18/05/2018
What are some digital marketing tips for multiple franchise restaurant?
When it comes to something like a restaurant, local search is the name of the game in your digital strategy.
Layering in the franchise element, we have to be smart about building a strong brand with excellent recall as you customers move from region to region.
Here’s how to achieve both.
How to achieve strong local SEO
Location & Maps
Set up a Google My Business account and do a bulk management so all listings and in sync and aligned. Bulk location management overview
Make sure that map listings are correct, locations are photographed etc. half of all local mobile searchers are looking for address information, and Google Maps is a top contender for this kind of information.
Reviews
Have a strong reviews presence across the major review engines: Yelp, Facebook and Google. Monitor your presence, empower local managers to engage and response to reviewers both positive and negative. These review sites also offer advertising and offers that are highly relevant to intent and have a high conversion rate. They’re also great for helping with SEO.
Social Media
This can go both ways, either one presence for the brand or pages for each location. There is no “right way” to do this. It’s up to you and your organization. Can the franchise support franchisees with enough content to ensure consistent engagement? And can franchisees ensure someone is available to manage local pages if you don’t have just one brand page? For some advice on managing multiple, local pages check this: Localizing social media
Building a strong brand
Contrary to what others are suggesting here, don’t build a website for every location. That becomes a nightmare for technology logistics, managers generally don’t care about maintaining websites and if you roll out things like online ordering for delivery, it’s easier if it’s centralized on one site and through one POS that directs orders to the stores selected by users.
You can have a locations section of the site that lists all of your franchise locations. This also serves two purposes, one a boost for local seo, but also a lead generator for new franchisees.
Finally, as your franchise brand grows, you want people to recognize the restaurant name, and to google it. Domain authority builds with brand authority. As you build your link profile, all the franchise locations benefit and so do local searches like brand name + location or restaurant type + location.
That’s a win for frachisor and franchisee.
