Introducing “Virtual Franchise Events”

Virtual Franchise Events, Inc. is a joint venture of Strategic Growth Concepts and franchisEssentials. The mission of this organization is to utilize the latest technology to assist the franchise industry in achieving growth.  This is accomplished thru the implementation of:

• Virtual Franchise Fairs
• Virtual trade shows for individual franchise organizations
• Virtual franchisee training programs
• Virtual franchisee recruitment seminars
• Franchisor executive presentations to the franchise network
• Franchise product development sessions

Virtual events are conducted entirely online with event organizers, presenters, sponsors, exhibitors, and attendees exchanging information and networking from the convenience of their computers.  These events look and feel remarkably similar to their in-person counterparts while delivering the same knowledge-sharing and personal interactions at a significantly reduced cost and requiring less investment of time and staff resources.

An additional benefit of virtual events for the sponsors and exhibitors is the rich marketing data that they deliver – far more than can be obtained at their in-person counterparts.  The anonymity of attendees roaming the in-person event evaporates; instead, sponsors and exhibitors receive detailed marketing data about attendees, much better than any other marketing vehicle available today.  Further, many virtual event organizers see many more C-level executives than at a physical show because attending a virtual event requires less of a time commitment on their part.

For event attendees, it’s much easier to gather information without having to deal with someone hovering to obtain their business card.  In fact, studies show that attendees are more apt to interact with an exhibitor, speaker or another event attendees online than in-person.  New technologies, including the most business-applicable elements of Web 2.0 and social networking, make it extremely easy for professional networking to occur in virtual events.

Click HERE to download a Virtual Events Fact Sheet.

Click HERE for Virtual Event case studies and industry information.

Soon To Be Announced:

A schedule of national and international virtual franchise industry events. Check back soon for more information.

If your firm would like to learn about the benefits of sponsorship for any of these upcoming events, CLICK HERE for information about the variety of sponsorship opportunities available.

What is Integrated Franchise Marketing?

Integrated Franchise Marketing (IFM) is a term we use at franchisEssentials to describe a comprehensive approach to achieving multiple goals and objectives within startup, emerging and mature franchise organizations. IFM directs its focus on creating or improving brand awareness for the franchise organization at local, regional and national levels, driving revenue for franchisees, and generating genuine interest in the franchise concept itself.

The key to IFM is the development of a comprehensive marketing strategy that benefits the entire franchise organization, and is line with the goals and objectives of all parties to the franchise agreement. It includes coordination at all levels to deliver concise, consistent messages that ultimately ensures positive results at franchisee and franchisor levels including:

Franchisee Level

* Local brand awareness
* Increased sales
* Improved communications with corporate office
* Improved communications with fellow franchisees
* Improved profitability
* Increased business value

Franchisor Level

* Regional & National brand awareness
* Increased royalty revenue
* Improved communications with franchisees
* Improved franchisee validation
* Increased interest in franchise concept
* Improved profitability

IFM works within traditional marketing methods and processes through and in conjunction with a very wide spectrum of non-traditional marketing and today’s unique, innovative tools and technology including the many aspects of social media. In addition, IFM encourages a cohesive, team effort at all levels of the franchise organization through information sharing and process awareness, enhanced by a solid educational approach.

As the new year is right around the corner and many franchise organizations fell short in achieving its goals and objectives for 2009, there’s no time like the present to develop a plan of action that will benefit the entire franchise organization.

For more information about utilizing Integrated Franchise Marketing (IFM) within your franchise organization please contact me by email at segreto.paul@gmail.com.

Local Business Listing, Search Engine Rankings and Mobile Devices

The following article has been submitted by Guest Author, Melih (“may-lee”) Oztalay. Melih is CEO of SmartFinds Internet Marketing, an internet marketing company known for developing very creative marketing strategies. Before starting SmartFinds, Melih ran one of the Detroit Metropolitan area’s premiere Internet Service Providers (ISP), SpeedLink, from the early 1990’s where he served for nearly a decade as President and CEO. In the new century he has pursued taking the creative and marketing services from his experience in the 1990’s to businesses via SmartFinds Internet Marketing. franchisEssentials is honored to have Melih as one of its Guest Authors.

Local Business Listing, Search Engine Rankings and Mobile Devices
by Melih Oztalay, CEO at SmartFinds Internet Marketing

There has been an ongoing difficulty for small local businesses to benefit from the Internet. Particularly if they are completely dependent upon the local market. Yes, those businesses still do exist and will continue to exist. As technology has been developing, there is an answer for the local business. It comes in the form of the major search engines having free local listings.

What Are Business Local Listings? In summary this is your free yellow page listings by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Do you still need to advertise with the Yellow Pages? This need is definitely dwindling. The upcoming generations are using the Internet and their mobile phones. Most probably are not familiar with the hard copy yellow pages. Baby-Boomers are a growing group of mobile device users…and certainly EVERYONE is using the Internet.

