Perfecting Franchise PPC Management

Posted on July 21, 2008 in Blog

This article was updated November 11, 2020.

Managing franchise pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns can be complicated, especially when local franchisees manage their ads separately from corporate. There are several paid media publishers available to help get your message in front of your target audience, but where do you start? Here are a few tactics to ensure franchise PPC success both nationally and locally.

1. Franchise SEM Tips (Search Campaigns)

Get aggressive with product- and service-related keyword bids. Let the corporate and national ad campaigns support you outside of your owned and operated territories.
Corporate teams should use broader, industry-related keywords and let franchise owners target specific cities, zip codes, and owned territories.
Franchisees should work with corporate marketing teams to share keyword lists, add negatives, test copy and manage local offers to improve franchise SEM performance.

2. Display Campaign Tips

Display campaigns are a great way to reach users in the awareness stage of the marketing funnel.
Remarketing is an ideal way to reach users who have previously visited your website but didn’t take action.
You can reach users based on specific in-market or affinity audiences or create a custom list using Google search queries, apps, and more.

3. Social Campaign Tips

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn offer different targeting options. One may offer you better audience options than others for your franchise PPC strategy.
Reach users in the awareness stage of the marketing funnel by using different demographics, interests, and behaviors targeting options. As with Google search and display ads, remarketing is an option on social too.
Lookalike audiences have the potential to perform well on social media. Upload a list of current customers, and deliver personalized ads to users who share similar traits.

4. Targeting Tips for Franchise PPC and Other Campaign Types

Because each publisher offers different ways to target potential customers, it is important you assess your campaign goals and marketing objectives first. Then choose the right platform and targeting options to get the best results.
Each franchise should have its own account or campaigns, with clear and specific naming conventions in place.
Within most platforms, you can target an entire county, state or designated market area (DMA) down to a one-mile radius.

5. Data Tracking & Analysis Tips

Make sure you are tracking your digital campaigns. Whether you are using Google Ads conversion tracking, Google Analytics, Microsoft, or Facebook, use an auto-tagging feature or manually add tags to every campaign link.
Using a conversion event from a publisher pixel allows you to see conversions directly in the platform, rather than sending them to a third-party platform such as Google Analytics. However, we recommend sending data to both places, as it supports more robust analytics and unified reporting.
Page-level insights are available automatically in Google Analytics. This will allow you to see campaign-specific performance as part of the whole.

Looking for more franchise marketing information? Download our franchise marketing playbook to read additional helpful tips!

Franchise PPC Management from Oneupweb

Managing paid media for a franchise requires clear goals and good local-to-national balance. If you need support, Oneupweb’s paid media team would be glad to provide a strategy that makes sense for you and your business. We love marketing for franchises, from regional to multi-national corporations.

To get right to work, contact us online or call (231) 922-9977.