Why Many Franchised Brands Are Failing in Social Media

Oct. 25, 2010 - PRLog -- Social media engagement specialist, ‘We Engage’ announced its appointment as social media consultant to an international franchise brand with over 250 locations (200 in the US).

'We Engage' CEO, Bill James ( http://www.weengage.com ), summarized problems shared by many franchised brands when marketing in social media. "The types of problems we are encountering are mostly due to lack of uniform marketing and inconsistent approaches within social media. Without strong corporate guidance and supporting franchise agreements, damage to the brand can be enormous and difficult to undo. Corporate management has to step in and add guidance.

“Social media has slipped through the grate because, up until recently, it wasn't considered a viable communication channel for most franchised businesses.

"It's one thing to have a single corporate account in Facebook (FB) and Twitter. When you have a couple hundred account owners who aren't clear about the rules of engagement in social media and who may have widely ranging marketing experience, you face real risk. The solution is to create and apply standard operating procedures and uniform structures and protocol. The brand requires strong franchise agreements that are clear about entitlement, accountability and responsibility. Corporate management needs to know what is going on in each and every social media account that carries the brand's logo. Once the structural issues are under control, the marketing strategy and approach needs to be defined and controlled," he said.

He warned franchisors and franchisees alike to attend to basics before beginning marketing campaigns in applications like FB and Twitter. Then, hammer out a viable strategy.

Mr. James ( http://www.linkedin.com/in/billljames ) cited the following 7 issues that franchised brands must focus on getting right from the start.

1. Inconsistency in the use of the brand logo

Inconsistent logo usage is a problem for many multi-national, multi-divisional, multi-brand, multi-product and franchise groups. There is nothing more off-putting than to search FB or Twitter for a brand name, and then see a list of results come up with 20-30 different logo images. Often, you need to open up each account to determine you have the right brand. This presents an image of a haphazard organization and an unprofessional or disorganized management team. It dilutes and disfigures the brand image before brand reputation is even considered. Brand image can also be way off message with a proliferation of rogue logos.

2. Inconsistent naming of accounts

This leads to frustration for the consumer trying to search for a particular brand (often geographically) and presents a real problem for brands with numerous locations. Any brand with a name including more than one word or that includes apostrophes, hyphens, etc can result in searches that don't list certain franchises. Poor search ability is tantamount to being invisible.

Most consumers will attempt one or two spellings to see what comes up. If the brand, product or location doesn’t show up after a couple of attempts, they may as well not exist.”

3. Inconsistent account structure and setup

In FB, for example, different accounts under the one brand often have a completely different array of 'tabs' or may call different tabs ‘home’. Additionally, many will use different copy in the ‘info’ tab when describing the company or even range widely in their choice of descriptions for the core focus of the business. For example, one franchise might describe itself in 'education', whereas another franchise might state that it is in ’health and fitness'. Again, this strikes at the professional appearance of the brand.

4. Inability to control/delete abandoned accounts and maintain high engagement standards

In FB, many brands use a combination of ‘people’ accounts and business ‘page’ listings to represent franchises. This raises problems when it comes to dealing with abandoned or duplicated accounts over time.  Business ‘pages’ are not accounts. 'Pages' are an extension of a ‘people’ accounts and can accommodate more than one administrator. 'People’ accounts themselves have only one owner. If multiple administrators are set up for business pages, corporate administrators can be included, and abandoned accounts can be easily removed.  This is not the case with 'people' accounts. Corporate may also bolster otherwise poor engagement levels using multiple administrators in business 'pages'.

Nobody wants abandoned accounts to multiply over time and find they cannot be removed or ‘de-logoed’. This is an ugly message to send to prospective franchisees, and it creates a haven for the dreaded ‘wall-spammer’.

5. The failure to trial and develop multi-application marketing strategies

For many franchised businesses, we see Twitter's principal strength as an advertising channel. From here, you can aggregate and drive customers to places like Flickr and YouTube for more sophisticated multi-media content, or push them to your promotional offerings at the corporate website or in FB. Twitter is the place to target your customers (using hash-tags and key word monitoring) with the 'hooks' and links to other advertising and promotional offerings in FB. Growing your Twitter following is critical. FB has the functionality to accommodate the promotional marketing element, but many franchised brands are presenting promotional offerings without any tactical consideration of how to drive customers from Twitter, and without requiring a 'like' or in return once customers decide to participate in FB.  Many franchisees don't know the difference between a 'poke', a 'like' and a 'tag'. They are confused by account types and the functionality offered by the User Interface (UI).

FB and Twitter are discrete communication channels. In any discrete channel, a key objective is to grow participation in each subsequent promotional offering by expanding the network. It is surprising how many marketing campaigns don't even attempt to grow the channel network. So many brands allow consumers to participate in promotional activity without requiring a 'like' in return.

6.  The failure to use ‘reveals’ when offering new product and promotions in FB

Making the 'like' in FB a prerequisite of customer participation is best accomplished by using the ‘reveal’. This is a piece of code that hides a tab’s content until a ‘like’ is received from the consumer. Businesses can use a special tab titled ‘offers/promotions’ to house their promotional offerings and keep them hidden until a ‘like’ is received. It’s a small price to pay to ‘like’ a page if there is an inducement available for the consumer. Once ‘liked’, consumers will see future promotional offerings in their news feeds.

Many companies continue to give away promotional value without using it to leverage an increase in the size of the channel. Businesses are giving away value and then just praying that the customer will 'like' their business page.  

7.  Ignoring customers’ choices of communication channels

Many companies make promotional offers via FB or Twitter only to then require the customer to register their details via another communication channel.  There are numerous examples of businesses who ask for email registrations in FB instead of asking for 'likes' before allowing customers to participate. Why would someone viewing a brand in FB want promotional offers through email rather than through their FB 'news feed'? If they are looking in FB and seeking to participate in a promotional offering, why would the brand then push them to register in another communication channel? Take the customer’s choice of communication channel at face value and grab the 'like'. Don't try to shove them elsewhere.

Mr James stated that a company’s communication channel is wherever their customers are looking and listening. “Find your customers and market to them on their terms."

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'We Engage' is an outsourced provider of community management services in social media. We assist our clients to sustain a culture of trust and brand advocacy by engaging subject to agreed protocol, brand strategy and tactics.