If you’ve franchised your business and you’re looking to grow your network, this article is for you. We share how we helped our children’s-activity franchise client grow their business from a handful of franchisees to over 40. We’ll take you step-by-step through the process and how we used Facebook ads to speed up the business growth.
3 important factors when growing your franchise network using digital marketing:
- Understanding who your ideal target franchisee is; both from a psychological standpoint (what makes them tick, what would encourage them to join, and what objections they might have) and in terms of demographics (age, gender, interests, location, income, education, career, status, etc).
- Getting your franchise opportunity in front of your ideal franchisees, and combining your in-depth knowledge to be able to target them directly on social media.
- Understanding the process and user journey from being a cold lead to getting on a call, and using digital marketing strategies to facilitate that journey.
There are over 2 BILLION daily active users on Facebook. Without a doubt, your target audience are using Facebook or Instagram on a regular basis. Facebook advertising gives us the unique opportunity to leverage all the data it holds on every individual for a fraction of the cost of other marketing channels.
Facebook Advertising helped generate £169,200 for our client with £3k ad spend:
We’d been working with a national franchisor in the children’s-activity space. They came to us with an underperforming franchise recruitment drive, with a close rate of 2 franchises per annum and an average lead time of 6 months for a low value franchise package (under £5k).
They had previously tested the water with Facebook Advertising, but like so many business owners, didn’t really have the knowledge to execute and optimise campaigns successfully. As a result, good quality leads were simply not being generated and the ROI was pretty low.
Jess is absolutely amazing! When I needed to get my franchise business off the ground and get the message out there in a big way she did in buckets – I grew my network to 40 in a short time.
Here’s how we built a highly successful Facebook ads strategy to grow their franchise network, that continued to run without our input:
Step 1: The Audience.
The process started with what we call Audience Mapping. The key here is to really understand who your ideal prospect is, not only to be able to reach out to them, but to speak to them in all your communications.
As an advertiser, you’re able to target the interests, demographics, and behaviours of your ideal audience so you can be sure to get in front of the perfect prospect.
We targeted the following audiences on Facebook:
• A cold audience using age, location, interests and behaviours.
• A lookalike audience based on the client’s current franchisees.
• A warm audience of people who had seen one of our ads, and entered the sales funnel, but had not yet signed.
Need some audience targeting ideas? Book your free Facebook Ads Optimisation call, visit jab-marketing.uk/how
Step 2: The Hook.
We had to dig into the psychology of why someone scrolling Facebook would stop to respond to an advert for a franchise opportunity. What was their current pain-point, and how would the franchise opportunity address it?
There were a number of different hooks to test and we tracked performance against our main KPIs of metrics such as CTR (click-through rate).
We tested out a variety of hooks including special offer, pain-points, FOMO (fear of missing out), and case studies. Testing different hooks not only drove down the overall costs but most importantly it drove more qualified leads and allowed us to scale.
Step 3: The Objective (now we get a little technical).
We tested a number of different Facebook ads campaign types for our franchise client, but we’ve found that the most successful is the conversion objective. This means that Facebook will show the advert to people more likely to ‘convert’ – i.e. complete an initial registration form. We use the term convert/conversion in different contexts throughout the funnel, but with regards to Facebook advertising, the conversion is whatever ‘next step’ your audience will take. In our case this is a prospectus registration form.
Be aware, that in order for the algorithm to optimise the campaign accurately, your pixel needs to be collecting at least 50 conversions per week – in our case at least 50 registrations per week. If you are not generating that many conversions, opt for a traffic objective instead, focussing on click-throughs to your landing page.
Once the pixel has found it’s stride (usually at around 8000 impressions), you can optimise for the conversion objective. You might find your CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) will increase, but your CPL (cost per lead) will decrease.
In order to allow the pixel to collect data and optimise, you will need standard events set up on your website through your pixel, so that it can track when different events take place on your website; this includes leads, page views, purchases, etc, to allow you to use data from each step of the funnel, and also allowing you to retarget and create lookalike audiences based on your standard event metrics.
If you’ve not had success with Facebook advertising before, diagnose common issues on a free Facebook Ads Optimisation call with our team here.
Step 4: The Funnel.
A high-converting nurture sequence is paramount if you’re running any type of lead generation campaigns. We established quite quickly that the sales funnel – that is the point from which leads are generated, through to closing the sale – was quite convoluted and inefficient. There was little or no automation in place, and the systems that existed weren’t really working as they should.
