Franchise Update Magazine Issue IV, 2012

Grow Market Lead Mystery Shoppers Speak! 44 Mobile Response Michael Alston, Landmark Interactive Franchise Group U Social Media Jon Carlston, Process Peak W e conducted the social marketing benchmark analysis. This entailed research on the franchisor/ franchisee presences on Facebook, T witter, LinkedIn, and blog networks. As expected, Facebook continues to make the most impact. Despite the significant audience Facebook represents, 68 percent of franchisors did not mention the franchise opportunity on their page. Only 17 percent had a franchise request form on their Facebook page. While Twitter can play an important role in consumer marketing for select brands, it represents only about 2 percent of the total social audience. The most surprising finding in our research was the lack of consumer marketing fundamentals on the franchisor Facebook pages: 60 percent did not provide a link enabling visitors to search for a location. In general, franchisors are doing a much better job of engaging their audience. The engagement percentage averaged 1.5 percent in 2012, compared with 0.6 percent the year before. Most brands are still not leveraging their social presences to bring exposure to their franchise opportunity, and have not implemented programs to ensure that brand integrity is intact at the local level. n Recommendation: We encourage franchisors to develop a plan for franchisees to execute effectively and appropriately at the local level, therefore demonstrating to potential candidates the opportunities they would have to drive local business as a franchisee. Last, we would encourage them to work with marketing and ensure that the ability to request information on ownership is available through all their local presences. Franchiseupdate Iss u e IV, 2 0 1 2 sing proprietary web server and tracking data, we analyzed mobile and desktop usage patterns across our network of online franchise recruitment sites, or portals (Franchise.com, FranchiseOpportunities.com, FranchiseSolutions.com, FranchiseGator.com, and BusinessBroker.net). The research covered more than 15 million online and mobile visits since we started adding mobile features more than 2 years ago. We found that mobile channels are now a significant segment in the franchise recruitment/sales process. The mobile share of visitors to franchise portals has tripled since January 2011, and mobile phones and tablets now account for 20.7 percent of all visitors to the group’s websites. Within that mobile segment, phones account for 57 percent of visitors and tablets for 43 percent. Tablets are the fastergrowing category, with a share that has more than quadrupled since January 2011. The number of mobile franchise prospects submitting online leads has tripled in the past 18 months, reaching 20.2 percent of online investment inquiries. Mobile users are high-value prospects and were 8.7 percent more likely to request franchise information with $100,000 to $500,000 in available capital to invest. We were surprised that mobile lead submissions grew just as fast as mobile browsing and research. The smaller screens were not a barrier to filling in lead forms with investment information. We were also surprised at how fragmented the mobile “audience” is. The different devices, screen sizes, apps, and browser choices are far more complex to develop for than the desktop web. Lead submissions were spread out among all of these different platforms. n Recommendat [ێ

Franchise Update Magazine Issue IV, 2012 | Page 46