Precision Spending for Paid Search & Social Media Advertising
If you have paid search or social media advertising running, you are probably looking for ways to optimize these critical budgets. Today’s franchise development paid media campaigns rely on broad search terms, like buy a franchise. Social media campaigns tend to rely on look-alike audiences created to mimic existing franchise owner profiles.
Both of these approaches are valuable and necessary. However, they also come with limitations. How can Fran Dev marketing budgets be used more effectively? With precision targeting and custom audiences.
Limitations of Broad Search Terms
Before we dig into how custom audience marketing can benefit your brand, let’s look at some of the limitations of relying on broad search terms.
For paid media, the broad search terms Fran Dev marketing relies upon only capture those people who are already exploring franchise ownership opportunities. This limits the pool of prospects to those who already understand franchise opportunities. That pool of prospects is being chased by every franchise creating competition, driving up cost per lead (CPL), and lowering conversion rates.
To drive down CPL and raise conversion rates, the pool of prospects needs to be expanded. To do so, it is necessary to add even broader terms that expand the audience to anyone searching for any kind of business ownership options. This creates a larger group of prospects that can be persuaded to explore franchise ownership. Unfortunately, this is just too costly to be a viable option for any Fran Dev department.
On the social media side, look-alike audiences are the best option for targeting ads. However, a look-alike audience doesn’t take into account that not everyone with the same demographic, psychographic, or professional profile wants to open a franchise or is even considering opening a business.
When you rely on broad search terms, like “buy a franchise” or “franchise ownership opportunities”, or look-alike audiences, your results will:
Attract a wide, untargeted audience, including many people who are not serious buyers or who are early in the research phase.
Generate higher costs due to competition between franchise brands, which are all bidding on the same generic keywords.
Result in lower conversion rates, as many clicks come from users who are not ready or qualified to take the next step.
How Does Custom Audience Advertising Work?
Custom audience targeting uses data to reach people who are more likely to be interested in franchise opportunities with your brand. This approach offers several benefits:
Higher Relevance: Ads are shown to individuals who have already shown interest in business ownership, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
Improved ROI: By focusing on a more qualified audience, campaigns waste less budget on irrelevant clicks, driving down cost per acquisition and improving return on ad spend.
Personalization: Custom audiences allow for more tailored messaging, creatives, and landing pages, which resonate better with targeted users and can significantly boost response rates.
Advantages of Custom Audience Targeting
Utilizing the data Franchise Ninja provides, Fran Dev marketing teams can create custom audiences to more accurately target in-market prospects. How does it work?
We identify in-market prospects using AI insights and sophisticated data analysis. What are in-market prospects? In-market prospects are those Individuals searching for broad match search terms like:
Own a business
Buy a business
How to open a business
Become your own boss
Start a business
What are successful small business ideas
These types of search terms are simply too broad for franchisors to bid on. But there is gold to be mined here.
Research shows that many people who are interested in business ownership lack a full understanding of the benefits of becoming a franchisee. Many people searching for general business ownership ideas may never explore buying a franchise, but they would make excellent franchisees.
With millions searching for these terms every day, there really is an ocean of opportunities. But the cost of finding the fish in the ocean is just too high. Our job is to help corral these fish into a smaller pond so it’s easier for your marketing team to reach them.
We do this by identifying 1 million or more of these potential, future franchise owners. You’ll have access to their name, email, estimated income and net worth, and up to 35 other data points. Using this data, you can create custom audience marketing campaigns that speak to the benefits of franchising as well as why they should choose your brand as their next business venture.
How Custom Audience Targeting Drives Higher Conversion Rates
The goal for any marketing campaign is to lower spend and increase conversion rates. Custom audience targeting moves the needle. Let’s look at how custom audience targeting improves conversion rates.
Provides Data-Driven Optimization
Custom audiences leverage data and behavioral insights, allowing marketing teams to refine campaigns based on real user actions and preferences. This ongoing optimization leads to more effective campaigns and steadily increasing conversion rates.
Delivers Highly Relevant Messaging
Because custom audiences are defined by specific behaviors or attributes, marketers can tailor ad creative and messaging to address their unique interests, needs, and pain points. This personalization increases engagement and makes prospects feel understood, which directly boosts conversion rates.
Reduces Wasted Ad Spend
By focusing budgets on audiences most likely to convert, franchises minimize spending on unqualified leads. This precision not only improves ROI but also ensures that marketing dollars are directed toward prospects interested in franchise opportunities.
Enables More Effective Retargeting
Custom audience targeting allows for strategic retargeting-reminding prospects who have shown interest but haven’t yet converted to take the next step. This repeated exposure nudges high-potential leads further down the funnel.
Strategic Shift in Franchise Marketing
As franchise brands look for ways to move away from the old “spray and pray” way of attracting future franchisees, custom audience advertising emerges as the best solution for future efforts.
One of the most compelling reasons to shift to custom audience advertising is that there is no additional financial investment to be made in paid and social media efforts. By reallocating budget from broad search terms to custom audience targeting, franchise marketers can:
Avoid high costs and low-quality leads associated with broad, competitive keywords.
Focus on long-tail, location-specific, or highly relevant audience segments that are closer to making a decision.
Deliver more relevant ad experiences, increasing engagement and the likelihood of franchise inquiries or applications.
Custom audience targeting significantly improves conversion rates in franchise development marketing by enabling campaigns to focus on individuals who are most likely to take action, rather than casting a wide net with generic messaging.