Why Use the Local Business Listings? There are a number of reasons why the Internet local business listings are important to the local business.

1. Listings can show up in search results
2. Helps advertise business for free
3. Helps promote any discounts, offers, promotions
4. Displays on Mobile maps (e.g. iPhone)

The benefits help to increase your exposure through the Internet with this free listing. It can help you reduce your yellow page costs and makes sure you can get in front of your customers when they need you through the Internet or their mobile devices as they are around town.

Additionally these local listings help give you the opportunity to get more information in front of your customers than the yellow pages can ever offer. This would include your menus, your products, services, photos, videos, coupons, offers, promotions to mention a few.

Did we mention this was a free listing? Did we also mention you can update this listing anytime you want? And, lastly, you get statistics about your statistics. Now we’re confident the yellow pages cannot provide statistics. The benefits far outweigh the costs from the hard copy yellow pages.

Do you need your own website? No. Would it benefit you? Possibly, but dependent upon your business. Your free local business listing could be your website. The reason for having your own website would be because the free local business listing is not allowing you to add everything a customer may wish to see.

Like everything else on the Internet, it is best to work with a professional firm that can help get this setup for you. You have to be sure to have the right keywords for your business, along with knowing how to get the listing up to date so it benefits with immediately. Once the local business listing has been updated you can either maintain the information yourself or continue having a low cost monthly fee to have it maintained and monitored for you.

Monitoring your listing is very important as customers have the ability to post reviews about your products, services and business. Of course their ability to review you are not limited to the local business listing and include everything from Angie’s List to Complaint Boards on the web. While this may sound like a negative, you can turn customers with problems and complaints to long term relationship. You have to address their concerns and have them reach out to you instead of the Internet with their emotional frustrations.

Whether you are a single store, have multiple locations, are a franchise or a bank with multiple branches, you will want to learn more about local business listings. Learn more about Local Business Listings and submitting them to the search engines and other local related business websites and directories at SmartFinds Local Business Listings.

Franchise Development via Social Media – Podcast Now Available

Recently, I introduced to the franchise community, an extensive 11-page article, “Franchise Development via Social Media.”

On Thursday, October 15th on Franchise Today Show on BlogTalkRadio, I discussed the article in detail, along with my thoughts and ideas about utilizing social media within a franchise organization for the purpose of:

- Creating brand awareness with franchise candidates and consumers alike?
- Generating qualified franchise leads and subsequent franchise sales?
- Establishing an interactive environment of communications and information sharing at all levels of a franchise organization?

Some franchise organizations are beginning to take advantage of this information and are utilizing it to take a major step in building the foundation for a successful 2010 without wasting the first quarter on things their organization could be doing right now.

LISTEN TO PODCAST HERE.

Donald Cranford at the Franchise Direct blog has been kind of enough to submit a link to an interesting complementary article that may be accessed HERE.

Contact me at segreto.paul@gmail for more information.

[E-IDEA] Five Steps to Social Media Success

Over the past two months, I have presented in several webinar series and have spoken to various groups about using social media within franchise organizations. Specifically, about [E-IDEA] that was originally posted on LinkedIn and on this site in June 2009. As I’ll be completing the Frantelligence Webinar Series with Franchise Business Review this coming week, I thought it appropriate to repost the original [E-IDEA] article.

[E-IDEA] Five Steps to Social Media Success

I recently responded to a LinkedIn discussion post on one of the franchise groups. The discussion was “What do you see as the biggest challenge this year in franchise sales and development growth?” I thought this the perfect opportunity to present my five steps to social media success and responded accordingly.

The biggest challenge will be to capitalize on the influx of interest generated through social media.

As today’s franchise candidate has become more sophisticated, educated and technologically advanced than ever before, many will spend a great deal of time within social media, exploring franchise opportunities.

To effectively capitalize on this interest, franchisors will need to embrace social media as an integral component of their overall franchise marketing and development strategy, and integrate the same with traditional strategies. A firm commitment of time, money and other resources must be dedicated to the initiative.

Oh, don’t think it would work by having someone play around with Facebook or Twitter without a strategy in place. That definitely won’t work. Instead, it’s going to take a concentrated focus, or as I fondly describe as [E-IDEA], the acronym for franchisEssentials five step process to social media success.

1. Exploring different aspects of Social Media, including Social Networking and key Web 2.0 technology that creates excitement and brand awareness within your industry segment.
2. Identifying primary and secondary targets – Who will be targeted to purchase and/or visit your franchise locations? How deep do the target groups go and are there collateral groups that can be tapped?
3. Developing a Strategy and Plan of Action – Customized to specific targets in accordance with franchise development goals and objectives?
4. Executing the Plan – Putting the plan in motion including monitoring, managing the process including new content and updates. Keep it fresh!
5. Analyzing & Quantifying the Results – Is it working? Do you continue straight ahead or repeat the process from the beginning? What are actual results in franchise sales and system revenue?