Utilizing Social Media for Franchise Recruitment

Utilizing social media for franchise recruitment is a crucial element of your overall franchise development strategy. Here’s how to use social media strategically, channel by channel, to attract the right-fit prospects for sustainable franchise system growth.

Why Use Social Media For Franchise Recruitment?

You’re ready to sell more territories and bring on the right-fit franchise owners for your system’s growth, and social media is a critical part of that franchise development process.

With 500 million active daily users on Instagram alone, showing up strategically on social media channels is one of the best ways to find, attract, and nurture franchise prospects.

Social media serves as an important top-of-the-funnel step in your franchise development marketing strategy, with ads, organic content, video, and targeted campaigns that can get your brand in front of potential franchise owners every single day.

But beyond the lead-generating and brand awareness phases, social media marketing also plays a key role in engagement and nurturing leads, from using DMs and messages for engagement to candidates using social media as a research tool.

People looking into investing in a franchise opportunity spend an average of 172 minutes on a franchise website researching a brand before deciding to book that initial inquiry call. This poses a problem if you don’t have much content on social media channels or your website for them to explore.

Social media is also an opportunity to build trust and credibility with your leads. Sales-centric content can create distrust, lose you followers, and limit conversions, while authentic, genuine content that shares your story, your team, your franchise owners, and your business is the kind of content that performs best and creates a connection with prospects. 

By having an authentic social media presence and a channel-by-channel franchise development marketing strategy, you can utilize social media for effective franchise recruitment.

Best Social Media Platforms for Franchise Recruitment

Ready to start utilizing social media for franchise recruitment, but not sure which platforms to prioritize? What channels to use for what purpose? We’ve got you covered with this list.

LinkedIn – Professional Networking & Thought Leadership

With 134.5 million active daily users, LinkedIn is THE networking platform for entrepreneurs and business professionals. 

It’s easy to use, filled with people excited about business and career development, and if you can avoid the insane amount of direct sales messages in your inbox, it’s a pretty ideal platform for franchise recruitment.

LinkedIn works best when you use it as an individual to share engaging, genuine content about your brand. Having a company page is also valuable, but the platform is designed to be used by individuals for networking and creating relationships first and foremost.

Having your CEO, President, and franchise recruitment team members use their own LinkedIn profiles to grow their network, share content that showcases your existing franchisees, and tell the story of the brand will help your franchise opportunity stand out.

Only 1% of LinkedIn users post content on the platform regularly. This opens up a huge opportunity for franchise brands to set themselves apart by sharing engaging content consistently. 

Content that resonates with franchise prospects includes case studies, testimonials from current franchise owners, announcements from your brand, stories from the founder, insights into what it’s like to own a franchise at your brand, and behind-the-scenes content.

Facebook and Instagram – Lead Generation & Engagement

Facebook and Instagram are hugely popular social media platforms, and hundreds of millions of people log in to use them every day. This fact alone makes these platforms an important part of a well-rounded digital franchise recruitment strategy.

The most popular ways to utilize these two platforms for franchise recruitment are lead generation and candidate engagement. 

Both Facebook and Instagram have targeted ad opportunities that can appear as ads or sponsored content opportunities that closely resemble organic posts. Using ads to catch your ideal candidate’s attention and bring them to your website or a strategic lead capture form has become a popular strategy for franchise recruitment.

Instagram and Facebook also both offer the capability to target local audiences if you are trying to open locations in specific areas – very handy as you strategically allocate your franchise development marketing budget.

The most effective content to use for franchise recruitment on these platforms is video testimonials, behind-the-scenes content from current franchise owners, and franchisee stories. 

Instead of curated imagery or stock photos, more and more franchise brands have been using images taken on iPhones of real franchise owners for recruitment ads with much better results. Audiences are excited by real stories and real people across platforms.

YouTube & TikTok – Video Marketing for Awareness

It’s important to know which channels are best for specific purposes. Video is king (or queen) is a sentiment that has been echoed constantly for several years.

The two platforms that work the best for video and brand awareness are definitely YouTube and TikTok. These platforms are used as both search engines and entertainment, making them a great resource for being discovered via video.

For YouTube, there is the option to share both long and short videos, with YouTube shorts opening up a whole new arena for short-form vertical content to pair with your larger horizontal video content.

