When putting together a strategic marketing plan, many franchisors view aspects of their plan in silos.
One silo consists of placing advertising in print, broadcast, and digital platforms.
A second silo includes public relations initiatives.
The third silo involves the social media implementation.
This approach may result in some effectiveness; however, integrating the three efforts will provide greater results, especially as it relates to your search marketing efforts and organic lead generation.
Integration is not a naughty word.
Search marketing is a vital component of a franchisor's marketing success, and one crucial element is the franchise public relations aspects of the plan.
When the PR facets of the plan are defined and implemented, elements like advertising and social media fit together smoothly into the integrated approach.
Taking the time to develop strong public relations initiatives is essential, and the following three steps will provide a foundation for future success.
Develop Quality Content
It's important to create quality content that is relevant, fresh, and interesting. Strong content for websites, press releases, and blogs is vital to ranking on search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing. To develop quality content, it's important to stay organized in the approach. Creating a content calendar to schedule posts and releases is very beneficial, and will benefit the integration of the advertising and social media efforts enormously.
Choose Strong Keywords
Developing strong keywords will help drive traffic to a site, and increase the effectiveness of press releases and blogs. Selecting strong keywords is key, and for franchise companies it's important to select keywords that describe a product or service. Once keywords are defined, it's important to hyperlink those words back to a website. This will increase the effectiveness of a press release and blog, and will drive a reader to the franchise opportunity page, which is the goal.
Strategic Distribution
Content must be distributed strategically to be effective. Press releases are often sent through a wire service, which helps increase the reach and publicity of the news on the web.
Distributing a news release over the wire ensures releases are delivered directly into the newsrooms of daily newspapers, newsweeklies, national news services (like the AP, Dow Jones, Reuters), trade publications and broadcast newsrooms.
Also, keywords in press releases are also beneficial when sending through the wire, because the news feeds devoted to a specific industry are more likely to release.
As for blogs, it's important to tie into the social media implementation and share on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and LinkedIn accounts.
Integrating strong public relations tactics into a marketing plan will help improve a franchise's marketing strategy and search marketing results, as well as, increase incoming lead generation. Incorporating quality content, strong keywords, and strategic distribution are key ways to communicate your message and services to your customers, and are essential to a business' marketing success.
If your franchise business is interested in improving your search marketing plan and would like help creating dynamic content for your public relations and marketing strategy, please contact the experts at Ripley PR.
