Brand Journalists specializes in franchise sales PPC and SEO
Stop wasting money on lead generation programs that don’t work and harness the power of your brand story to engage and educate top-performing franchisee prospects. We can help you break through if you are new, want to increase results or have hit a wall!
Google PPC vendors and you’ll get pages of results. Truth is, there are only a handful of suppliers that understand how to generate high-quality franchise leads from paid digital marketing platforms. Buying a franchise isn’t an impulsive action – it is a long-term goal for a buyer with a substantial research funnel.
Google Adwords is often ranked as the highest quality source of franchise buyers available to franchisors. It is common for the average franchise lead from Adwords to cost over $100 a lead and even higher if you are targeting competitors. You might see vendors advertising lower cost per lead from this channel, but beware! You often get what you pay for!
The reason Adwords leads are so valuable is that Google allows you to intersect buyers searching for specific phrases and pay for top ranking so you are highly visible. These buyers have intent – meaning they are seeking information with an intent to buy. The language of the questions they are asking is the key to what intent they have. For instance, here’s a screen shot of a search for ‘Best Burrito Franchise” –
There are over 30 franchise concepts bidding on “burrito Franchise” and phrases that match the term. Pancheros, a Brand Journalists client, is the top ranked advertiser. How do you beat out the competition and generate cost effective leads that turn into actual buyers? Working with a supplier partner that has enough experience in franchise segments to position your brand to win.
Some brands don’t advertise on Adwords because they can’t get cost effective leads and it is common for brands to spend thousands a month with little to show for the effort. It is also common to work with suppliers that can generate ‘conversions’ that aren’t good quality and never buy, wasting valuable marketing dollars.
The nature of PPC advertising is getting more complex by the day and we manage over $1.5 million a year of paid search spends specifically for franchise lead generation.
Where do deals come from?
Want to get advice on how to start PPC, SEM or SEO lead generation? We include these services in our standard lead generation retainer; start a conversation with us and start improving your franchise lead program today!
What is PPC
According to Wordstream, PPC is an online advertising model in which advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their online ads. All of these searches trigger pay-per-click ads. In pay-per-click advertising, businesses running ads are only charged when a user actually clicks on their ad, hence the name “pay-per-click.”
In franchise sales, we primarily use PPC to refer to Google Ads or Adwords. Brand Journalists offers a few PPC services for franchise development departments:
- Google targeted search term ads within Adwords
- Responsive search ads within Adwords
- Persona display marketing
- Responsive display advertising
- Lead form ads
- Retargeting display ads
- Segmented display campaigns
- Email look-alike lists
- Behavior and interest targeted advertising (such as targeting buyers looking at SBA loans or franchise websites)
We recommend ALWAYS spending some of your budget, no matter what your goals are or how large or small your spend is, on PPC marketing. Franchise buyers with intent are out there and if they don’t buy your opportunity, they will gravitate to the brand that advertises best.
What is SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimization, is the work you have to apply to any website you launch. Google has a noble mission: deliver relevant results to people using its search engine.
Do any typical franchise or franchise industry segment search and you’ll see that there are tens of THOUSANDS of search results. For organic search results – the 10 ranked positions on a search engine results page, such as this one for Chem Dry Carpet Cleaning, it is important for your franchise opportunity to rank highly and stand out on the page.
Organic results are important – franchise buyers see them as more ‘trustworthy’ than a paid placement, which makes sense. Google ranks content by how authoritative it is, the closer a page or site matches the detailed information a user is searching for, the more likely your site will rank highly.
SEO services focus on gaining positive ranking for your recruitment website so it shows up as highly as possible in the free, organic results.
Consider:
- Google directs the highest amount of traffic towards organic results and they are the most trusted source for people researching a purchase.
- Google is very, very particular about their rankings and ranking in the top five results for a keyword indicates that your content is optimized properly.
- Moving up in the rankings is difficult and takes time, but once you’re there you get to reap the benefits for a long time.
- Results on the first page of Google (The Top 10) receive 92% off all search traffic on Google.
- 33% of clicks from organic search results go to top-ranked listing.
Spending time and resources on organic SEO work can pay off in a big way for your recruitment efforts. It doesn’t produce instant results but over time can become highly valuable. We combine PPC and SEO work so our efforts on your behalf are integrated, producing better results on both fronts.
Similar to PPC, the specific words and phrases you target for SEO matter. Language matters! Work with supplier partners that understand the complexity of these connections and, like us, can demonstrate positive ranking and lead generation.
What is Facebook and LinkedIN Advertising
Where do people spend their time online?
Increasingly, our best target franchise owners are spending time on social networks. The average person spends over 2 hours looking at various social networks today! Two networks dominate time, especially for prospective franchise buyers: Facebook and LinkedIN. As part of our paid advertising to help clients generate quality leads we recommend advertising on both platforms.
Lead quality varies but the cost per lead is low – we often generate leads as low as $5 and $10, making it an affordable way to generate higher volume of demand for your franchise opportunity.
There is no silver bullet or single tactic that will create a consistent franchise sales breakthrough; a relentless pursuit of the best candidates on as many channels as you can afford create demand for your opportunity and demand drives sales conversations – Thomas Scott