Here are some ideas for video content that performs well, hooks your audience, and engages them in your story:

• Short-form educational videos
• Testimonials from franchise owners
• Day in the life, authentic video content
• Show off a finished service (before and after of lawn care, for example)
• Timelapse content
• Behind-the-scenes training

For both platforms, the name of the game is consistency and authenticity. Audiences are tired of polished and curated content and want to be engaged by real people and real stories, which is a huge plus for franchise brands ready to try video!

Key Strategies for Franchise Recruitment on Social Media

Now that we’ve gone through the key social media platforms for franchise recruitment, here are the strategies that are important across those platforms. 

Keep in mind that the important part of an effective franchise recruitment strategy is to always go back to your ideal franchisee persona and not be afraid to try things until you discover the messaging and campaigns that resonate with your ideal candidates.

Using Paid Ads  Targeted Campaigns

To attract franchise leads, running ads on Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn is a strategy that is targeted and direct. Typically, leads from ads are seeking very high-level information, so think of this as a very early-funnel lead.

They likely are not ready to dive directly into your discovery process after seeing one or two ads, so use this lead generation strategy to capture contact information and give them more details about your brand, franchising, and the opportunity to become a franchise owner.

To target high-intent prospects, use lookalike audiences. Lookalike audiences are when you use existing data and have Facebook or Instagram create a similar audience to target with your ads. This approach is helpful when you have existing lead data or audiences that have been successful in the past.

Costs for ads can stretch across a wide range of investment levels, with boosted posts on Facebook and Instagram being the lowest and targeted LinkedIn ads on the higher end. Understanding your budget and audience will help you determine which platforms to use for targeted ad campaigns.

Showcasing Franchisee Success Stories

People don’t buy from brands, they buy from people. Your current franchise owners are one of your greatest assets when it comes to growing your system because they can share their experiences and show what it’s like to own a franchise with your brand.

When a candidate finds your social media, they should see video testimonials, photos of franchise owners running their businesses, behind-the-scenes of training and running the business, community events, and more.

This content can be in the form of photos, short-form videos, long-form videos, ads, and organic content. The important thing is that they start to really see what it’s like to own a franchise with your brand and decide if they can see themselves doing well in your system.

Need some help putting together franchisee success stories, franchisee satisfaction data, custom videos, and more to help create this type of content? Request a copy of FBR’s Media Kit to learn more.

Engaging with Prospects Through DMs & Comments

Beyond lead generation and authentic content that nurtures candidate relationships, engaging with prospects on social media is another great way to improve your franchise recruitment process.

Responding to questions that candidates share through comments or DMs across social media platforms is an important part of creating a smooth, cohesive experience for your franchise leads. 

For emerging brands, you may want to have your franchise development lead actively engage on social media throughout the day to monitor for messages and comments. For growing brands ready to improve their recruitment process, you may want to use chatbots and automation tools for quicker responses.

Relationship-building through DMs and comments is another great way to engage with your potential candidates. Outreach that focuses on genuine relationship-building can be done well through personal LinkedIn or Instagram profiles.

Measuring & Optimizing Social Media Recruitment Efforts

Utilizing social media for franchise recruitment will take some time and effort to work for your system, but it can be set up more quickly and effectively when you properly track and measure your efforts and results!

Setting up your social media to integrate with your CRM is a critical step in tracking and measuring your results. Tracking leads, engagement, and conversion rates will help you improve over time and understand where to focus your efforts.

Platforms like Zoho and Hubspot often have social media integrations already built into their CRM options. Ask your CRM provider about tracking your social media efforts to ensure you’re capturing as much data as possible!

As you track your analytics and results, set monthly or quarterly meetings to review the data from your social media efforts. Focus on the insights you’re gaining from your audience, lead generation, engagement data, and conversions.

A Strategic Approach to Social Media

If you’re excited to grow your franchise system, social media is a key piece of an effective franchise recruitment process that should be focused on strategically for growth. By showing up intentionally across social media platforms — starting with one or two to get you started — you’ll be reaching potential franchise owners every day.

Knowing your target audience, creating content and ads from a place of authenticity, and tracking your efforts and results to refine your strategy are the key steps to getting started on social media for franchise recruitment success.

Ready to grow your franchise? Learn more about how the FBR Franchise Validation and Lead Generation programs can help you attract more qualified candidates and speed up your development process.

Related Content

Media Kit

Looking to strategically position your brand to candidates? FBR’s media kit can help you target the right opportunities, plan ahead around strategic deadlines, and diversify your exposure. Explore opportunities for:

• Franchisee profiles
• Content marketing
• Lead generation…and more

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