So we mapped out a more succinct journey for the potential lead to travel through. This involved email automation, integration with their website, email nurture sequences, retargeting stacks, and the use of a Messenger bot.
The main consideration for each of the elements of the funnel is the mindset of the prospect at each point throughout the decision-making process. You need to ensure that the message and method of communication addresses your prospects reservations while highlighting the outcome.
By explicitly addressing their key concerns, you ensure they move through the funnel towards the end goal (i.e. sale). For example, offering finance options at the point when their consideration of funding may be an issue is a great example of how to reduce a bottleneck in your funnel. We were able to segment leads based on their engagement and interaction with the sequence, and deliver content that helped them get closer to a decision. It’s also important to have a very strong CTA (call to action) for people to want to take the next step – in this case it was to book a discovery call or attend one of the client’s discovery days.
Step 5: The Budget.
In order to calculate how much to spend on Facebook advertising, you need to reverse-engineer the costs and metrics.
• Calculate the LTV (lifetime value) of a sale.
• How many leads are required to close one sale?
• Your lead cost multiplied by the number of leads required gives you a target acquisition cost; this is usually around 30% of the LTV.
Next, calculate your on-page conversion rate (i.e. how many people out of every 100 who land on your page, go on to complete a registration form?).
Using these various Facebook ads metrics, you can calculate how many link clicks are required in order to generate enough leads that will convert to a sale.
Bear in mind your budget in relation to these costs. For example, if a lead costs £20 and you need 100 to make a sale, be prepared to spend £2000 in ads to make 1 sale. If you’re only spending £5 per day on ads, it’s going to take 400 days to make that one sale.
Step 6: Retargeting.
The magic of Facebook ads is the ability to retarget visitors for much cheaper than the cost of acquiring their attention in the first place. For instance, you can retarget people who visited your website after clicking your ad, but exclude those have completed a registration form. You can speak very specifically to people using your ad copy, based on the fact they have shown interest but not committed with a registration.
We also used a Messenger campaign for people who showed intent without making a next step, which invites them to contact one of the franchise team directly with their concerns/questions. This strategy is very much a long game. It may take 30 days or more for Facebook to start working with the data, but once set up, can generate consistent leads on a rolling basis.
Click here to find out how you could integrate retargeting into your marketing by booking a free Facebook Ads Optimisation call with our team.
How we optimised our campaigns:
Using urgency: our average link CTR (click through rate) was 1.24% but using urgency in some of our ad creative, certain ad-sets achieved a link CTR of 2.5%, meaning we were able to acquire more leads for the same overall cost.
Pre-qualifying leads: the landing page I designed posed questions/statements about key requirements from the outset, leading to leads that are pre-qualified and more likely to convert to a sale. This lead to a lower on-page conversion rate of 13% but a much better sales conversion rate overall.
Testing: we ran a few different test audiences with a variety of hooks that would appeal to them specifically. Once we’d determined which one resonated the most, we scaled that campaign. The idea at this stage is to test different creatives and headlines, and then scale the best performers. Look out specifically for good performers with high link CTR and low CPL, and switch off ads/ad-sets which aren’t working.
The Results:
Over the course of 12 months, the results were incredible:
This shows with an ad spend of £3019, we generated 1156 leads at a cost per lead of £2.61 with a (LTV) revenue of £169,200 which is 56 times or 5600% return on ad spend.
Take note:
The nature of the sales process means that it is very difficult to directly attribute sales to specific channels, and there are a number of factors to consider when calculating attribution results. Although our client did not undertake any other trackable digital advertising such as Google Ads, they did attend trade shows and exhibitions as well as in-person workshops, which were advertised to their email list and on social media. This is the beauty of digital marketing – it acts as another hands-off touchpoint that works in addition to your other promotional efforts.
Ready to accelerate your franchise growth? Book a free Facebook Ads Optimsisation call with the team, visit jab-marketing.uk/how
A few things to remember:
• Check the current guidelines and ensure your ads and landing page comply with Facebook’s guidelines, especially when it comes to money-making claims and opportunities.
• People don’t want to be sold to on Facebook; instead, add value where you can to build your audiences and nurture a relationship.
• When starting a new campaign, keep your daily budget under £100 and then scale gradually in order to feed the algorithm. Don’t be too aggressive in your spending, and keep an eye on the metrics to ensure you’re campaigns are optimised.
• As difficult as it is, allow at least two months to begin to see results and be able to scale.