Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a proven way for franchises to generate more quality leads and customers cost-effectively. When implemented and optimized correctly, PPC gives your franchise visibility against larger competitors while delivering a strong return on your marketing investment.
Why PPC Advertising is Essential for All Franchises
PPC allows your franchise to:
Target Customers Actively Searching
The biggest benefit of PPC is it puts your ads in front of people already searching for your products or services online. This intent-based targeting gives you higher relevancy and conversion rates over other advertising outlets.
72% of searchers on Google follow up on ads for more information or make a purchase.
Compete Against Dominant Chains
PPC helps smaller franchises stand out against giant chains dominating organic listings. You can buy keywords specific to your franchise brand and offerings to get on the first page.
Generate Measurable Results
With PPC, you can directly see how much you spend and correlate it to the number of leads, calls, or sales generated. This makes determining ROI simple and gives you actionable data to optimize campaigns.
One franchise brand boosted their monthly leads by 26% in just 2 months through expert PPC management.
Best Practices for PPC Campaign Optimization
Follow these guidelines to ensure your franchise PPC campaigns perform optimally:
Granular Keyword Targeting
Research buying keywords around all your products, services, locations and narrow it down for tight relevance. Group similar keywords into tightly themed ad groups.
Location-Based Campaigns
Structure campaigns around geographic areas you service locally. Use radius targeting, location extensions, campaign naming (e.g. Miami Franchises) and more to drive local store traffic.
Search Intent-Focused Ads
Analyze keywords to determine user intent – are they ready to buy or just researching? Then craft compelling ads that speak directly to that intent.
Searchers with purchase intent convert over 10X more than generic traffic. Optimize ads for buyers, not researchers.
Mobile PPC Optimization
With over 60% of searches on mobile, ensure ads stand out on small screens using call extensions, responsive display ads, click-to-call buttons and more. Prioritize actions over clicks.
Executing a Cohesive PPC Strategy Across Franchises
A key PPC challenge for franchises compared to other businesses is balancing national scale and branding with locally optimized efforts.
To achieve this cohesion, the corporate marketing team should manage umbrella brand terms and larger regional/state campaigns. Individual franchises can then take the lead on hyper local city/neighborhood campaigns.
No matter what level runs them, be sure to:
Maintain Accessible Campaign Dashboards
Give corporate and franchisee teams access to shared dashboards to view campaign analytics specific to their locations.
Develop Reusable Templates and Assets
Create display ads, call-only ad formats, location extensions and other assets that franchisees can deploy with easy customization.
Incentivize PPC Adoption Through Subsidies
Consider offering full or partial PPC subsidies to franchisees who meet lead/sales goals. This incentivizes them to dedicate budget.
Papa John’s reported a 13% increase in local store sales after rolling out a suite of free digital marketing for franchisees, including AdWords access.
Getting Franchise Owners On Board
Some franchise owners may see PPC and paid search as newfangled marketing tactics and fail to understand the value compared to traditional options. That’s why it’s so important for corporate marketing teams to educate franchisees.
Provide concrete examples of PPC success stories and data-driven ROI across the franchise system. Demonstrate how an optimized strategy can cost-effectively deliver more leads and sales compared to other methods.
Offering partial or full management of campaigns at the corporate level also reduces the barrier to entry. Franchisees may lack the expertise, tools or bandwidth to manage PPC correctly on their own. Centralized PPC can solve this while still giving local owners campaign visibility.
In Conclusion
Pay-per-click advertising should be a franchise marketing cornerstone due to its unrivaled ability to drive measurable leads and sales. By coordinating campaign efforts across corporate and franchise locations, you can execute a cohesive PPC strategy tailored both locally and nationally. Just focus on optimizing for customer intent, tracking ROI and incentivizing buy-in across the organization.
