. I’m the CEO and founder of Brand Journalists, and today I’ve got a really interesting topic that I’m very passionate about.
I want to talk about the changing nature of content marketing for franchise development, and what I really, specifically mean is buyer acquisition. How do you reach out with your brand and connect meaningfully with relevant content that’s contextual and creative and interesting with the people that are most likely to buy your franchise?
Content marketing’s not new
The name of our brand, Brand Journalists, we started content marketing for franchise development more than a decade ago, and I’ve been doing it with a lot of really great success for lots and lots of clients. But it has really evolved, and that was one of my big takeaways from this year’s IFA Conference, was that the scope of content that you need to produce to really engage the people who have your brand in their wheelhouse already, the people that are most likely to be good buyers, to have the passions and skills and where with all to do well in your franchise has really changed.
What I mean is, when we started content marketing it was an offshoot of social media where you were really blogging and writing articles. Content really meant words on webpages, for the most part, longer webpages, article format content based on Google’s original Panda update in 2010 which basically said, “People want when they want and they go to a search engine to ask questions.” What they’re asking of the search engine is for a detailed answer. And the answer most often preferred by people is simply an article that’s in the format of a journalism article like something you would read in a magazine or a newspaper, so 1500 word article that explains in detail the answer to whatever the search query is. That’s what most people want when they’re doing research on the internet.
So that gave birth to this idea of content marketing using brand storytelling and it makes a lot of sense. Right? The story as we understand it is the essence of human communication, and the story always stands out. The people we use, stories as humans to make sense of the world around us, to relate to one another and to make decisions in our lives. And everything that we do is boiled down to a story.
When you’re looking on Yelp for a restaurant review to go have dinner with your spouse or some friends, what you’re reading were in reviews and pictures or stories that people have told about their experience at a restaurant. So if you buy into this idea, the power of a well-told story is that you don’t realize you’re being sold to because it’s interesting, and then if you understand storytelling and sales and how they go together, meaning simply that sales is a really a series of conversations that take a story format.
A good franchise prospect wants you to tell them an enthusiastic and positive reinforcing story. So the story is the essence of content marketing. From it’s beginning content marketing was writing, was writing a lot, hiring journalists and former newspaper people to write articles, to blog, to write press releases, to write long format websites that could stop somebody and keep them engaged for 45 minutes.
So they were so excited about the life they could see themselves living as a franchise owner in your system that you would beat out your competition, and that’s been highly effective … It remains a very successful strategy for franchise lead generation and buyer acquisition and development marketing within a franchise system.
But here’s what’s changed. Today we would look at content … If I had to explain it to a client, I would say, “Look, content really is broken into three distinct buckets.” So the traditional form of content marketing which hasn’t decreased in volume, so we still have to produce the same amount of content in written form, on websites and press releases and in blogs and articles because people are still going to the search engine. And they still have an appetite for information. They still are able to be influenced by press releases and things they find on the internet. It’s still written form, so a third of the content that you have to produce now is traditional written content, written in a journalistic format. Not written in a series of bullet points, and not necessarily short.
The goal of content marketing is not to create content you can consume in 30 seconds or less, it’s really to get somebody to slow down and think thoughtfully about what this choice is that they want to make as a franchise owner.
So the next third big chunk of content which has evolved over the last five years is primarily video and increasingly audio. And I think audio, this is where conversing in this format, in the podcast format now which is audio based, is the most underutilized form of franchise development marketing. We just don’t understand the power of audio, and one of the reasons that podcasting and audio format marketing, which would translate into podcasts, also things like XM Radio and remnant marketing on local radio stations. Audio is very powerful. It’s very easy to communicate with. It’s very easy to share.
We do a ton of podcasts for clients where we interview franchisees and create really slick interfaces tied into the CRM so that somebody can be on the website or have already opted in on the website. Then when you’re talking to the salesperson you say, “I’m going to send you a set of links to podcasts with franchisee interviews, and you can listen to them on your way home on your commute.”
So a third of the content today is video and by video I mean not the type of video where you bring a video photographer to your conference and you line all your franchisees up against the wall in logo shirts with a logo background and you make them say nice things about you. That’s very aggressive, kind of forced, artificial video.
What I really mean is a video that is cinematic and documentary style and storytelling in its nature with lots of movement. If you’re trying to communicate with younger buyers and you look on YouTube and see the movie making skills that even the average YouTuber has today, your video has to emulate aesthetically some of that both in LinkedIn format and scale and storytelling. Things like music and stop action and motion within the video itself, it’s people’s expectations for quality of video has changed. It’s not necessarily slick, high-end production value, but cinematic and storytelling that is common to what people use.
