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LinkedIn Company Pages: Optimized for Franchise Development

By Nicole HudsoN aNd RyaN VaspRa

M A R K E T I N G

According to the 2012 Annual Franchise

Development Report from Franchise Update Media

Group, an estimated 46 percent of a company’s

franchise development marketing budget is allocated

to public relations, search engine optimization and

social media. The result is that an estimated 39

percent of awarded franchise licenses in 2011 were

attributed to SEO and social media.

Public relations effectiveness has historically been

difficult to quantify, but has become an increasingly

important competency as awareness grows of the

value of public relations content that is optimized for

online use. When this medium is tailored for search

engine optimization by promoting PR content in

online channels like LinkedIn, it has the capacity to

show measurable return on investment by driving

engagement in social media and generating inbound

links, which influence page authority and rank for SEO.

An estimated 39 percent of awarded franchise licenses in 2011 were attributed to SEO and social media.

Behavior and research patterns of how franchise candidates are educating themselves and communicating with your brand are evolving.

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LinkedIn Company Pages: Optimized for Franchise Development

By Nicole HudsoN aNd RyaN VaspRaNick Powills, CFE, chief brand strategist at No Limit

Agency, a public relations firm specializing in franchising

said “Brands should no longer silo communications. PR,

social media, marketing and advertising must work together

in order to provide maximum value for each medium. While

communications in silos is challenging to quantify the

singular value, when impressions are spread across multiple

channels, the results are maximized. Lead generation is

not about a magic moment, rather many magic moments

merged together and repeatedly.”

Franchise organizations know that social media is

becoming more important as both a communication tool

in the sales process and a conversion channel for lead

generation. Spending on social media for franchise

development rose in both 2012 and 2013. The social media

channel that is garnering the most interest from franchise

executives and could provide huge dividends for the

franchise sales community is LinkedIn.

People join LinkedIn to showcase their careers, work

expertise, and find content, information, individuals or

business opportunities that advance their professional lives.

Also, when someone visits LinkedIn, the person is most likely

in a business-focused mindset, helping business’ content

perform inherently better. In a recent study of more than

5,000 businesses, HubSpot found that traffic from LinkedIn

generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74

percent, almost three times higher (277 percent) than both

Twitter (0.69 percent) and Facebook (0.77 percent).

Paul Litterer, the senior sales executive of national

accounts and franchise partners at HubSpot said, “LinkedIn

is a great place to start online lead generation on several

fronts. You can monitor and participate in groups that

represent your industry or groups that contain the right

prospects for your industry. Using topics covered in such

groups, you can start to strategize your own online marketing

program around the questions and concerns of people

within your market.”

How does a brand, and specifically franchise

development, take advantage of LinkedIn company pages to

showcase the business-ownership opportunity?

1. CreateaCompanyPage. This is a free tool that

will help you craft a better corporate brand and further

communicate your brand story and value propositions to

your target audience.

2. MainHeaderImages. Take advantage of

company pages’ new expanded header image (646×220

pixels) functionality. Add a variety of images that reflect a

range of business priorities, lifestyle and representations

of your ideal franchise candidate, marketing campaigns or

promotions.

3. Banners. Create banners that show the vibrant

nature of your business and culture. Showcase the franchise

owners and employees that a candidate will engage

with throughout the franchise ownership process from

investigation, to meet-the-team day to training and the

business launch.

4. ProductsandServices. Build your “Products and

Services” pages to showcase both the services you offer the

consumer and the franchise ownership opportunity. Craft

this content to be rich in the keywords and phrases that are

defined in the brand’s development SEO strategy. There is

also the opportunity to greatly increase lead conversion on

the Products and Services pages. In the eight areas where a

prospect can convert into the sales funnel, make sure these

are correctly optimized with images, calls to action, content,

and landing pages that link into your customer relationship

management and to automated marketing programs such as

HubSpot. (Continued on page 70)

70 FRANCHISING WORLD JULY 2013

5. Recommendations. Don’t be shy about asking

for recommendations of your products. Develop campaigns

that recommendations from your customers of the services

your franchise provides and ask your top validators to

provide recommendations on being a franchise owner.

6. PostingUpdates. One of the many “silver bullets”

in this channel is content curation. This is repurposing all

of your public relations articles, both past and present,

nationally and locally. Share your blog articles and reshare

content from other sources that educates your audience on

your brand, how to be a business owner and franchising.

The key to success is to make sure you have optimized these

posts for SEO, unique calls to action and landing pages.

This sets the stage for conversion into the sales funnel

and placement into a lead nurturing campaign as further

investigation of your franchise opportunity continues.

7. Engagement. Post status updates, share blog

posts and curate content that speaks to your audience and

then be there to continue the conversation when responses

occur. It can’t be all about your brand. The ideal candidates

that are looking to purchase a franchise are interested in

very specific things: entrepreneurship, career change,

business funding and planning, SBA loans, 401(k) rollovers,

work-life balance and franchising as a whole. These are the

themes you need to incorporate into your brand and content

strategy.

Service Brands International is a great example of

a franchisor using LinkedIn for franchise development.

The company has a family of brands − Molly Maid, Mr.

Handyman and ProTect Painters − all engaging in company

pages that market the franchise opportunity while the

parent company page integrates all the brands. The affiliate

marketing strategy that has been applied to the products

and services pages can be a powerful mix to generate

awareness and secure brand real estate on search engine

results pages.

In March, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions released a case

study on how Service Brands International uses company

pages for franchise development lead generation and SEO.

The results showed, “after 12 months of renewed focus from

the franchise development marketing team on all the brands’

LinkedIn company pages, the Service Brands company page

increased followers by 70 percent; the Mr. Handyman page

by 38 percent; the Molly Maid page by 67 percent; and the

Protect Painters page by 83 percent.”

Lana Khavinson, a senior product manager of company

pages at LinkedIn said, “LinkedIn is committed to supporting

its members as they build communities and develop brands.

As advanced targeting evolves within the LinkedIn network,

franchise companies have a great opportunity to recruit

new employees, find experienced vendors and connect

with professionals that are uniquely qualified to be franchise

owners.”

The behavior and research patterns of how franchise

opportunity candidates are educating themselves and

communicating with your brand are forever evolving. They

are engaging with social media, having conversations, and

consuming content from a variety of channels that need to

be aligned to work in conjunction with your website and other

marketing channels. Take advantage of all the great lead

development tools that LinkedIn has created and connect with

the 2 million-plus members that participate in this business

network.

What are you waiting for? Start your conversation today. n

Nicole Hudson is a digital marketing consultant and Ryan Vaspra is vice president of media services for Aviatech. Hudson can be reached at 248-808-9922 or nhudson@inboundleadsolutions.com and Vaspra at 858-777-5000

and info@aviatech.com.

HUDSON VASPRA

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