Franchise Marketing Software

Franchisees Have Feelings Too

Monday, March 15, 2010 by Kallen Hayes

I was raised by very traditional parents who insisted that life was moving too fast and that it was best to hold onto the good ole days for as long as possible. They raised my brother, sister, and me without cable television, they refused to buy us a Nintendo system, and I don’t remember them ever coming home with a movie rated anything higher than PG. When we took road trips (which we did quite often) we didn’t have Gameboys to keep us entertained, we stopped at nearly every roadside historical sign, and we always stopped for lunch or dinner at a local ma & pa’s diner. My father was adamant that we wouldn’t eat at a restaurant chain or franchise fast food joint. He said he wanted us to experience the true tastes of our country's unique regions and wanted us to support the local communities. He made me feel as though patronizing a national chain was equivalent to handing my five dollar bill to a table of stuffy board members in New York City.

This mentality stuck with me for years. It wasn’t until I got to college and traveled with our college rodeo team that I learned to really appreciate restaurant chains and fast food. Sure, there is a time and a place for the ma & pa diners of the country, but there’s also something to be said for the dependability and speed of the big name restaurants. I have to admit, though, that the tinge of guilt never really left me when my friends and I stopped at the Sonic, Texas Roadhouse, or Applebee’s on a highway bypassing the downtown of a small community where the old establishments struggled everyday to gain back their customers who had moved on to a faster and more convenient lifestyle. I knew I was only fueling the fire that was threatening to smoke out their traditional way of life with daily specials, pie displays, and familar faces.

The perspective I was lacking throughout all the years was that of the franchise owners. The image of board members sitting around a table never quite left me and I never took the time to consider the real people who were actually managing the chain restaurants. My eyes were recently opened a couple of months ago when the Balihoo product became the franchise marketing software of choice for the national sandwich chain, Quiznos. After only a few phone calls with their franchise owners, I realized my perspective had been unfairly skewed against the big dogs of the restaurant world for too long. The Quiznos owners I now speak with on a daily basis are hardworking and passionate people. They strive everyday to make their restaurants successful operations and they face many of the same business challenges that independent restaurant owners do. Sure, they receive lots of support from their corporate team, but the day-to-day managerial tasks are the same. And it takes the same grit, determination, and heart to make their restaurants a customer favorite.

I have been truly inspired by the Quiznos owners. They work hard to connect with their customer base and they want to deliver the personalized touch that sets them apart from other quick service restaurants. I love to see the posters and flyers customized in our ad builder software with the names of local high schools, colleges, and community events. Just the other day, one of the owners was looking to create a poster featuring the Italian Melt sandwich because he said it was a local favorite and he wanted to acknowledge the community spirit of his customers. I’ve also been very impressed with the number of Quiznos owners that have ordered material for local fundraising events.

I no longer have any qualms about eating at a chain restaurant. I realize now that the people behind the counter or serving my table are just as local and just as deserving of a paycheck as the people working in the independent restaurants down the street. I also know that the people in the back offices care deeply for their communities, work hard to provide for their families, and are no different than my parents, who themselves are small business owners. I might not be able to change my dad’s eating habits on the road, but I have succeeded in opening his eyes to the fact that franchisees have feelings too.

Ready to Learn

Saturday, March 13, 2010 by Kelly Mason

It's amazing when a lesson heard becomes a lesson learned. It's like when you go speeding past the speed limit sign only to find yourself pulled over a few miles down the road, practically crying to the terminator-like highway patrolman who obviously doesn't seem deterred by your pity-gathering efforts. You know then that you're going to get a ticket. You know that the sign was there to remind you that this is, in fact, a law that you're breaking by speeding and you know that you just learned your lesson - at least for another 6 months.

Well, our development and product teams just heard and then learned a similar lesson last week in regards the our most recent sprint. We have had the privilege recently of working closely with Jeff Sutherland, one of the inventors of the Scrum process.

We first met with Jeff back in September. He came onsite and dissected our current process. He saw our scrum board, which was embarrassingly off the mark. That feeling can only be equated to having a guest show up to your house and realizing, after they have already used the bathroom that your toilet is filthy. (Not that this has ever happened to me, of course.)

Jeff helped us get back on track. The team was excited about the things we learned and we implemented changes the very next day. The process for developing our local marketing software improved with each sprint.

This week we were able to learn from Jeff again, this time via video conference. Jeff focused on the importance of making sure a story is Ready. If a story is not entirely ready, it causes mid-sprint confusion. Teams are debating, clarifying and essentially scrambling after a story has already started. Now, we heard this lesson very clearly. We felt pretty confident in our current sprint, so we began identifying times when this had happened and ways we could alleviate that and talking theoretically about how to avoid this - in the future. Later on in the week, we learned that lesson the hard way.

The hardest stories to get Ready are the ones that are for a particular client. We have to rely on a third party to be thorough in providing us with the information, and we have to hold hard deadlines, which is also hard to do when working with our valued franchise marketing clients.

The team thought that this story was ready, but upon starting the work, we realized it was NOT. The story requirements did not match the local store marketing sample data. The sample data suggested that the scope of work was entirely different. And we were two days away from the end of the sprint. Rather than ignore the miss, we took drastic measures to adjust the sprint, and manage expectations with the client.

The bottom line is, on Monday, we heard the message from Jeff about the importance of making sure that a story is Ready. On Thursday, we learned what having a story Ready means and what it means to our success as a team. Valuable lessons learned. Doubled velocity, here we come.

Freebies Get Me Everytime, Especially from Local Businesses!

Friday, March 12, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

This MSNBC.com headline caught my eye this morning: Weak economy means it’s a freebie nation.

At a time when almost everyone seems to be tightening their purse strings, giving past and potential customers a product or service for free is a great solution for a business with local store marketing needs. What's more, with the adoption and immediacy that social networking tools provide, the cost of getting your 'freebie' message out to your local audience doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg! In fact, you could utilize facebook or twitter and have your message out to past, current and potential customers within seconds for absolutely zero out-of-pocket cost!

