Social media allows franchise businesses to customize their marketing like never before and connect with local audiences in meaningful, authentic ways that truly speak to them. But franchise social media marketing comes with its own unique challenges.
Unlike independent businesses that handle all social media marketing themselves, franchise businesses must handle the added complexities that come with multiple owners in different locations. It’s important to ensure consistent branding, messages, and voice, no matter what location is advertising or what platform is being used. When it’s poorly managed, franchise social media can be ineffective or even reflect poorly on the whole brand.
Are you wondering how to balance a strong brand with your franchisees’ local voices? This guide will walk you through the challenges you might face, as well as some strategies to help you overcome them.
What Challenges Do Franchise Businesses Face with Social Media?
Challenge 1: Maintaining Brand Consistency While Allowing Local Flexibility
One of the biggest challenges of franchise social media marketing is finding the perfect balance between maintaining a consistent brand image and offering local flexibility. National campaigns serve to establish the overall brand identity, but each location needs to have its own promotions and events.
Without giving franchisees enough leeway to make their own posts, they may feel frustrated and unable to localize content to meet the needs of their particular customer base. But without clear direction, locations may slowly drift off brand, diluting the message of national campaigns.
Challenge 2: Inconsistent Voice and Graphics Across Locations
A consistent brand voice builds trust with your customers. It shouldn’t matter whether a customer visits a franchise location in Phoenix or scrolls through a San Francisco location’s Instagram page. They should be getting the same brand voice and experience every single time.
But when different franchise owners use drastically different tones online, it can be confusing to customers. Add in low-quality graphics, and your brand’s reputation can be seriously impacted.
Remember: Brand reputation takes years to build up, but only one serious, off-brand misstep to cause damage.
Without guidelines and safeguards in place, a franchisee could unintentionally post content that goes against your brand standards or even misrepresents your brand entirely.
Challenge 3: An Inconsistent Social Media Presence
Franchise owners are busy. Ordering inventory, managing staff, and building strong relationships with customers takes up a lot of time. Social media and marketing frequently get shelved until tomorrow or the next day … or next week.
Unfortunately, social media algorithms don’t understand being too busy to post. An inconsistent posting schedule means that a franchise’s online visibility will drop. That could result in potential customers assuming the franchise is inactive or unengaged.
How to Overcome These Challenges
Solution 1: Develop Clear Brand Guidelines
The most important step you can take when building a social media marketing strategy for your brand is to establish clear, comprehensive guidelines right from the start.
This should be more than just color palettes and logos. Guidelines should also address:
- Tone of voice
- Imagery
- Fonts and formatting
- Suggested themes and topics for content
Good guidelines should provide a clear structure while still leaving enough room for franchisees to add their own local identity to their posts.
Solution 2: Empower Content Creation
Most franchise owners don’t have a background in marketing. Some may have never used social media on a professional level before and may be unsure how to post effectively.
The easier you make the content creation process, the more likely franchisees are to post regularly. So, provide your franchisees with easily customizable templates for graphics, captions, and even videos. Then, they can simply add local details before posting. Not only do templates save time, but they also ensure that your franchisees’ posts are polished and on-brand.
Simplify things further by using a company-wide social media management platform. This keeps all assets and posts on one centralized platform, making it simpler for franchisees to post and easier for you as the franchisor to retain oversight.
Solution 3: Provide Training and Support
Franchisees don’t need to be social media experts who know the ins and outs of every platform, but they do need enough training to be able to run their socials effectively.
Provide your franchisees with tools such as:
- An onboarding course that covers the basics of marketing and what your brand expects from franchisees
- Easy-to-use how-to guides explaining how to create posts, use brand assets, and respond to reviews
- Regular communications sharing best practice tips and success stories, as well as informing your franchisees about platform changes and new features
- A dedicated support team to provide franchisees with guidance and help along the way
When franchisees feel supported, they’re more likely to stay motivated and maintain an active, on-brand presence online.
Solution 4: Measure Success the Right Way
Your San Diego franchise is getting lots of likes on their Instagram posts, and its follower number is going up every day. They’re doing a good job … right?
It can be tempting to measure social media success purely on metrics like comments or followers. But true success often lies a little deeper than that.
It’s worth taking the time as a franchisor to clarify what your end goal is. Communicate specific, achievable goals to franchisees, and provide them with the tools to make it happen.
Trying to increase the number of new member signups this year? Let your franchisees know, and provide them with tips and customizable social media posts to help them succeed. Then, track this metric and share updates so franchisees can understand the progress they’re making.
Solution 5: Partner With the Right Agency
Running a brand and coordinating franchises is complicated enough without having to develop an effective franchise social media marketing plan too. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to social media, but fortunately, partnering with the right team will make the path much easier.
At InnoVision Marketing Group, we’re experts in helping franchises create recognizable, scalable, and most importantly, locally relevant social media presences.
Whether you have 10 franchise locations in California or 100 around the United States, we’re ready to work with you to bring your vision to life and help you stand out from the competition. Contact us today to learn what our team can do for you.
Meta: Discover how strategies like creating brand guidelines and providing templates can help you overcome the challenges of franchise social media marketing.
