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Many franchisees use social media as an opportunity to highlight their own deals and in-store offers
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the reputation management issues when it comes to Facebook and so forth, smaller companies do not face such angst. Indeed it plays to their strengths.
“The entry cost to social media is minimal,
it’s low risk and provides a real opportunity for nimble players to build their brands, create fan-bases, listen to and reach customers, find partners, distributors, recruit and rapidly target new markets both at home and abroad. Indeed seven per cent of businesses in our latest survey are predicting a 100 per cent or more growth in sales from social media!”
Many businesses set up a page on Facebook or Twitter and have a following or a fan-base. Domino’s Pizza, for example, has a Facebook page with more than 261,000 fans and almost 11,000 UK followers on Twitter. This helps the company engage with
its customers and inform them of the latest offers. Domino’s Digital Media Executive Claire Nash says: “Many of our franchisees use social media as an opportunity to highlight their own deals and in-store offers. We recently ran a campaign with Facebook Deals that encouraged our customers to check into their local store to receive a free garlic pizza bread with an order of a Domino’s stuffed crust pizza.”
Similarly, social media has been a hugely successful avenue for Franchise Marketing Award winner for best online marketing campaign, 0800 Repair. As a service-based business, the franchise uses social media as a way of finding customers. Kevin explains: “More and more people are expressing themselves digitally these days. For example, if the cooker isn’t working or a washing machine has broken, people would put a
statement out there either on Twitter or Facebook, which means we can find them.” In some cases, 0800 Repair has managed to bring together the customer and franchisee, and introduced the two parties. However, as much as the rise of social media amongst SMEs presents an exciting new avenue for franchisors, it also presents a number of challenges. On the one hand, the freedom and minimal red tape is a good thing, but on the flip side comes the lack of control, which is of great concern, especially for a franchise. Kevin explains: “Consistency of voice, brand protection and language used is a big challenge and, for franchisees, just knowing how to write on social media forums can be difficult.” Social media has no borders and can be a gateway to unrestricted and unapproved messaging. For example, one franchisor recently had to tell a franchisee
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