While many big franchises are on the freebie fad bandwagon - Starbucks (Free music downloads), Denny's (free grand slam breakfast), Auntie Anne's (free pretzels), Amazon (free ebook downloads) - don't think that you have to have a big brand budget to offer a worthwhile freebie that yields a big ROI.

While offering 'freebies' has routinely popped up during economic slumps, never before did businesses with local advertising needs have such a variety of affordable tools to get their message out. Not convinced that offering a freebie could help your bottom line? - What's more, Promotional Products Association recently found that consumers were far more likely to make a purchase after receiving an item for free than after simply viewing an ad or commercial for the product or service.

I've experienced this personally several times over the past several months. One of my (now) local favorite coffee shops gave me a free coffee mug a couple of months ago - at the time I didn't feel overly connected to that particular shop or brand and was surprised to receive the free mug....Looking back now, it is interesting to consider that I went from visiting their location once or twice a week to going nearly every day (seriously, if you come by my desk, 9 times out of 10 times there will be a Tully's coffee cup there). Come to think of it, I haven't consumed "office coffee" in weeks (perhaps even months!) Nice job with the freebie Tully's - see you on Monday!

The Del Taco Super Special Show

Thursday, March 11, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

Mexican fast food chain Del Taco took its Facebook fan base from roughly 20,000 to nearly 60,000 in just seven weeks after launching their Facebook-based "The Del Taco Super Special Show".

Del Taco vice president of marketing John Cappasola says that their new, multiplatform marketing approach will hopefully help to broaden their customer base. "Looking at our position in the category, it's important that we find ways to extend our reach as efficiently as possible," Cappasola says. "We knew that integrating what we were doing—a traditional media approach—with social media was going to be really important for us."

The QSR brand is continually monitoring impressions, click-throughs and other metrics and using that information to tweak their placement of online and social media ads for the show, as well as the creative and offers featured. For example, online ads are now relying on both coupons AND viral tools to encourage current fans to recruit their friends and family to become Del Taco Facebook fans.

Great to see that the Mexican chain is also using Twitter to promote the show and other special offers/coupons. It is great to see how tightly their complete franchise marketing plan seems to be tied together. (They are incorporating shoutouts to their Facebook page (specifically to The Del Taco Super Special Show") in numerous media forms (radio, tv, print, etc.)

While Del Taco is relatively late to the game with Facebook, they are proving that even for for a late-adopter, social networking can greatly impact one's franchise marketing strategy and local internet marketing efforts!

Local Franchisee Marketing - 10 Things You Need to Know

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

This post, Local Franchisee Marketing - 10 Things You Need to Know, was originally written and posted by Shane Vaughan on our old blog on 7/14/09.

Balihoo recently penned an article for one of our favorite sites for franchise news - Blue MauMau. Article can be seen here, or you can read the full article below!

Local Franchisee Marketing - 10 Things You Need to Know

If you’re a franchisee, you’re probably already doing some local marketing — even if it’s just listing your business in the local Yellow Pages. Think additional advertising will cost too much? Think you don’t need an online presence? Or does “online presence” seem to be the opposite of “local media”?

In fact, every company, no matter how large or small, can benefit from using local media effectively. And it doesn’t have to break your budget! Here’s a list of the Top Ten things you need to know to make Local Marketing work for you.

1. Know Your Target Audience.

First, last, and always: Pay attention to your target market! If you’re not focused on your customers, you cannot hope to win their attention — or their business.

Be specific about who you’re trying to reach. Men? Women? Retirees? Mothers? Sports Fans? Chinchilla owners? People with other particular interests? Other small businesses, such as real-estate firms? Dental offices?

Now that you’ve clearly defined your target audience, consider what marketing messages will resonate with them. What problem does your product or service solve for them? Think carefully about where you should position your communications so your target audience will see, read — and act on them.

If possible, develop a “profile” of your target customer. Give them a name to easily refer to them, let’s use “Katie” for an example. Where does Katie work? Is she married? Kids? What does she do in her free time? What is Katie’s household income? The more specific, the better.

2. Measure, Measure, Measure.

There’s an old saying, “Half the money you spend on advertising is wasted, and you don’t know which half.” Unfortunately, this is true in many cases, but it doesn’t have to be. Careful planning and – most importantly, measurement, ensures your advertising is working hard for your business.

It’s all about ROI — Return On Investment. This may sound complicated, but it’s actually pretty easy to calculate. Simply take the benefit you receive from an investment, and subtract the cost of that investment. Divide the result by the cost of that investment. (Benefit - Cost)/Cost.

You can apply this to any business investment, including marketing campaigns. And you should. ROI tells you if a given effort is providing a net benefit to your bottom line, and if so, the size of the gain. You’ll want to get the highest ROI possible from your marketing dollars, and you can’t improve what you don’t measure.

3. Buy Media; Don’t Be Sold

Strategically buy your media, don’t allow yourself to be “sold.” Make sure you evaluate all options, across all communications channels, not just whoever happens to knock on your door. And evaluate them in terms of their effectiveness for your target market, not necessarily in terms of your personal interests!

Also, make sure that any reps who call on you know you’re considering other placement; they will probably sweeten their rates.

4. Integrate Your Marketing Messages.

Don’t spend all of your marketing dollars on a single medium. Why not? Because multi-channel marketing efforts perform better. In one study, over a few years multi-channel customers spent at least several hundred dollars more in comparison with single-channel customers. Multiply that difference by your total number of customers, and you can see there’s real value to be had.

As you venture into multi-channel marketing, be sure to integrate your marketing. You’ll need to convey the same message across all channels.

And don’t forget some powerful experiential channels that many small franchises overlook. Your storefront or office, your signage, your employees, and your product are all sending messages of their own. Are those experiential messages consistent with your advertising messages? Are they consistent with the message you want to send?