So a third of the content you produce is written, blogs, press releases, website content, articles on LinkedIn, all of those things. The next third is a mix of documentary and longer form video and testimonial video and podcasts, audio of various natures whether that’s podcasting in a traditional sense or is it … And then the third, that’s an industry we don’t do well at all. Like most franchise systems haven’t even gotten the first two covered, and they don’t even understand this third bucket.
But it’s really clear to us in our work that this is the next frontier of lead generation is what I would call visual content marketing. And if you spend any time on Facebook and the franchise industry, they’ll run … A majority of people do spend time on Facebook or LinkedIn … You know that what stops people is not written content. It’s not necessarily video content. It’s captivating images and graphics and infographics.
So a lot of the next third of content is how do you tell your brand’s story in a visual story based format that takes the form of pictures, infographics, carousel slide images, videos with text overlay, videos that you can watch without listening to the sound, but hear an interview? Now how do you communicate all of this kind of visual content? So it might be something as simple as a pullout quote. You might have a quote from your founder that you really think is powerful, that you create an infographic on, and that’s what drives a LinkedIn post for one of the weeks you’re doing content marketing that might be a picture of a franchisee doing something fun.
I have three daughters in college and they’re like a lot of kids in that Generation C bucket, very entrepreneurial and very communicative. They will spend of time on their phones. And if I look at what they’re social media feeds look like, if I look at what their Snapchat looks like, if I look at what they’re Instagram look like, more importantly, what are the Instagram accounts that they gravitate towards, there’s a certain style and aesthetic and method of marketing in that type of imagery that’s very common and uniform for that generation. That is when I look at the typical visual marketing for a franchise system, we use stock pictures. We’re just pretty lame to put it bluntly. We do a really awful job of content marketing to start with, and we get into the really relevant stuff that’s catchy. So if you know what Boomerang is, is an app, or Memento is another really good app, they can use our Smartphone.
We’re sending young photographers out on our team, Generation C of millennial photographers on field visits with us when we go to clients, and we’re producing a lot of content just using a Smartphone for that matter which is an unheard of thing. And we’re doing Boomerang loop videos and Memento time lapse images and live image gifts, you might not even know what that is. A live image gift is my little Smartphones today make a series of pictures so you can see the moment around the time when you took the picture. It’s a really short slice, like a second or less. But you can actually create a gift that some movement in it.
So maybe you’re walking up to the front of your store, and the outside store instead of being a static image, has some animation and comes to life in text overlay and things like [inaudible 00:10:20]. But you can make a brand pop in a way that is really full of life. It doesn’t have to be a fun food brand. It can be something as mundane as a carpet cleaning franchise or a commercial cleaning franchise or even an IT business. There’s all types of ways to think about content today.
And the content takes the form, all three of these buckets, go in several places. Obviously your recruiting website is the home base for your brand story. So if you buy into content marketing you also have to buy into, at the same time, that you need to have a home base where you’re living, breathing brand story lives, and that’s typically your recruiting website. And on the website you have a core content, things like a research funnel with all the kind of traditional content that somebody needs to wrap their mind around your business, understand the culture and value proposition, build a proforma, and really visualize themselves as a franchisee. Because that’s what you need to get somebody educated and engaged and teed up for a conversation with a recruiter.
But you also need to have blog content on your website, some way to publish articles whether that’s landing pages, anchor pages, traditional blog articles, just ongoing content. Google expects you to publish new content on a regular basis. That could be something as simple as a series of press releases. It could be the kind of stuff, the content marketing we do for clients where we’re producing written content. It could be pages driven to dominate on SEO searches, but whatever it is, it’s on your website.
Beyond your website you’ll have forms like LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook are really critical. It’s not today as simple as a LinkedIn, putting a post in your newsfeed. Maybe you have a separate editorial calendar where you’re posting articles on the LinkedIn blog platform itself which is very powerful. Like when I can get a recruiter that works with us to post content we create for them on their personal LinkedIn, it’s shocking how much visibility that person gets from that exposure. And if you do it on a regular basis, people begin to become much more aware of your brand, and you built brand at a very inexpensive rate. So using the blog function on LinkedIn to post an actual article on LinkedIn’s blog and platform which is something very few people do, posting stuff in your newsfeed is very important.
I would tend to link articles and produce some of the visual content. Perhaps you have, and it’s the nature of the newsfeed on LinkedIn, an article that has an entry to stack. I could put an infographic up that says, “Look I’m podcasting in audio format. Content marketing has increased 200% in the last two years, and here’s why.” And have an infographic in the post and then link to a piece of information that backs up the claim. That’s an interesting thing to read.
So if you’re thinking about your concept, if you’re in a frozen dessert brand and there’s been a trend that affects your brand, or if you’re a specialty coffee shop, or you want to talk about the number of square feet that an office cleaning business has potential to do, there’s a lot of ways to use numbers and stats to create something interesting and visual that will stop people and get them to pay attention to you.
