How to Set up Your Website when you Franchise your Business

by FMS Franchise | Articles
3 minutes
Franchise Website

Prior to launching a franchise model, your brand is like an undiscovered cluster of innovation and ideas. Generally, the only people who know or care about your brand are those that are in your immediate local market. Therefore, your website, social media, and online presence are completely fine to be entirely localized and specific to your market.

But that changes when you franchise your business.  Immediately, your offering becomes relevant to a much broader market and your potential customer is now located almost anywhere in the world.  It’s time to change our online persona to match.

First, go through your website carefully, you want to make sure that your presentation is speaking the right language. Your home page should be relevant to any market and not present only to folks in your hometown. Use bigger language and imaging to represent your brand as an organization that’s bigger than one person.

If you haven’t already, make the investment in a solid-looking consumer website and a great franchise website. Create a presentation that conveys professionalism, solidarity, and trust, franchise buyers will look more critically at this than your consumer might.

Next, if you aren’t already, get set up on all social media platforms.  Make sure your brand is represented on Facebook (Meta), Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and for some brands TikTok.  Start posting regularly if you haven’t, in today’s market it can do as much damage to your brand to look “dead” on social media as if you have negative reviews for your product or service.

Now here is where it gets a bit complicated.  Do you set up individual accounts for each location, or have all social media run through one central account?  My advice, you definitely want to control what goes on any social media under your brand, one bad post can send shockwaves through an entire brand if not managed correctly.

On the other hand, you want that localized feel and opportunity for each franchise market to be able to post and market local events. Our recommendation is typically to have multiple accounts, but run them all through you, your social media manager, or a franchise as an agency that manages your overall campaign.

On your website, you need to have a location tab in place that allows a visitor to go to each location page. The location page should have local contact information, owner information, and some market-specific details there, but it should all be on your main website.

This way you control the content, look, feel, and overall web presence while still giving the franchisee a local presentation from the site.  As your brand builds, all of the franchisees will be marketing and promoting the site and building up momentum for your brand creating a bigger digital footprint and more exposure for everyone involved in your franchise.

For more information on how to franchise your business, contact us.

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