Web marketing at its best with 3 C's

YouTube, Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc are few of the social media channels which are getting popular amongst the biz owners including franchise community. All these social websites create unique content to engage with the right customers at the right time. People of all age-groups engage in the various channels of social media according to their interest and use. Gauging the popularity of social channels, brands and their owners have started engaging these social websites for advertising their franchise brands. Let us know more about it.

Why use social media?

Experienced franchise owners may sometimes wonder why they should take the help of social websites as their brand has been doing well without it also. However, irrespective of how established or new a brand is, social media is emerging as the most essential way of marketing or advertising. Moreover, all franchised brands, whether big or small employ various websites to develop unique and impressive content to pull traffic and viewers.
However, franchisors before jumping on the bandwagon of the latest social media channel should make sure that the cart is heading in a direction that will take the brand towards the determined marketing goals. This can be done by determining the unique mix of the Three C's: customer, content, and channel.

Customer: It should be kept in mind by both the franchisor and franchisee that the best marketing strategies start by understanding the customers and their needs. This same fundamental rule also governs the social media advertising. A franchise brand dealing in child products and apparels should have a social media presence on websites which are viewed more by young adults and parents. The company as well as the website should centralise around the target customers. The bottom line on social media is that it is essential to be able to answer the customer's question, ‘What is in it for me?’ To be able to answer that meaningfully, the franchisor and the media site has to know the customers very well.

Content: The best content for social media strategy should not be dictated solely by customers. It also has to be right for the franchisor’s brand. A brand should be considered more like a real character with individual characteristics and the content should be developed keeping in mind the brand characteristics as well. For example if it is a financial service franchise brand, characteristics like confidence, competent, careful about money yet friendly and comfortable to trust with money matters come into mind. Therefore, the content of that particular brand should also feature these character traits. It is imperative to personify the brand as it becomes easier to create content with a consistent tone of voice and, in turn, build a successful social media presence.  

Channel: The third C also is not less important. Even with a great strategy, target customers, and quality content, it can still be very difficult to gain a successful grip in social media. Many franchisors commit the mistake of posting their content on websites where it does not belong to. As a result, the web campaign does not bring-in profits as desired by the brand owners. Instead it can make the brand less popular. Hence franchisors should take time to determine which social media channels are best suited to his brand content and audience. For example, if a brand has a lot of video content, make sure the channel (or channels) chosen makes it easy for target audience to both find and view the visuals. YouTube and other such sites might be good place to start.

To end it can be said that social media can surely make a brand more popular and successful but it is essential for the franchise owners to remember the three C’s while cashing on this modern marketing strategy.