Case Study: Franchisees

1 THE CHALLENGE

A local franchise of a nationally recognized automotive repair brand wanted to take his business to the 21st century. The existing sales and marketing efforts were outsourced to a non-local firm that had zero understanding of his needs: local area. When pressed for data to look at effectiveness, zero answers were obtained and the firm told the owner that ‘he wouldn’t understand as it was technically complicated.’

The owner didn’t like that answer, especially considering his business repairs some of the most technologically complex machines out there! So he decided to take things into his own hands. His problem was he didn’t know where to start, he was being approached by many different businesses all pitching their own solutions. YP.com? Yelp? Google? Bing? Yahoo? Facebook? Twitter? Email?

2 Our Approach

We implemented a system-wide overhaul of the entire marketing spend for the franchise. Combing through the data that we put together on our own, we were able to determine that 85% of the marketing dollars were being spent on campaigns that had no tangible benefit for the business.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION & MANAGEMENT

We cut the fat and took some of those savings and put them to work with a small subset of the online advertising companies with hyper-specific campaign targeting.

E-MAIL MARKETING RECRUITMENT & RETENTION

We built up a simple, in-house e-mail marketing program so customers could be kept aware of seasonal specials and promotions thereby improving retention of loyal customers.

SOCIAL MEDIA & REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

We built a website that the manager would then send to recent customers to get their feedback and their experience. Favorable reviewers were encouraged to take those kind words to various review sites. Reviews that advised some improvements were immediately directed to the manager who could then take corrective action to ensure great customer service.

3 The Result

Business at the franchise picked up 25% within the first month that was directly attributed to our online marketing efforts. After 6 months, business has more than doubled since the start of our efforts. E-mail distribution went from zero to 1500 names within 4 months and the list grows steadily every week with new leads & customers added. Most importantly, the reputation management services have increased ratings across the board by 25% with different review sites.