Same with podcasts. On Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram where we spend a lot less time thinking about traditional engagement, things like likes and comments and posts and members and shares on Facebook, and we think of more of those platforms as an advertising channel, so we do a lot of marketing around using things as ads, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, email ads, Instagram ads. And we create visual content that would stand on its own and be interesting to look at, but also is tied more towards the type of targeting that we’re running, and we use the creative to really target people and get them to concentrate on a specific franchise opportunity.
Here’s the deal after all that. So there’s three buckets of content we’ve talked a little bit about wherein this is Gary Vaynerchuk talked to the IFA, the keynote speaker. This is a very complex demographic and psychographic world we’re in, and success in advertising on these networks often that are really inexpensive to advertising on which reach millions of people revolves around your ability to, one, target very effectively. So no matter who you’re writing content for, creating content for, creating design for, you have to be really clear on who you’re trying to recruit, and be super specific. Because the more relative you can make it and the more contextual you can make your marketing, the more successful it will be.
And when people get frustrated with Facebook marketing which is ridiculous because that’s one of the best things going in the franchise we’re creating today, it’s often because they don’t stick with it long enough, they don’t understand how to work the leads, or they just don’t understand how to target it effectively. And very few people do in our industry so relatively new frontier for us to go on.
But we really believe that pushing through content and thinking about the demographics and the psychographics and the interesting behaviors and the persona marketing, and other programmatic pieces to content marketing, and tying all that back to your website, is the key to growing in the next five years in franchise development. And companies that understand these concepts and either use vendors like us or figure out how to do some of this on their own, and orchestrate it in a graded approach to, “How do I create visibility for this franchisee that I want to recruit?” are going to be much more successful.
We’re certainly seeing a lot of success with the clients we work with, and that we believe that it’s the future, and we got a lot of reinforcement this year from the IFA on that. So I think the challenge is the targeting, and second challenge is going to be simply that you have to create a just ton of content, like way, way more than we’re traditionally used to marketing.
These are not the kind of … The days are gone where you can put a small amount of content up and let it sit for months or years. You really have to have an editorial calendar for content, and you have to produce hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of content over a time, and be able to roll them out much more aggressively. So that’s the other piece, I think, that dooms a lot of content marketers is they underestimate the sheer volume it takes to get pieces going and to avoid ad fatigue and to be relevant.
Gary Vaynerchuk talked about if he had a retail store, say it was a coffee shop, that he would advertise in one mile radius just on Facebook and Instagram, and he would be really aggressive and spend a lot of money on that. But he would have hundreds of pieces of content and they would be very short run and they would overlap. And he’d have a strategy where every time somebody looked in their feed and they lived in that one mile radius, they would see a different picture, video, image, infographic podcast, whatever it was. But it was a constant stream of new content. It wasn’t the same thing over and over and over and over and over.
So I think that’s the challenge today with content marketing is there’s an opportunity to generate a lot more and a lot less. We certainly saw that with Code Ninjas, the keynote speaker for the marketing session at the IFA who added over 200 units in 2-1/2 years, the majority of through Facebook marketing and generating hundreds of leads a week off of Facebook. It works. It’s not for the faint of heart. It requires different skills on our salespeople and recruiters and thinking about marketing budgets, but we believe it’s worth the effort.
So those are our thoughts on the changing nature of content before our franchise development, and it’s a brave new world, and we’re full of excitement for what’s ahead. And if you’re curious about how any of this works, feel free to reach out and start a conversation with us, and please subscribe to our podcast. It’s available on iTunes, on our website, brandj.com, or on our Buzzsprout page.
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
Authenticity 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.
Why Brand Journalism is the New Key to Franchise Lead Generation
Professional Storytelling provides content that potential franchise leads crave
Quick, close your eyes and try to recall a business mailing, magazine advertisement or online banner ad that you’ve seen in the last week.
It should be easy — the average person is exposed to several thousand display ads a day. But are you able to recall a single one? It’s hard, isn’t it.
Now, think of the last article you read online.
If you are like most people, it is easy to recall a number of online articles. That’s because a good article uses vivid storytelling that appeals to both emotion and logic. A story about how a business responded to a tornado, and revealed the character of its leadership team, is much more powerful than any banner ad.
Gilad de Vries, a marketing professional, used a similar exercise to make his point in a recent Forbes.com article: It is almost impossible to tell a story in a display ad — and customers have become completely impervious to them. He said that much of the $620 billion a year that corporations spend on online advertising goes into the “brand awareness black hole.”
And he’s right. People have become expert at ignoring traditional display advertising.
That’s why it’s so important for companies to tell honest, factual stories that people will seek out rather than ignore.
