A franchise’s social media channels are not to show off their follower count. The real value of social media lies in its capacity to offer you valuable insight into your customer’s mind, the ability to make your franchise user-friendly, and the ease in marketing your franchise.
If by now you are not entirely convinced that social media makes a difference in your business, perhaps these top three reasons why you need to use social media to market your franchise will.
1. Boost Brand Awareness – Hashtags
Whether you like it or not, the truth is that up to 37 percent of users use social media to research brands before they purchase a service or product. While corporate may already have an established brand presence online, your particular location needs to do that too.
Here is when hashtags come in handy. Set your posts to be targeted by location. Include a location hashtag for users within your community to interact with your franchise and increase brand awareness. The best part about social media is that it can be fueled by user-generated content that promotes your brand for you. This means your users are creating engaging content for you and they also tend to share it with their friends, which means you reach a bigger audience.
2. Unique Insight Access – Analytics
One of the most valuable assets social media has for franchisees is analytics. There are over 95 million photos and videos uploaded to Instagram each day. All this information is being liked, tagged, shared, and commented on. Now, thanks to analytics, you can digest this information and understand more about your customer.
Social media analytics will not only show you where your audience location is, but it can also tell you when they are being more engaging, which posts are getting more reactions, what messages are working better than others, and so on. Having this kind of information was never seen before. Social media insights are valuable access to your customer’s minds, use this to your advantage.
3. Outstanding Customer Service – Replies
It used to be that when a customer had a complaint or a compliment, they had to call the company and jump through some phone extensions to finally reach the person in charge of feedback. Nowadays, all your customers have to do is reach out through social media.
About 67 percent of customers turn to social media to get in touch with a company. Customers have a unique two-way street to communicate with brands, regardless of the industry. Whether it is a quick tweet, an Instagram comment, or a Facebook review, customers everywhere are turning to social media for answers. And, in fact, 42 percent of them expect an answer within an hour or so. This means that customers are waiting for franchises everywhere to be responsive, at the moment, and present.
Social media is changing the way franchises manage customer service as compared with the past. Today, quality customer service goes past the cash register or the drive-thru window. Social media is also changing the way franchises market themselves. Thanks to targeted ads, franchisees are now able to target particular audiences, something most businesses could not achieve before through traditional advertisement.
Social media is the ultimate tool for you to market your franchise, to stay connected with your customers, and to promote your latest offers. This all aids in growing your franchise and reaching new business objectives.
https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Social-Media-Weaves-Its-Way-Through-Customer-Life-Process/1010381
https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-for-business/
http://www.jdpower.com/press-releases/2013-social-media-benchmark-study
