As a multi-location brand, opening a new location is exciting! A new location means new opportunities and new challenges. With so many pieces to set in place, your pre-opening marketing strategy may slip your mind.
While it might not seem necessary to market a new location of a franchise due to brand recognition, it’s an essential part of the new location's sucess, and gaining customer loyalty, even before opening.
Here are our best tips for crafting an effective pre-opening digital marketing strategy.
Incorporate local search into your pre-opening marketing strategy
The first step is making sure your new location can be found online when potential customers are searching. Local search marketing, sometimes referred to as local SEO, is a strategy to help your new business location rank in the search results.
Local search is the heart of your digital presence. Without local search, your rankings will decrease and fewer consumers will be able to find your business. When you’re opening a new location for your multi-location brand, you can’t ignore local search. Keep in mind, local search takes some time to get traction. We recommend beginning your local search strategy 90 days before your opening takes place.
Learn more about why local search is vital to your brand marketing strategy.
Paid advertising efforts are a must for pre-open marketing
Not every person will search for your specific business or what you offer, which means you need to target them with ads! At RevLocal, we have a paid advertising plan called Brand Expander. This plan helps spread brand awareness and create demand for your new location.
Imagine Brand Expander as an online billboard for your business. This impression-based paid advertising tactic helps to build recognition and trust with your business. Brand Expander shows ads on the Google Display Network as well as on Facebook and Instagram newsfeeds. Our team can also implement retargeting ads to reach consumers who have left your website and geofencing to target consumers in a specific area.
If you find you need help with paid advertising, we can guide you with industry best practices and our experience to create the best paid ad strategy for your new location!
Review marketing helps establish a positive online reputation
It’s crucial that you have a review marketing strategy in place so you can start gathering reviews as soon as your location opens.
Make sure your staff is trained on how to ask for reviews before you officially open and that you offer multiple easy ways for customers to leave reviews. We suggest starting your review marketing strategy 30 days before you open, which will allow you to train your staff and become familiar with the review process, including how to respond to reviews.
Building a positive online reputation is not only helpful to your business's SEO but to consumers as well! When a consumer is researching a business, they’ll look at the reviews to help inform their choice. Often, reviews can either be the thing that draws in new business or pushes it away.
With RevLocal’s review and reputation management platform, Renown: Review Marketing, we can help you generate more reviews on a consistent basis and respond to every type of review. With most consumers reading online reviews, you can’t afford to miss review marketing in your digital marketing strategy for your new location.
If you want to learn more about online reviews, check out these resources:
Final thoughts...
It can be easy to let marketing fall through the cracks amidst the excitement of opening a new location. When you combine local search, paid advertising and review marketing, your new location will be headed toward success before you even open!
If you need help with your multi-location brand’s digital marketing strategy, our Brand Team is standing by! From day one, you’ll work with a dedicated consultant and strategist to create localized and scalable marketing solutions for your business.
Request a demo today to learn all about our strategies for multi-location brand and franchise networks. Check out our other resources here!