Marketing Your Franchise Online

Do you want to successfully market your business franchise online? Here's an internet strategy you can use for your franchise opportunity.

1. Design a very simple web site.

I've visited quite a number of web sites of Philippine companies, and their franchise page is sometimes hidden under layers of beautiful flash pages. If you insist on having a visually attractive web site, go ahead and maintain it. Please consider, however, building a partner web site that contains mostly text and no flash programming (i.e., the ones with moving images, the ones which show 15% loading....)

When you have a simple web site or even a web page, your info will have a better chance of being found in the search engines.

2. Create a blog or frequently updated web site.

A blog is simply a web site that can be easily updated, without you having to rely heavily on a webmaster. Each time you have a new item to write about, just login and fill-in-the-blanks (title, body of your article or post), and your web site gets updated.

The more frequently your web site is updated, the more search engine robots will visit your site. When that happens, your web pages will rank higher in the search engines.

Try visiting Google.com, for example, and do a search for your company name. Does your web site appear in the first page of the search engine results?

3. Package your franchise information as a downloadable PDF file.

Do your potential franchise applicants surf the web a lot? I don't know exactly how much, but it's probably a lot less compared to their children or their friends.

If you offer a downloadable PDF file about your franchise opportunity, people can download and print it. They can then pass along the printout to their retired relatives who are looking for places to invest their funds, or who are looking for turn-key businesses to run.

By offering PDF files, you are in effect giving your franchise information the chance to spread around more quickly.

4. Package your franchise information as a downloadable MP3 file.

It's similar in concept to the PDF file tip above. The difference is prospective franchise applicants will get to hear your voice. You'll come across as more progressive, more attractive, and more human.

There are many people offering recordings or podcasts online. Some of them have a "promo" portion where they promote another person's web site, podcast, or business. If you like, you can have some kind of interview which can be inserted in an MP3 file.

(Here's an example of an mp3 file. It talks about the latest jingle of a food manufacturing company.)

The Bottomline

Give your information a chance to spread around by offering it in various formats (html/web, pdf, mp3). Not only will you be able to get the word out faster, you'll also be able to do it at a low cost.

[ First posted on 07/19/2005 by Manuel Viloria ]