What are the best ways to build a Facebook audience for your franchise?

One of the top mistakes made by small businesses and franchises is not properly defining and targeting their audience when using Facebook Ads. There are many ways to segment for potential customers - demographic traits such as household income, gender, age, and hobbies, but the number one characteristic that will waste your money when not properly set-up is geofencing. You can spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on Facebook ads with overly broad (or even incorrect) geotargets. If you are a local business that wants to attract local people, be sure to properly set-up your geofencing. You can create a radius around your business or use zip codes, but the last thing you want is to attract customers you cannot serve.

To build a Facebook audience for your franchise, create engaging, relevant content that resonates with your target demographic. Utilize Facebook Ads to target potential customers by location, interests, and behaviors. Host contests and giveaways to encourage shares and likes. Regularly interact with followers through comments and messages to foster community and encourage word-of-mouth referrals.

To build a Facebook audience for your franchise, focus on engaging content tailored to your target demographic. Use Facebook Ads to reach potential customers, leveraging its targeting capabilities. Host giveaways and contests to increase engagement. Share customer testimonials and behind-the-scenes glimpses to foster trust. For example, a coffee shop franchise could post daily specials and customer stories to attract local coffee enthusiasts.

It’s good to have multiple goals, but ensure you diversify your content to align with each. Tracking your metrics is a great way to continuously improve your strategy, based on which posts your audience engage with the most.

The best ways to build a Facebook audience for your franchise include targeted advertising, localized content, consistent posting, customer engagement campaigns, cross-promotion, and utilizing Facebook groups and influencers. Regularly monitor performance to optimize strategies.

Where this gets tricky for Franchisors is when it comes to compliance. While franchisees can and should manage their Facebook pages, brand consistency is key. Provide guidelines and resources to help them develop a solid strategy and content that speaks to their audience.

Providing your Franchisees with a wide selection of pre-formatted, editable templates for banners and profile images will give them the ability to refresh their pages regularly, but always keeping it on brand. Consider developing a catalog of seasonal assets, as well as community event facing assets that Franchisees can edit and post as required. These should not always be campaign/promotional, but should always clearly reflect the brand.

Keeping Franchisees pages consistent and on brand can be achieved by providing them with editable graphic templates. Create banner image templates that can be localized for brand campaigns. Create post templates for polls and quizzes for can be customized at local level with their own product, or local community content. And provide your Franchisees with examples of how to show behind-the-scenes content (via image posts, carousels, videos). Most importantly, teach them how to repurpose their content, and if suitable, how to share resources within the network (eg can a snippet of behind the scenes content to re-purposed at another location, as part of another video or post).

Post consistently on Facebook to keep your audience engaged. Mix up your posts with a mix of videos and photos with comment that will catch the attention of your audience. Also consider sharing other business content on your business page such as businesses that you do business with or other businesses in your neighborhood or shopping center. It is a great way to get your name out there to other followers. And as mentioned, don't forget the 80/20 rule on content as followers do not want to just see constant promotional posts. Post content on upcoming local activities including community and fundraising events along with some educational posts.

Think outside of text only comments when crafting your responses on other pages. Can you create assets that add to the personality of your brand that can be re-used when interacting with comments? Can you create /source light-hearted branded GIFs that can be added to your comments, or that provide support/validation to the posts you're interacting with?

This is a KEY factor that I’ve seen so many brands skip out on. Posting content is only one part of your social strategy. Showing that you’re truly engaged will, in turn, prompt others to engage with your brand.

Follow some of your major customer pages and share, like, and comment on some of their posts to get increased exposure on their business pages. Engage consistently with customers on your own page by responding to their comments or share photos of regular customers visiting your business. I see too many business pages that just post content with no engagement and it is clear that their social media posts are being handled either by the franchisor or a marketing group. Take the time to customize your social media content with videos and pictures or local events and standout from your fellow franchisee pages. Customers can easily spot a generic or "robot" social media business page.

Try out the many options on Facebook for ads and boosted posts. It is very easy to get started and almost impossible to screw it up, so don't be scared. Start with a small advertising budget and just play around with the various ad settings. Test out if videos or photo postings perform better in your market or with your optimal demographics. There are so many great options on Facebook Ads to customize your marketing. Try out small and increase your ad budgets as you get more comfortable. There are a lot of online training articles explaining the Facebook ad process and how to be most effective in your posting. And don't forget to make sure that your Facebook business page is also linked to an Instagram account for optimal advertising.

If Franchisees have their own Facebook pages, ensure that their other local area marketing assets and printed assets have the ability to add their own Facebook page handles as required. This could be in text format or QR codes, depending on the asset output.