What is a Franchising Marketing?
Franchise marketing refers to the strategies and tactics used to promote a franchise brand and its individual locations. If you’re a franchise business owner, you’re likely looking for ways to stand out in a crowded local market — while staying true to your national brand identity.
A franchise is a business model where a company (the franchisor) licenses its brand name, products, and operational processes to independent owners (franchisees), who then operate their own local businesses under the larger brand umbrella. This model has steadily grown in popularity across the U.S., with franchise businesses showing consistent growth every year since 2013.
However, marketing a franchise presents unique challenges. About 42% of franchise professionals say they no longer feel traditional marketing methods — like direct mail, newspaper ads, or PR — are effective or worth the investment. The shift toward digital marketing offers a powerful solution, giving franchises the ability to reach wider audiences, target specific markets, and measure results more accurately than ever before.
Whether you’re marketing a single franchise location or managing marketing for a regional group of stores, digital marketing gives you the tools to stand out, connect with customers, and grow your business.
The Three Main Goals of Franchise Marketing
An effective franchise marketing strategy should focus on three core goals:
Branding
Ensure a consistent brand identity across all locations, websites, social media accounts, and advertising. Customers should recognize the franchise brand no matter where they encounter it — while allowing for slight local personalization where appropriate.
Communication
Stay in regular contact with your audience — including current customers, past customers, and prospective leads. This includes newsletters, text messages, loyalty programs, promotional offers, and even customer service messaging.
Growth
Use digital marketing tactics to actively grow your customer base. SEO, paid ads, social media marketing, and reputation management all play critical roles in helping franchise locations attract new customers.
Why Digital Marketing is Critical for Franchises
Traditional marketing alone is no longer enough. Digital marketing allows franchise businesses to:
- Target audiences by location, demographics, and behavior.
- Track and measure campaign performance in real-time.
- Optimize spend by focusing on high-performing channels.
- Personalize messaging based on customer data and local market needs.
Franchise marketing also needs to balance two competing priorities: maintaining brand consistency across all locations, and giving individual franchisees enough flexibility to market locally.
How Franchises Market Online
Franchise marketing follows many of the same principles as general digital marketing — but with a few important differences. Whether you’re trying to attract local customers or potential franchisees, marketing your franchise requires a clear plan.
The first step is always defining your objectives:
- Are you trying to drive local foot traffic?
- Build awareness for your franchise brand?
- Recruit new franchisees?
Knowing your goals will shape your entire marketing strategy.
Key Digital Marketing Strategies for Franchises
Below are 8 Key Digital Marketing Strategies for Franchises
1. Focus on Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Because franchises operate across multiple locations, local visibility is critical.
Local SEO means optimizing your online presence so nearby customers find you when searching for services or products. Search engines use local signals — such as your website content, social profiles, business listings, and customer reviews — to show the most relevant results.
Best practices for franchise local SEO include:
- Creating and optimizing a Google My Business listing.
- Using location-specific keywords on your site.
- Ensuring your website is mobile-friendly.
SEO guide for more details.
2. Invest in Your Website
Your website is your digital storefront — and a powerful, always-on salesperson. It serves both customers looking to buy now and prospects researching franchise opportunities.
To optimize your website:
- Make sure it’s easy to navigate and loads quickly.
- Clearly display product/service information, pricing, and contact details.
Conduct Regular Website Audits
Ask yourself:
- What’s the first thing visitors see?
- Is it easy to find the most important information?
- How does it look and perform on mobile devices?
- How fast is my website loading?
Even if you don’t control your main franchise site, you should still audit it and send feedback to your franchisor. Your on-the-ground insights are valuable.
Your website serves as a tireless salesperson, available round the clock, helping both end customers and prospective franchisees explore your franchise, gain insights into your operations, and ultimately become paying customers.
Understand your visitor’s perspective
Always think from the user’s perspective. Collect feedback from existing customers. And make incremental changes according to any additional website traffic data you have access to.
Typically, visitors want to see information about your products and/or services (and pricing), your contact information and an understanding of who you are as a company in an “about us” section. Definitely don’t bury these items.
Your website is considered your most important business front in the digital age. Give it the thought and attention it deserves.
If you don’t have control over your website, it’s still important to conduct regular audits and submit that feedback to your franchisor. Things can’t be improved if no one speaks up. Think of yourself on the ground level. Your insights are incredibly valuable to any franchisor looking to serve its franchisees with up-to-date assets.
3. Content Marketing
Content marketing involves publishing valuable materials like blog posts, infographics, guides, and videos to attract and engage your audience.
Content ideas for franchises:
- Address common customer questions or pain points.
- Share expertise about your industry or products.
- Highlight local community involvement.
Publishing helpful content builds your authority, improves SEO, and strengthens customer trust.
🔗 10 types of videos you can use in franchise marketing
4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
PPC advertising ensures your franchise shows up at the right time, in front of the right people.
