The Art of Education through Advertising
While most look to advertising and marketing as a way to sell their products or services, it’s important to recognize that advertising can be a tool for education. Exposing the public to new ideas, providing valuable information, and seeking to explain are all ways that advertising can be used as a tool for education.
Educational advertising campaigns can be used for social awareness, brand awareness, and engagement. Let’s take a deeper dive into how advertising can be used to educate and persuade, and how the franchising industry can benefit from this tactic.
The What, How, and Why of Educational Advertising
What does education through advertising mean?
Let’s first look at what purpose educating through advertising serves. The primary objective for these types of ads is to:
Break down complex topics
Provide new information
Build credibility
These types of ads should seek to inform, bring clarity, and may even seek to change behaviors.
How can you educate through advertising?
Nearly all forms of traditional advertising can be used for educational purposes. In fact, the content you are reading right now is a type of educational advertising. Blog content, infographics, and videos are probably the most commonly used media for education through advertising.
Paid digital ads and social media are also incredibly effective ways to share messages and educate the public. TV, radio, and print campaigns are also popular avenues for large audience targeting when it comes to public health campaigns or broad social issues.
Why is educational advertising valuable?
Three primary benefits of advertising with an educational message include:
Building Trust and Authority. Companies wishing to establish themselves as thought leaders or industry experts can use educational messages to establish or reinforce their credibility.
Nurture Leads. Throughout the customer journey, educational messages can help to reinforce the value of a product or service. Messages can address potential concerns or questions prospects may be facing at each stage of the journey, from discovery to consideration to decision making.
Drive Conversions. Consumers respond positively to educational messaging and are far more likely to choose brands that provide this type of content. In fact, consumers who read informative content are 131% more likely to convert, while prospects who received educational messaging from a company were 83.6% more likely to purchase.
Why Franchise Development Should Embrace Educational Advertising
Franchise Development marketing has been forced to use the same marketing playbook for years. Broad scope paid and social media ads are placed in markets where expansion is desired. Look-alike ads are used to target the ideal customer profile. Content on the website is used to inform prospects about brand differentiators and build rankings. There hasn’t been a significant development in how to market to potential franchisees in quite some time.
By embracing educational advertising, franchise development teams don’t have to increase their ad budgets at all. They simply need to rethink their messaging and redistribute budgets across the larger ad funnel. Current fran dev advertising focuses on the brand, the cost, and the open, with messaging like:
“Open a Frozen Yogurt Franchise”
“For just $250,000, you can own a pest control franchise.”
“This Brand is expanding! Join our family-owned company as we expand in Ohio and Indiana.”
Can messages like these be successful? Of course! But they are largely only going to persuade prospects who are already significantly down the marketing funnel. Future business owners who are just dipping their toe in the water are less likely to be enticed by this type of messaging. Additionally, advertising that focuses on the buy-in cost for franchising can turn uneducated entrepreneurs away.
That big dollar number out front? It feels insurmountable to someone who is just beginning to consider business ownership. While they may end up making that same total investment if they open a new business alone, they don’t see that total roll-up number initially. This makes that initial franchise investment number seem out of reach.
What typical fran dev advertising doesn’t do is speak to the person who isn’t sure about or doesn’t understand franchising. The reason the pool of prospective franchisees hasn’t been growing is because too many prospects never make it to the point of having a conversation with a fran dev team. They either don’t understand all the benefits franchising can offer, they don’t believe they can afford it, or they simply don’t understand that franchising is more than just fast food.
Diversifying paid and social ads to include key educational messages can help bring more potential prospects to your door. What kind of messaging should you create? A few themes include:
What is franchising
Why you should choose franchising
Benefits of being a franchise owner
Why franchising is better than being in business by yourself
What strengths does the brand bring to the owner
By reaching out to more people who are unfamiliar with franchising and showing them the inherent advantages and strengths of the industry, the market of potential franchisees grows. Bringing more prospects to the table provides a larger pool to market to as you transition into explaining the key benefits your brand brings to the table. All of this leads to more closed deals and more open franchise locations.
How Franchise Development Can Use Educational Advertising
So, how do you go about investing in an educational advertising campaign designed to expand your pool of prospects? First, stay focused on what you are doing right. Paid and social media, supported by strong SEO efforts on your website, are the foundation of your fran dev efforts. You’ve solidified this foundation, now its time to build upon it.
Refine Your Paid and Social Messaging
Looking at your sales funnel, it likely starts with capturing the attention of prospects considering franchising, retargeting them, and then leading them to your site to complete a form. This is a solid foundation.
What should be added is a higher level to the funnel targeting those who are searching for information on buying, owning, or starting a business. Those people who are not yet interested in or even aware of franchising.
Drawing these entrepreneurs into the funnel helps to expand your prospect list. With the data Franchise Ninja provides, you’ll be able to create custom audience messaging that reaches these individuals.
What you won’t be doing is wasting precious media budgets on general messaging. You’ll be targeting messages specifically to the individuals we’ve identified as being in-market for a new business opportunity.
Providing educational messages to these entrepreneurs can bring them to the franchising industry and your brand. As you showcase and explain all the benefits franchising offers, you’ll also be establishing your brand as a thought leader and resource.
Refining Website Messaging and SEO Efforts
Alongside your refined paid and social media marketing, you’ll want to be sure your website includes resources that expand on the messages in your ads. Long-form content on what the franchise industry is, how expansive it is, and how impactful it is in our everyday lives can put into perspective how powerful joining a brand can be.
Additional content should address the many benefits of buying a franchise, including:
Costs of starting on your own vs buying a franchise
Support for critical start-up decisions
Building a tech stack vs having one ready to go
Trial and error process vs established systems
Value of brand recognition
Strength in numbers for negotiation
Buying power of a brand vs the individual
Why franchising isn’t as expensive as a start-up
Combating negative perceptions of franchising
Franchising offers built-in scalability with the purchase of additional territories
There are so many great ways to reinforce the value of franchise ownership. As these prospects begin to understand the leg up they will have with franchising, they will be more likely to reach out to talk with your sales team.
Additional Messaging Options
Want to really set your brand apart from the competition? Consider crafting a video series that helps entrepreneurs understand the journey to business ownership and how franchising makes that journey possible - and less stressful.
Do you have a current franchisee who came to ownership after being in business for themselves? Can they share their story about how franchising is superior? Video clips are engaging and are the basis of great ad campaigns.
Regardless of what avenues you take, be sure your messages integrate across all channels. Build the story from the base - what is franchising - down to - why your brand is the best.
Every brand wants more leads to close more sales to open more locations. Instead of fighting all the other brands in your space for a limited pool of prospects, reach out to the prospects Franchise Ninja identifies as in-market potentials. Build a relationship with them through custom audience advertising, introducing them to franchising, all it has to offer, and showcasing the highlights of your brand.