5. Relations With Local Media.

The thing to remember about local media is that when your business is down, so is theirs. Just like you, your local media want long-term repeatable revenue in a down economy. They want to keep your business! This means now is the time to renegotiate your contracts.

This is especially true of local print media. Understand the downward pricing pressure exerted on these media by the power of the internet: In 2008, print classified ad spend was down to about half what it was in 2000! Blame Craigslist, Google, and Yahoo — then put this knowledge to work for you.

6. Newspapers Are Still a Valid Option.

Although readership is shrinking, newspapers are still a valid local advertising option.

Particularly in smaller markets, newspapers carry more weight with the local audience.

Older readers in particular continue to rely on newspapers, especially for local info.

But make sure you supplement ad placement in the print version with placement on the newspaper’s own on-line presence. In 2008, newspapers actually accounted for over one-quarter of all local online advertising!

And consider writing up a press release announcing your company’s opening, refurbishment, website, sale, or upcoming special event — anything that could be seen as “news.” Get it out to your local papers. They may not take it, but they might if they need to fill a spot in a hurry.

7. Digital Works Locally.

You say you don’t think of interactive or online media as being “local”?

In fact, local online advertising is expected to grow 6% in 2009, to a total spend of $13.3 Billion. In a broader sense, local digital media includes things like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and online yellow pages. These are growing too.

Local search is also a powerful tool, increasingly replacing printed Yellow Pages. People used to “let their fingers do the walking;” now it’s the mouse! Local search is when a potential customer uses a search engine to find your kind of business, adding the name of your city or town. When that happens, you want that customer to see your company’s link — front and center!

8. Build Your Online Presence — Beyond Your Own Website.

Local search will work more effectively for you if you have your own website — and get it on the first page of search results.

To rise in the search rankings, your site needs to have relevant keywords but not appear “keyword-stuffed” — containing nothing but keywords and no useful knowledge.

A single website is not enough; keywords are not enough. Search engines also take into account how many websites have links to yours. This is an indication of how useful and relevant your content is.

You can build links to your website from your own Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter pages. This will help you rise in the search rankings. But it means you need to have a strategic plan for your online presence, and commit resources to implementing it.

9. Build a Relationship.

Attracting a new customer costs about 5 times as much as keeping an existing one. To control your customer acquisition costs, therefore, you need to build an emotional connection between your customers and your brand. (And yes, all companies have a brand, even if they don’t realize it!)

To do this, foster a relationship with your customers outside of the buying interaction.

Direct mail, email, social media, blogs, and Twitter can all contribute.

10. Email Marketing Is Your Friend.

Once you build up a solid email list, email marketing is relatively inexpensive and highly targeted. If done right, you know you are communicating a relevant message to motivated customers who want a relationship with you. That’s a marketer’s dream!

How do you build your own email list? Offer a “membership” campaign on your website. Give something of value exclusively to members (i.e., discount coupon, etc.) in return for their email addresses. Make sure you respect their privacy and take care in how you use customer contact info — and tell them about your privacy commitment.

Don’t spam your customers. Use a “preference center” on your website that will allow customers to tell you how often they want to hear from you, and on what topics.
Frequency: Daily; Weekly; Only when there’s a sale?
Potential Topics: Arrival of new merchandise; Monthly newsletter containing tips & how-to advice; When you have an event just for “members;” Only when you’re about to have a sale?

Then, respect that preference! Nothing is more annoying to a customer (and therefore destructive of the relationship you’re trying to build) than when they’ve told a company their preferences — and then that company ignores them.

There you have it: The Top 10 Things You Need To Know About Local Franchise Marketing. It isn’t just the Yellow Pages any more!

Is Agile/Scrum the Process Management Framework for the Creative Economy?

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Kevin Donaldson

Recently I have been talking to more and more people about the power of using the Agile/Scrum framework to manage multiple business functions and it struck me that a likely reason for this is that the nature of work is changing for many people and even entire organizations.

There is a broad shift happening away from the information/knowledge economy (which arguably started decades ago) into the next great stage often referred to as the creative economy. In this stage, business starts to look, and act more like art. Furthermore, a company's strength is often less about the systems and processes that it runs on, but more about the people and creative capital within. Take Balihoo or any start-up for that matter - In a start-up, treating the business as art is not only required, but also a source of competitive advantage in most cases.

As many more people and organizations move away from factory work, process's become harder to define and lock down. And when I say factory I don't mean just the traditional assembly line version of a factory that most of us think of. Seth Godin uses a broader term in his book Linchpin where he defined a factory as:

"... an organization that has it figured out, a place where people go to do what they are told and earn a paycheck"

This definition goes well beyond assembly lines and encompasses white collar information organizations such as insurance companies, government departments, and even franchises with their systems and controls that drive continuity in their offering.

Of course, as business's mature, it is inevitable that parts of the organization will become a factory - areas where the work is repeatable and comoditized. That's not necessarily a bad thing, however more and more things in modern business cannot be 'systematized'. This can be scary to many people that want to work in a job with a map to tell them what to do. It can also be a thorn in the side of traditional process engineers who love to create process maps for everything. What some fail to consider is that if a process can be mapped, it is likely that it can be copied and therefor starts a march down the path towards comoditization.

In the creative economy process engineers and the process's they create can actually reduce operational effectiveness when they attempt to systematize everything in the organization. Six Sigma works great when trying to create lots and lots of high quality microchips, but it doesn't work as well in value-add service offerings. Process engineers can fine tune accounting processes but it doesn't work as well when trying to create a musical. Traditional process engineering is valuable but not when it is used like a hammer and every aspect of a business is a considered to be a factory/nail.

Another common example for almost any company: Most large organizations have ultra detailed software development life-cycles that continue to grow and bloat over time but with all that detail its amazing how few projects finish on time with happy customers. Why? Because software development is Art.