Microsoft Advertising, you can target potential customers or franchisees based on search intent, location, and demographics.
Expand your PPC reach with:
- Google’s Display Network (reaches over 90% of internet users).
- Facebook and Instagram ads for precise audience targeting.
Diversifying your paid ad strategy beyond just search ads helps maximize your marketing impact.
PPC advertising basics and the difference between CPC (Cost-Per-Click) and CPM (Cost-Per-Impression).
5. Level Up Your Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the highest-ROI digital channels — especially for nurturing customer relationships and driving repeat business.
Key email strategies for franchises:
- Personalize your messaging wherever possible.
- Set up automation for promotions, welcome series, and reminders.
- Monitor open rates and click-through rates to refine your strategy.
Even if your franchisor provides templates, feel free to customize your email marketing to better suit your local audience.
🔗 48 email marketing statistics that prove how effective email still is
DailyStory can help you automate, personalize, and streamline your email marketing efforts.
Start with a basic strategy
To truly level up your emailing, you’ll want to:
- Think strategically about your content and who you’re messaging
- Identify opportunities for email automation
- Personalize your content whenever you can
As you pull together email marketing campaigns, be sure to monitor your analytics to assess what’s working and what isn’t.
And know that DailyStory’s platform can help you streamline this entire process (including automation and personalization).
6. Add SMS Marketing
Text messaging is another powerful tool — and a great complement to email marketing.
SMS, otherwise known as Short Message Service, is really just texting. And more than 560 billion texts are sent every month worldwide, and about 81 percent of Americans text regularly. In fact, Americans text twice as much as they call, on average.
Benefits of SMS marketing:
- Higher open rates (typically over 90%).
- Immediate delivery and quick customer responses.
- Easy to promote sales, coupons, event reminders, and updates.
With over 81% of Americans texting regularly, SMS marketing is no longer optional — it’s essential.
🔗 Tip: See why businesses are turning to text message marketing to boost engagement.
SMS text message marketing is a powerful tool in your digital marketing toolkit with many benefits, but it can feel a little intimidating for small businesses to dive into.
7. Engage on Social Media
Your franchisor may supply social media assets or suggest strategies — but you should tailor your content for your specific audience.
Franchise social media best practices:
- Choose the platform(s) where your local customers are most active.
- Create a monthly content calendar tied to promotions or events.
- Mix branded content with original posts, local highlights, behind-the-scenes, or customer stories.
It’s not uncommon for franchisors to provide some social media assets and suggested strategies to franchise businesses.
They might even have recommendations on which social media platforms to use.
While you absolutely can use provided assets and try suggested strategies, it’s important to remember that this franchise is your business. If something doesn’t make sense for your social audience, don’t use it.
In addition, you should feel empowered to go beyond what’s provided to you. For instance, you could do a weekly “ask me anything” Facebook Live with your audience as the owner or publish video interviews with key people in your community. You could even offer curated content posts to provide additional value to your followers.
Which social media platform is right for you?
First, decide which social media platform is best for you to focus on first. Then, sketch out a plan for the next month, preferably on a calendar where you can identify possible events and/or promotions you want to highlight specifically and even identify additional social media engagement opportunities (such as holidays).
Remember, eye-catching visuals as well as authenticity are critical to growing your social media engagement and reach.
If you’re looking for platform-specific advice, refer to our guides of challenges and opportunities for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Or, if you’re trying to reach a younger audience, check out our guide to help you decide whether Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok is best for your brand.
8. Manage Your Online Reputation
Online reviews make or break local businesses — and franchise locations are no exception.
Reputation management tips:
- Monitor Google, Yelp, and Facebook reviews regularly.
- Respond promptly to both positive and negative reviews.
- Offer solutions and personalized responses to dissatisfied customers.
About 85 percent of consumers use the internet to research and read reviews before purchasing a product or service. Therefore, online reputation management is not optional. It’s absolutely imperative to the growth and success of your franchise.
What to look for
Google and Yelp reviews are the most popular, but keep an eye out for:
- Social media reviews
- Social media posts mentioning your franchise
- Available local forums
- National listing/review databases
Always respond – to both positive and negative feedback
Whether your reviews are positive or negative, you always should respond. You should offer solutions to any negative reviewers, even if you need to directly message with them or have them call you. The key is customer service.
In Conclusion
Franchise businesses are all about consistency (which maintains the brand’s value), so while you want to maintain branding standards and other procedures (unique to every franchise agreement), don’t be afraid to experiment with your digital marketing where you can.
We recommend testing one tactic out first before diving into everything at one time and potentially overwhelming yourself.
In a lot of cases, your franchisor might be interested in experimenting with you to see how something goes, if it is successful in increasing customers, etc. So, be sure to communicate with your franchisor as much as it makes sense to do so.
Also, find out if you’re making any of these 11 digital marketing mistakes and how to evaluate your franchise marketing data that could be costing your franchise money.
