Social Media And Franchise Sales – Update from the 2012 IFA Convention (part one)

The IFA convention in Orlando was a great show.  Stark Logic attended with 5 representatives to learn about best practices with respect to consumer marketing and franchise development strategies.  While the show was great from a networking point of view, it also provided a lot of insight as to what franchises are doing successfully and how they are using social media to their advantage.

Social media has dominated the franchise conference  landscape the past four years.  I have attended 7 different conferences and the agenda seems to be the same for every conference with 50% of the show (the marketing part at least) dedicated to how social media can be used to increase sales and leads.  The 2012 IFA wasn’t any different.  From the technology seminar where Facebook presented upcoming plans to the room full of round tables dedicated to different topics, social media ruled the show.

 

How Social Media Can Be Used for Franchise Sales

 

Last year, I attended the Franchise Update Leadership conference and, as has been the case for the past 4 years, social media was a huge part of the show. How can social media be used to sell franchises? 4 years ago, out of 100 of the largest franchise systems in the Unites States, only 6 franchises were sold via social media. Last year, 4 years later, only 36 units were sold using social media. Of the 36, 6 were sold from CraigsList which doesn’t seem to be social media.

 

The big question at this IFA and previous shows was how to sell franchises using social media and the answer seems to be the same. Social Media is NOT a tool for selling franchises.  At one of the round tables, I did hear one company that has found some success using LinkedIn and they used profiling and many hours of work to put out messages to a number of people before they got some leads.  I did not hear any company have any success using Facebook to sell franchises.

 

Best practices are to include franchise opportunities messages in all consumer marketing through social media, but creating a separate franchise sales fan page on Facebook does not work and Facebook advertising has not worked.

 

The only methods I heard that have been successful include marketing strategies through Career Builder or Monster.

By Rich Stark, President of Stark Logic

For more information about online marketing strategies and how we can help you, please call (888) 915-6442 or visit www.starklogic.com.