However, in the software world, people have started to figure out that lighter process can actually generate more predicable results. Agile and its children (Scrum/XP etc) are not processes in the traditional sense, but frameworks that can both provide structure as well as freedom for the art of software development. At Balihoo we use Agile/Scrum to 'sculpt' our Local Marketing Software 'art', and as mentioned above, the Scrum framework can actually be used outside of the software world as a tool to help manage work in the creative economy more broadly.

Unfortunately, some that I explain the framework to get frustrated with the lack of detailed direction, but that is exactly why it works! It is a framework with very basic patters that support creativity, but also the need to produce maximum value for the customer in the shortest time possible. It does incorporate aspects of process engineering such as Lean, but only to provide general direction.

If you find that some or all of your business is more about people creating art than running a factory, traditional process engineering may not be the answer. Agile/Scrum could be the process management framework for the creative economy.

Great Franchises and Brands on Twitter!

Friday, March 5, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

It is no big secret that I am interested in watching how brands' Tweet. Here is a list of 117 great brands and franchises (both large and small) that are currently incorporating Twitter in their local internet marketing strategy:

Active Network – twitter.com/activenetwork
Amazon – twitter.com/amazon

American Airlines - twitter.com/AAirwaves
Anthropologie – twitter.com/anthropologie

Baskin-Robbins – twitter.com/BaskinRobbins
Barefoot Wine - twitter.com/barefootwine
Ben & Jerry’s – twitter.com/cherrygarcia

Best Buy - twitter.com/bestbuy

Bigelow Tea – twitter.com/bigelowtea
BMW - twitter.com/bmw

Bojangles – twitter.com/gottawannaneeda
Bosco Chocolate Syrup – twitter.com/scott_so
Build-A-Bear Workshop - twitter.com/buildabear
Cabela’s - twitter.com/cabelas

Cabot Cheese – twitter.com/cabotcoop
Cadbury – twitter.com/CadburyFriends

Carpet One Floor & Home - twitter.com/carpetone
Charm City Burger – twitter.com/charmcityburger
ComputerGeeks – twitter.com/ComputerGeeks
Constant Contact – twitter.com/ctcthelp
Dairy Queen - twitter.com/dairyqueen
Dell – twitter.com/Direct2Dell
Delta - twitter.com/DeltaAirLines
Dippin’ Dots – twitter.com/realdippindots

Discovery Channel – twitter.com/DiscoveryChPR
Domino’s Pizza - twitter.com/dominos
DunkinDonuts – twitter.com/DunkinDonuts
Eastbay – twitter.com/Eastbay
Etsy - twitter.com/etsy
Fast Company – twitter.com/fastcompany
Fiji Water - twitter.com/FIJIWater
Flooring America - twitter.com/flooringamerica
Flying Dog Beer – twitter.com/flyingdog
Ford Trucks – twitter.com/fordtrucks
ForRent.com – twitter.com/AptsForRent
Gandolfo’s NY Deli - twitter.com/gandolfos
Gatorade – twitter.com/Gatorade

GM Trucks – twitter.com/GMtruckclub
Greenling Organic – twitter.com/greenling_com
GU Energy – twitter.com/GUenergy
H&R Block – twitter.com/HRBlock
Harley Davidson – twitter.com/harleydavidson
Hertz – twitter.com/connectbyhertz
Home Depot – twitter.com/thehomedepot
HP Snapfish – twitter.com/snapfishbyhp
Ikea Fans – twitter.com/ikeafans
Infusionsoft – twitter.com/Infusionsoft
Inkfruit – twitter.com/inkfruit
iPhone – twitter.com/iphone
Jetblue – twitter.com/JetBlue
Joost – twitter.com/joost_com
Kodak – twitter.com/kodakCB
Landor.com – twitter.com/landor_dot_com
Lands End – twitter.com/LandsEndChat
Lilly Pulitzer - twitter.com/xxlilly

L’Express – twitter.com/LEXPRESS
M&M’S – Ms. Green –twitter.com/mmsgreen

Magicomm – twitter.com/magicomm
MarketingProfs – twitter.com/marketingprofs
Marriott – twitter.com/MarriottIntl
McDonald’s –twitter.com/mcdonalds

MGM Grand Hotel and Casino – twitter.com/mgmgrand

Moxie Java (Boise) - twitter.com/moxie_java
Nestle - twitter.com/nestle

Nike Basketball – twitter.com/nikebasketball

Nordstrom – twitter.com/nordstrom

North Face – twitter.com/thenorthface
nuBound- twitter.com/nuBound

Pancheros Mexican Grill – twitter.com/pancheros
Parts Express – twitter.com/Parts_Express
Patagonia – twitter.com/patagonia

Pepsi – twitter.com/pepsi

PizzaHut - twitter.com/pizzahut
PlanetGreen – twitter.com/planetgreen
Playboy – twitter.com/Playboy
popchips – twitter.com/popchips
Popeye’s Chicken – twitter.com/PopeyesChicken
Quiznos –twitter.com/quiznos

Red Hat – twitter.com/redhatnews
REI - twitter.com/REI_CoOp

Ron’s Home And Hardware – twitter.com/rons
Rubbermaid – twitter.com/Rubbermaid
Sacre Bleu Wine – twitter.com/sacrebleuwine

Safeway - twitter.com/safeway
Salesforce.com – twitter.com/successforce
Scuba Diver Girls – twitter.com/scubadivergirls
SEGA – twitter.com/segaamerica
Share Our Strength – twitter.com/sharestrength
Sierra Trading Post – twitter.com/sierratp
Southwest Airlines – twitter.com/southwestair
Starbucks – twitter.com/starbucks

