11 Effective Franchise Lead Generation Tips for 2019

Franchise lead generation is a continuous marketing process which has the potential to make or break your business. Here are 12 effective franchise lead generation tactics that will deliver results in 2019.

1: Competitor Research 

To stand ahead of the crowd, you need to research your competition and know what they’re up to. 

Monitor their franchise lead generation efforts, including keywords used, social channels, content, time of posting, etc.  

2: Franchise Website Audit

A franchise business website optimized for mobile devices is essential if you are serious about franchise leads. It is important to do an exhaustive website audit as well. This helps with understanding if there are any  improvements to be made. 

Once you are done with your research, try to fix issues ASAP, and do remember to audit your website periodically.

3: Content Audit

If creating high-quality content is one thing, publishing it regularly is another.  A content audit will help you understand issues with both.

To be effective, your content audit should also examine social engagement, topics with respect to business goals, messaging consistency, traffic, leads generated, etc.

4: Centralized Data

To strategize a successful lead generation effort, data should be readily available in a common location like a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. 

If the data is splintered and in silos managed by different teams, then it is difficult to run a unified, effective, and accountable lead generation campaign. 

5: Ideal Customer Profile

Once you have a CRM system in place, you have the means to compile and analyze customer data. 

Once that is possible, it is easy to set up triggers which alerts you when franchise leads are ready for conversion.

6: Franchise Customer Personas

Assuming that you would have already created buyer personas, it is time to refine and improve them for 2019. 

The data collected from your CRM is most useful in creating buyer personas, which helps in keeping the sales and marketing team on the same page.

7: Marketing Channels

With the increasing use of various social media platforms by your prospects, it is challenging to figure out the best way to engage with them. You need to be active on every platform possible, if you are to attract high-quality franchise leads. 

What worked for your franchise in the past may not necessarily work now. For example, large exhibitions are no longer fetching enough quality leads to justify the investment. Conversely, videos and blogs deliver better ROI.

8: Video Marketing

Videos are attracting a huge amount of traffic every year and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. This makes video marketing one of the sought after ways to get franchise leads.

Franchise videos with a compelling story line almost always deliver compelling ROI. If you haven’t tried it so far, make room for video in your marketing budget.

9: Marketing Automation & Artificial Intelligence

Marketing automation is fast becoming a necessity in franchise lead generation, since there are too many aspects to deliver, monitor, track, and analyze. If all these regular processes are taken care of by automation tools, then your staff will have sufficient time to look into other important issues. 

Along with marketing automation, if you include Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like chatbots in your lead generation process, then it reduces your dependency on human customer support and slashes operational costs.

10: Retargeting

One important marketing effort to revisit in 2019 is prospect retargeting, since not many will make the purchase on their first website visit. 

Retargeting helps to regularly remind them to reconsider your products or services, until they are ready to buy.

11: Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is an important step in the lead generation process that lets you understand what is the buyer’s intent, which stage of the purchase cycle they are in, and if they are ready to convert or not.

If you haven’t done lead scoring yet, then give it a try in 2019. If you already have a lead scoring system in place, then you need to refine it.

To know more about effective franchise lead generation tips for 2019, Contact Us.