Franchise Marketing: Costs for Franchise Owners

Businesses that invest in marketing are investing in their future success. Consider marketing costs in your budget so you don’t leave any campaigns behind! With that in mind, determining a franchise marketing strategy for your local business while you are budgeting for the year can increase sales.

Use the information in this blog to figure out how to budget common components of a franchise marketing strategy for local businesses like content calendars, blogs and video.

Include marketing costs in your yearly budgeting.

Franchise Marketing Tools

First, it’s crucial that your national marketing strategy works with your local marketing efforts. Why would consumers trust your brand if it looks different everywhere it appears?

We recommend developing a national franchise marketing strategy first. Once you have completed a brand guide for your national franchise brand, use that as the skeleton of every franchise location’s marketing guidelines so your brand appears the same on every franchise account. You wouldn’t want one franchisor using incorrect brand colors, right?

With consistency in mind, consider these common features of a local franchise marketing strategy when planning out your budget. Often, the corporate office might provide advice on which features to use, but the final decision comes down to the local franchise.

Features to consider:

• Content calendar: Using a content planning platform like Condario keeps all your marketing assets, like those seen below, in one place. Read more about how to build a content calendar for a franchise business here.
• Visual assets: Visual assets like photos, graphics, gifs and videos are essential for local franchise owners looking to run social media accounts, blogs or paid campaigns. Consider hiring an agency that can take on the design of your visual assets and maintain your content calendar at the same time.
  • Video
  • Photography
  • Design
• Email marketing: Email is a cost-effective way to build relationships and generate leads.
• Paid media: PointA paid media campaigns get you more traffic by targeting keywords that are relevant to the products you sell or the services you provide.
• SEO and content marketing: Help your customers find you online by optimizing your website and blog pages for keyword targets and perfecting your technical SEO for maximum exposure in the search engine results pages (SERP).

Franchise Marketing Costs

Depending on your business’s resources, you may be able to handle some of the above marketing strategies yourself. For instance, if you have a photography team, you’ll be able to produce certain visual assets for use on social media or email marketing.

As a local franchise, however, it’s likely you’re already swamped with work and can’t find enough hours in the day to even think about managing a multi-faceted marketing strategy.

That’s where an agency like PointA would step in to help.

We work with you to determine which marketing tactics best fit your goals. A content calendar is your best option for keeping your assets organized across platforms. Aside from a content calendar, we might recommend your local franchise focus on local listings management, local SEO and social media (both organic and paid). Of course, the tactics depend on your business goals and specific situation.

While we can’t speak for other agencies, we estimate the cost of content calendars based on how many assets you require. We then sell you a bucket of retainer hours to create these assets on a monthly basis. You’re in control of implementation and management. You have all the assets at your fingertips with the content calendar – as well as a data-centered dashboard and monthly performance reports!

Streamline Your Local Franchise Marketing Efforts

PointA specializes in local franchise marketing efforts. Research indicates 7-8% of your budget should be allocated toward marketing – make the most of that 8% with help from an agency.

Contact us today at 231.882.1100 to discuss how our franchise marketing expertise can increase your return on investment.