Subway –twitter.com/subwayfreshbuzz

Taco Bell – twitter.com/TacoBellTruck

Tasti D-Lite - twitter.com/Tastidlite
The Oregonian – twitter.com/oregonian
The Sims3 – twitter.com/thesims3
TheHandbagShop – twitter.com/thehandbagshop
Thomson Reuters – twitter.com/thomsonreuters
Thomson Reuters Careers – twitter.com/TRCareers
Tiara Hotels & Resorts – twitter.com/TiaraHotels
Tillamook Cheese – twitter.com/TillamookCheese

Times Online – twitter.com/timesonline
Trader Joe’s – twitter.com/traderjoes
Triathlete Magazine – twitter.com/TriathleteMag
TurboTax – twitter.com/turbotax
Urban Outfitters – twitter.com/UrbanOutfitters

Vera Bradley - twitter.com/VeraBradley

Vitamin Water - twitter.com/vitaminwater
VIBE Magazine – twitter.com/VibeMagazine
Virgin – twitter.com/virgindotcom

Volvo (US) - twitter.com/VolvoCars_US
Wachovia – twitter.com/Wachovia
Weight Watchers – twitter.com/weightwatchers

Westaflex – twitter.com/westaflex
Whole Foods – twitter.com/wholefoods
YesToCarrots – twitter.com/yestocarrots
Zappos – twitter.com/zappos

Twitter is great for businesses with local advertising needs - not only is it nearly immediate, it's free and can connect you immediately with past and potential customers. If you haven't already, add it to your Local Internet Marketing strategy!

Check out the above brands for some twitterpated local advertising inspiration!

Boise, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Friday, March 5, 2010 by Betsie Richardson

Every so often, our beloved Boise turns up in national media. In this instance, we owe thanks to Sunset Magazine for highlighting Boise as one of the Top 20 Towns of the Future.

Boise, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth of the Payette river and breadth of our foothills' trails and height of Bogus Basin
Balihoo's local marketing automation software can reach, when franchises feel out of site
For the ends of well executed media campaigns and ideal ad builder software
I love thee to the ends of every day's
Most quiet local business owner's need, by our 234-day shining sun and crisp Idaho evenings,
I love thee freely, as men strive to summit Hard Guy
I love thee purely, as they turn from crowded cities
I love thee with a Balihoo passion put to use
In a CEO's griefs and his childhood's faith that more Balihoo's may be so lucky to thrive in Boise.

Does this poem sound familiar? I thought I would pull from my British literature studies and allude to Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Local Marketing Strategy - Local Email Marketing

Friday, March 5, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

This is the start of a new series called, "Local Marketing Strategy". The intention here is to take a specific tactic and explore how it can impact your local marketing strategy and provide some specific guidance on how to implement that at the local level.

Today's topic is local email marketing. First, some fun facts:

According the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated a ROI of $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009.
Epsilon reports that email drove an average of $.14 in revenue per delivered message.
In general, email is considered the top-performing tactic from a ROI perspective in a marketers toolkit

As you can see, email marketing should be a critical component of your local marketing strategy.

There are typically two types of email marketing campaigns at the local level:
1. "Newsletter" type campaigns designed to stay in touch with your current customer base. These are primarily brand type activities and help you develop thought leadership with your customers and keep your store/product top-of-mind.
2. "Promotional" type campaigns designed to communicate special offers.

The first (and often most difficult) step in implementing a local marketing campaign is developing your list. This must be integrated in your overall business approach. If you're a higher-touch business, you should be including emails with all of your customer data (train your employees to ask). The other approach is the "fishbowl" on the counter which asks your customers to give you their email in exchange for information, special offers or the chance to win something. Either way you choose to implement, it's critical that you start building your list now.

This brings up the issue of "renting" email lists. We believe that at the local level especially, businesses should be very wary of renting email lists. They're often inaccurate, untargeted and can do more harm than good for your business.

The next step is the software you'll use. Of course we thing that a comprehensive local marketing software like Balihoo is the best option, but there are many point-solutions from vendors such as Constant Contact or Exact Target that you can use. The bottom line is to make sure you're using something that will help you manage the deliverability and be in compliance with SPAM laws.

Finally, comes the actual content. "Buy Now" certainly works with local email marketing, but you'll get much better results if you balance that with providing good, relevant content that engages your customers. Remember, they've asked to receive information from you, so make sure it's good. Also, be consistent - if it's a monthly newsletter, ensure that you distribute it monthly at around the same time.

Local email marketing can and should play a significant role in your overall local marketing strategy. Focus on the above items and get started today!

If you would like to learn more, check out some of our resources:

Local Franchise Marketing Playbook
Local Marketing Automation Whitepaper

The Local Marketing Hurricane

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by Brian King

If you watched the second week of the Olympics, there is a good chance that you might have seen some coverage on Men’s Freestyle Aerials Skier, Jeret “Speedy” Peterson. Speedy, who happens to be a Boise native, managed to take home the silver medal after stomping a trick he calls The Hurricane. The Hurricane is a jump that consists of three flips and five twists all while soaring 55+ feet in the air over a period of about 2.9 seconds. It’s simply unreal. Jeret named the jump The Hurricane because he said halfway through; you have no clue where you are.

Rather than attempt the jump myself, I’ll gladly take his word for it. Jeret happens to be a buddy of mine so I took particular interest in his success and actually planned meetings around when he was competing to make sure I was near a TV. The meeting I had prior to his event was with that of a dental practice that had been dabbling in local advertising but saw minimal success because they simply, didn’t know where they were. Because they got lost in the mix, they gave up which is common in the world of local marketing and often times the demise of most direct-to-consumer local advertising campaigns.

Fortunately for national brands and franchises, Balihoo is changing this with its local marketing automation platform. It allows the parent company to offer their customers, distributors and/or affiliates the ability to implement strategic local advertising campaigns with the assistance of enterprise class advertising professionals, and all at a fraction of the cost. Rather than attempting to throw The Hurricane (which is actually a fair description of advertising world in general) on their own and risk the bone-breaking brutal landing, companies now have the ability to utilize Balihoo’s local marketing software to take on The Hurricane and nail the landing with the precision to bring home the medal.