How brand storytelling makes a difference
In today’s franchise lead generation market, if you can’t emotionally engage a potential candidate, you can’t get them to opt into the sales process and seriously consider what you have to offer.
Buying a business is a big decision, and to earn the consideration of potential franchise partners, you need to be able to appeal to their heart and mind.
There is a parallel in real estate. Good real estate agents will tell you that you can’t really ‘sell’ a house — the house has to sell itself. What they mean is that you can’t push someone into purchasing a home; the home buyers have to be able to envision themselves living there and the connection buyers make with the house is what drives the decision to buy.
Every time a home buyer walks into a house, they are telling themselves stories: This comfy room is where we’ll play games together as a family; this is where I’ll set hor d’oeuvres when we have house parties; I will put the Christmas tree in front of that window and its lovely drapes. People are buying the next chapter of their lives.
When buyers preview a vacant house, there is nothing to look at except the floor, ceilings and walls. There’s not much of a story to tell. As a result, buyers spend very little time inside the home — as little as 5-10 minutes. Savvy real estate agents hire staging companies to fill these empty shells with stories — comfy couches, stylish furniture and color-coordinated accesories. According to franchise home stager Showhomes, buyers spend upwards of 45 minutes in staged homes, which sell more quickly and for more money.
That’s the power of a story.
Recruiting franchisees is identical to selling homes. Both involve highly emotional decisions and large commitments of time and money.
How Brand Journalism attracts franchise leads
Display ads, banner ads, franchise portal ads and most email campaigns don’t work as well as they once did because today’s potential franchise buyers demand more information than ever before. They want to know who is in charge of your company, what it’s like to be a franchisee, and how it will affect their lives. We’ve essentially lost the first conversation a sales person has with a lead to the internet, and we’re not going to get it back.
Brand journalism gives companies a way to tell their stories across multiple platforms and media. And it’s not just about telling stories well — it’s also about telling stories while using the same language as a potential franchisee. Brand journalism is all about providing the content that the audience is already looking for.
Brand Journalism has been a hot marketing topic in 2012, and companies outside of franchising are rushing to adopt some form of brand storytelling. At the popular SXSW conference in Austin, several sessions focused on the new form of marketing. TED talks have mentioned it and just about every PR school in the country is struggling to incorporate it into existing curriculum. Entrepreneur magazine spotlighted Brand Journalism in its 2012 branding issue as the hottest trend in marketing this year.
For franchise systems that are adopting it, the results are breathtaking: enormous spikes in lead volume and even bigger gains in lead quality. They are getting more engaged leads who are easier to catch on the phone, more people opting into the sales process with a lot less selling on the recruiter’s part, and — most importantly — more sales to more candidates who understand the business and are a good fit.
Ten years ago, internet search, PPC and SEO were the big trends in franchise lead generation. Five years ago it was social media. In 2012 and 2013 we are entering into the brand storytelling and content marketing era.
The engaging stories unearthed through brand journalism overlaps PR, SEO, social media, blogging, website content, franchise portal strategy, paid search and even email campaigns. It’s an all-encompassing way to generate leads.
The stories are engaging because they use journalism-style storytelling. Stories are written to be engaging, transparent, informative and helpful. It doesn’t focus on sales pitches that make people skeptical. Instead, stories stand on their own and give people doing self-directed research about a franchise brand exactly what they are looking for — which isn’t always what your marketing department has been serving up.
Why companies should hire corporate storytellers to focus on franchise lead generation
How well is your brand doing telling its story to your audience of potential franchise candidates? Is your pipeline full of leads, and are you attracting people who really get your brand? Are you able to talk to the majority of leads that fill out your forms?
If not, it’s time to take another look at your overall lead generation strategy. Right now, there are people who are already interested in your brand. Use brand storytelling and you’ll have a better chance of recruiting them.
Brand Journalism is not easy to execute; it takes a special skill set rarely found in franchise marketing departments and almost never seen in development staffs. It takes trained journalists who have the know how to discover and tell stories. It takes outside help from people who know franchising and understand your audience. It also takes expertise in PR and SEO along with social media and web development. It is a lot more than just writing and blogging; it is an integrated approach. Think of it as adding a team member to your development staff whose job is to think from the outside in about how all of your marketing is working and make sure that the content stays current and relative.
Today, companies are embracing the chance to be their own publisher. Rather than rely on others to shape how the public perceives your brand, smart companies are using media they own and control — websites, blogs, social media, PR — to begin publishing stories about themselves that shape public perception. Becoming a publisher is far beyond the traditional role of a PR firm. When done well, it’s a new form of franchise lead generation that works.
Curious to learn more about using brand journalism for franchise lead generation? Start a conversation with us and see if it is a fit.
Why Brand Storytelling Makes A Difference
Authenticity 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.