Becoming a franchisor is an exciting opportunity that comes with a lot of responsibility. At Franchise Digital Marketing, we’ve seen all too many franchisors dive into their business without considering tactical business moves, like who controls the company’s online presence. In the digital space, it is of vital importance for franchisors to have sound marketing strategy for each of their franchisee’s digital strategy before they start selling franchises.Consider this scenario: Once you sell your first franchise, that franchisee will start generating business by creating listings on every digital outlet, from Google My Business to Angie’s List. A few weeks/months/years pass and your franchisee finds another opportunity and sells their turf. As the franchisor, it’s your responsibility to find a new franchisee for that territory, but there’s a problem. All of the old listings are in your old franchisee’s name – they contain that franchisee’s phone number, address, and photos, and you have no way of accessing these listings to make changes.This is detrimental to both the local and national business because you stand to miss out on potential clientele. If users can’t easily find you in the right location, they’re going to go elsewhere. On the other hand, if that franchisee’s location closes, you could be missing out on redirecting consumers to a new or different location.
The answer to this problem seems simple – log on and make the necessary adjustments to the listings. Remember, though, that your franchisee set each of these accounts up with their own login credentials. Queue the nightmare of dealing with countless representatives in an attempt to have these listings changed.
In order to remain in control, keep branding consistent, and easily make adjustments to your listings, it’s vital that every franchisor actively control each of their franchisee’s digital marketing presence. As a franchisor you should control…
- Each of your website domains through whichever hosting provider you’re using.
- You must have access to the CMS or backend of every website under the franchise
- You should also have control of a unified master Google account that grants you access to Google Map listings, Google My Business, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager. Each of your franchisees can also have access to this information, but your franchisor email should be the administrator of these accounts.
- Similarly, you as the franchisor should have one master account for Google Adwords. Each of your franchisees can access the MCC, but your administrative account can access any territory’s campaign at any time to check for brand compliance, ad content, etc.
- The Franchisor should also own all social media accounts, have admin access/accounts or at worst control logins.
Why? To make running your business simpler! Whether you inherit new territories, replace one franchisee with another, or change a franchise’s phone number, you’ll be able to access that location’s information quickly and easily to make the changes necessary. This keeps your business running smoothly.
Doing so can also add an extra layer of protection to your business. You’re in control of how company logins and passwords are formatted, as well as the content your franchisees are publishing online. Certain platforms, like Google+, make franchisor control easy. You’re able to access everything through a single Google account and dish out control to franchisees as needed. Other user-friendly platforms include:
- Yelp
- Bing
- Yahoo
- Angie’s List
And for those platforms who don’t allow complete control from one administrative account, we recommend using uniform login and password credentials to make things easier (ex. Username: Franchisee Location ; password: FranchiseeName123).
Don’t wait until it’s too late to take control of your franchisee websites. Still confused on how to do so? Reach out to FDI today to learn more.