For those loyal Balihoo Blog followers who were too busy reading our blogs and missed Jeret “Speedy” Peterson landing The Hurricane, I have attached a link to watch him compete. Enjoy! Click to View

Clever Local Advertising / Local Internet Marketing - Tasti D-Lite

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

While many brands and franchises have gotten their local internet marketing feet wet by creating Facebook pages, Twitter handles, blogs, etc. the vast majority of them seem to fall flat quickly - allowing days and weeks to go by without updates, failing to respond to past or potential customers - finally declare that social networking "just doesn't" for them, or that they "just don't have the time".

However, there are obviously some fantastic exceptions (there to remind, encourage or perhaps taunt the others with the knowledge that it can be done).

One brand that has done incredibly well with local internet marketing and social media, particularly with Twitter, is Tasti

D-Lite. Before they embraced the microblogging service, the only thing I knew about the frozen dessert giant was that 4 ladies from Manhattan often devoured the stuff.

Tasti D- Lite's local store marketing efforts first grabbed my attention when they began tweeting Twitter-exclusive coupons for customers to print out and redeem. From the numbers, the Director of Information and Social Technologies at Tasti D-Lite, BJ Emerson, concluded that their Twitter coupon campaigns could outperform similar targeted ads on other social network platforms or certain PPC ads.

And then they just recently launched their TastiRewards program. This novel program allows customers to tie their loyalty cards to their accounts with Twitter and Foursquare. Customers can enable their accounts to send out messages to their social networks every time they use their card. For each brand-related Twitter or Foursquare update they earn points (50 points = free cup/cone). This program gets their message out quickly and easily - and what's more, the message is being sent out by a member of one's

social network (presumably someone they know, like and trust).

I think a great addition would be to auto-populate the flavor/dessert purchased. I don't know about you, but "Just scored 5 TastiReward points at Tasti D-Lite in Columbus Circle, NY with Mocha Almond Fudge Cone mytasti.com' (112 characters) sounds more appealing and tempting than "I just scored 5 TastiRewards at Tasti D-Lite Columbus Circle, NYC mytasti.com'.

Now, if only Tasti D-Lite would move to Idaho. For the time being I guess I will just have to watch my ole' NYC-based friends' Tasti D-Lite tweets roll in and leave me missing the Big Apple.

Decide as Late as Possible

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Kevin Donaldson

One of the core principals of Lean thinking is 'Decide as Late as Possible'. Like many aspects of Agile and Lean thinking, they can often be taken at face value and lead to less than optimal outcomes, leaving the organization with a sour taste in their mouth but with the correct application there is power.

In uncertain environments better results can be achieved with an options-based approach, delaying decisions as much as possible until they can be made based on better facts rather than uncertain assumptions and predictions. This is of course a continuum, not an end. If you wait too long to gather facts the organization can become paralyzed, and you may miss the opportunity. An iterative approach with short cycles promotes this principal, giving a team the ability to adapt to changes quickly and also and correct mistakes which might be costly if discovered after long development cycles.

We had a great example of this principal in action just recently. Back in early December a few of us got together to talk about possible product strategies for the IFA (International Franchising Association) Conference to be held in the first week of February 2010. We batted around a few ideas, and as it started to get closer to Christmas we felt that we had to make some decisions soon given that the holidays were upon us, and that we now only had a little over a month to get ready. However nothing seemed to be clicking yet.

After the holidays in early January we decided that introducing a social media offering within our local marketing software tool would be the ideal launch platform for the event. Social media was everywhere, but how to combine it effectively into a local marketing strategy is the question that franchisees are asking. Everyone in the room thought it was a great idea - The only problem was that we had less than 4 weeks until the start of the conference!

At this first meeting a quick sketch was made on a piece of paper of the new offering that would allow a local store marketer to publish a message and send it to Twitter, Facebook, an email list and a mobile phone list. They could then use this message with a shortened track-able URL link to a customized web based landing page for more details about the offer (all designd to tie into their existing local advertising).

Within 3 weeks we took the hand sketch and converted it into a ascetically pleasing, fully functioning prototype of the offering, that we deployed to the production version of our local marketing software on its regular bi-weekly release schedule the day before the conference started. We actually even had all the development work done more than a week prior to this point, so it wasn't an all night-er for our engineering team the day before! So what happened? The sales team at the conference promoted and used it on the trade show to produce one of our largest lead gen opportunities in months.

Just-in-time decision making is critical to allow a business to make the highest value decisions with the least amount of cost or waste. Yes, its a fine line between just-in-time and too late, but you will never get good at it until you practice. Think Lean!

I'm Usually an Arial Narrow

Friday, February 26, 2010 by Megan Heath

Here at Balihoo, we work with several clients whose local advertising strategies are heavily print-focused. When deploying our solution for a new client, Balihoo's crack design team goes to great lengths to ensure that our print ad builder incorporates the appropriate fonts for the brand we're servicing. Though this process can be laborious, it speaks to the core of our offering as a business; fonts are a critical brand component, one that sets the tone for a company's local advertising efforts.

It's no accident that we choose Cambria for business reports and Lucida Calligraphy for Christmas cards. Like any creative element, fonts provide context for our messages; they give your written voice the timbre that readers "hear" as they process your message. Bold, blocky letters sound aggressive; round, uneven letters sound youthful; ornate, elongated letters sound luxurious.

Think of your font as the theme song in the background of your opening scene print ad.

Given this importance, you can imagine my dismay when a prior blog post was somehow published in a clunky, disagreeable Calibri. I personally prefer a more subtle Arial, but would settle for a classic Times New Roman. When limited patience and knowledge of the blog platform prevented me from quickly making a change, I lost sight of my goal and broke the cardinal rule of messaging: I shrugged my shoulders and sent it into the world, knowing it didn't quite reflect what I hoped to communicate.

The devil is in the details, and this is overwhelmingly true for a local advertiser. Your words inherently invite scrutiny - not just what they say, but when, where, why, and how they're said. For a franchise organization seeking national consistency, a state-of-the-art print ad builder ensures that every detail is communicated exactly as you intend.

Your font is one subtle detail of many that create and preserve your brand. Balihoo's ad builder software and professional support ensure that the message delivered is the message intended.

Don't let your Courier degrade into Wingdings. Contact us for a consultation.

Local Franchise Marketing Playbook - Download

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

Balihoo recently released a 24-page e-book that all you franchise marketing folks will find interesting, you can download it here.

If you're involved in local advertising, local store marketing, local media buying or franchise marketing, check it out and let us know what you think!

Download the Local Franchise Marketing Playbook

Social Media Marketing...I think I get it? - Local Marketing Ideas

Friday, February 12, 2010 by Meghann Splittgerber

Working daily with Carpet One and Flooring America franchise owners from all over the country on their local advertising campaigns, I have found a common response among these local affiliates is, "I think I get it, but...?" when it comes to social media marketing. They understand that social media is important to the overall franchise marketing mix, the message is coming through loud and clear from their corporate brand, but they are unsure of how to use these tools to market their business. The article, Social Media Marketing: Useful tool or passing fad?, tackles social media from what I consider to be a typical small business owner perspective. Here are some important things to consider:

Social marketing can be considered a modern day word-of-mouth marketing. The difference between traditional word-of-mouth and social media word-of-mouth is that you have to manage the message by consistent interaction. It is not a set it and forget solution. Unlike when a happy customer tells their neighbor about their experience.

It is challenging to know where to start with all the options available between Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to name a few, and how to incorporate them into your local Internet marketing strategy. On top of selecting your social media outlets, it takes a great deal of time to manage the content and keep things current and the conversation evolving. It is recommended to assign this responsibility to one person as a daily job function. Especially, since this is an integral part of the overall marketing mix.

Content should not be all sales and promotional messaging. It is important to incorporate interesting and relevant industry information as well to establish credibility with your community of readers and provide them value.

Social media is a good way to target the younger segment of your audience, which continues to get younger and younger. This generation of consumers are actively involved in this marketing medium and the trend is only going to grow stronger in the years to come.

If still not convinced, most social media marketing is absolutely FREE. We love free media!

Local Advertising Goes to College

Monday, February 8, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

Who doesn’t remember the “hot spot” during high school and college? You know, that central location that you always seemed to end up at– whether to study, meet for a group project, recover from the night before or just grab a bite before an exam. In high school, our central spot, ‘The Greer’ was a staple in my oh-so-important teenage social life. Even today, when I talk to fellow alumni (even if they are 20 years my senior), ‘The Greer’ comes up. Legendary. If ‘The Greer’ were a national franchise, I can guarantee I would stop by (likely weekly), order an Oreo frappe and look for Post-Grad hockey players.

In college, the central spot was Subway, located smack dab in the middle of campus. Today, I can’t step foot in a Subway and not think of U of O. I wasn't too surprised when I that franchises often battle for college campus locations. As this article points out, more than 100 of Pita Pit's 180 locations are located on or near college campuses, while Subway has over 200.

Alongside of Pita Pit and Panda Express, Subway establishes early brand connections with students during their college years – students graduate, go get jobs and take their brand preferences with them. While I had certainly frequented Subway before entering the wonderful world of college, I hadn't really "bonded" with the brand. I didn't feel any form of attachment to the franchise - I would never have walked an extra 6 blocks to purchase a Subway sub (opposed to another popular sub-peddling joint). Now, I do so without thinking.

Today, local franchisee’s are increasingly looking for new ways to connect with their local customers. Two media forms that could be incredibly beneficial to college-located, QSR (quick service restaurants) locations – local internet marketing and mobile advertising. While cell phones are now largely widespread across all demographics – for the college student, his/her reliance on their phone is unparalleled. What’s more, teenagers and young adults are more likely to be technologically in-tune with their mobile devices than the average customer. Whether utilized for coupons (delivered by the mobile owners location), campus-based promotions, daily special announcements, etc. mobile advertising could be HUGE for many campus-based businesses.

Increasingly, local marketing automation tools are allowing franchise marketing teams to seamlessly provide franchisees with the advertising materials they need to immediately connect with their local customers. If I had received coupons and information on daily specials while on campus I would likely have visited Subway even more - and who knows, if Panda Express had sent me a coupon I might have buzzed by Subway in a beeline for some Chinese food (and would today, be walking an additional 7 blocks to get a different college comfort food).

Balihoo Launches Social Media Integration and Local Franchise Marketing Playbook at IFA’s Annual Convention

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

Leading local marketing provider for franchise brands utilizes the International Franchise Association’s 50^th Annual Convention to announce significant local marketing enhancements.

Boise, ID (Feb. 2, 2010) — Balihoo, the premier provider of Local Marketing Automation technology and services to national franchise brands, announced today that it will launch two major initiatives at IFA’s 50^th Annual Convention on February 5, 2010, in San Antonio, Texas.

The first initiative is the integration of social media marketing vehicles into Balihoo’s Local Marketing Automation platform. This advancement, the first of its kind in the industry, allows the local franchise marketer to seamlessly and easily integrate social media vehicles such as Twitter and Facebook into their day-to-day marketing efforts.

“This is a breakthrough that changes the face of local marketing by putting the power of social media marketing in the hands of the local marketer,” said Pete Gombert, Balihoo’s CEO. “We’re giving the local franchise marketer access to customize national-quality creative and the ability to quickly drive these communications to their customers across all media channels, now including Twitter, Facebook, and SMS text.”

Balihoo will be providing the first live demonstrations of this social media integration at the IFA Convention beginning February 5^th, 2010, in San Antonio, Texas. Attendees can schedule a private appointment to see the functionality or visit Balihoo at booth #627.

Additionally, Balihoo will share its first ever Local Franchise Marketing Playbook at the event, a 24-page hardcopy guide designed to help franchisors and franchisees navigate the complicated local marketing landscape with tips, tactics and insights to build a powerful local marketing strategy.

Available only in limited quantities, attendees of the IFA Conference can reserve their copy here: Local Franchise Marketing Playbook reservation. Alternately, an electronic version of the Playbook can be downloaded here: Local Franchise Marketing Playbook (digital).

“Our clients represent over twenty five thousand local marketers which give us a unique and data-driven perspective on what works in local marketing,” said Shane Vaughan, Balihoo’s VP of Marketing. “The Local Franchise Marketing Playbook represents the distillation of this knowledge, with clear, actionable guidance for both franchisors and their franchisees.”

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About Balihoo
Balihoo (www.balihoo.com) is the premier provider of Local Marketing Automation technology and services to national brands with local marketing needs. Balihoo brings enterprise-class marketing to the local level and gives national brands full visibility into all local marketing activities and results.

Enabling Breakthrough Local Store Marketing

Thursday, January 28, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

For franchise organizations, product manufacturers and national brands, enabling franchisees, distributors and affiliates to effectively generate demand at the local level is of utmost importance.

Check out this 'Local Store Marketing' presentation to see what local marketing ideas and solutions are currently available - and begin enabling your franchisees and affiliates to more successfully and efficiently represent your brand and generate demand with their local advertising efforts.

Local Store Marketing - Enabling Breakthrough Local Store Marketing

View more presentations from Balihoo.

Social Media + Yahoo Search + GPS = Big Brother? Maybe, But I'm Over Irrelevant Search Results

Monday, January 25, 2010 by Alex Fascilla

Do you feel as though that target on your back is growing? You should. Whenever I hear about the latest ad-targeting technique/software/service, I always imagine arrows tipped with arrowheads that read "Old Spice" or "Pantine Pro-V" hurling toward targets affixed to our backs that are made up of rings that say things like "Male", or: "Age 25-34", or even: "Retired-Southern-Religious, Would-Never-Drive-Anything-But-A-Buick, Lamenting-The-Days-Reagan-Was-In-Office-Senior". The shooters? Well, in that last case, probably Unger, maker of the vaunted Nifty Nabber. In the first case, probably Unilever, the obvious scent-challenged maker of Axe products... as an aside, if you're a male aged 25-34 and you currently use an Axe product, STOP--in an attempt to smell better, you've managed to make yourself smell much worse (additionally, if a manufacturer makes a product for a sole purpose and that sole purpose is never fulfilled, it's probably time to start thinking about having another sole purpose [Tip: empty Axe bottles are great at filling that unused space in recycle bins!])

As MediaBuyerPlanner recently reported, Yahoo is working to help those advertisers (like Unilever) that engage in search and social media advertising, but yearn for better-targeting in these local internet marketing efforts. As the article indicates, "Yahoo is developing a search app which takes into account the location of the mobile device, time of day, an event, information from the mobile user’s calendar, past behavior of the mobile user, weather, social networking data, aggregate behaviors, information about proximity of a social contact - or even the mobile user’s mode as determined by an avatar."

Wow. That's quite a bit of data that a search from a mobile phone can deliver over a search from a traditional desktop. With internet usage and web searches on phones becoming increasingly more popular, and local advertising becoming increasingly more, well, local, Yahoo will do well to fully-develop this "contextual search results" idea. Taking an event on Facebook, for instance, and marrying it to search results for a person searching Yahoo for a related event is just the kind of Web 2.0 synergy we've all been waiting for. And think of how this might change franchise marketing: a consumer sees a national ad for the Flooring America name, does a quick search on their mobile device for 'Flooring America', and comes to find the Flooring America store just a few blocks from them is hosting an event that features a local designer and offers wine and cheese tasting!

Additionally, the fact that advances continue to be made in areas of search advertising just provide one more reason to include heavy internet marketing--including a social media component--as a part of any media planning strategy. We media buyers aren't seeing large strides in demographic/location targeting in other mediums like radio or newspaper--an online presence MUST be a part of any solid recommendation. And with The BIA Kelsey Group predicting mobile search ad revenues to grow into the billions by 2013, and Yahoo's recent progress, those that jump on the bandwagon sooner will be rewarded. And to those conducting searches from your mobile phones: quit trying to shake the target on your back... the sharpshooters are only getting sharper from here.

KFC Franchise Marketing Blunder

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

Interesting article in Blue Mau Mau about KFC Franchisees filing a lawsuit to maintain marketing control.

In a nutshell, the story goes: KFC introduced a new menu item, Kentucky Grilled Chicken, and part of that introduction was to offer a free in-store sample. They were crafty enough to get that offer mentioned on the Oprah Winfrey show, which caused an overload of requests at the store level. The franchisees were unhappy and the customers who were turned away were also unhappy. Lawsuits abounded.

I'll avoid for now the legal side of this issue and instead talk a bit about something that we discuss frequently here at Balihoo: franchisee empathy. From our perspective, a franchisor that feel franchise empathy takes the time and the challenge to truly understand the business from the local operators perspective. They understand the challenges to the business at the local level and strive to improve the day-to-day performance of their franchise locations.

In our experience, when this franchisee empathy exists in a franchise system, the net result is a consolidated, clear effort from national to local. In terms of franchise marketing, this means that messaging and tactics are supported from national to local media and marketing efforts. When local store marketing activities support the national brand message, everyone wins (including, by the way, the customer).

A franchisor that discounts franchisee engagement or buy-in is missing a huge opportunity - the ability to align local marketing strategy with their national efforts. When this alignment exists, the franchise brand realizes significantly additional value as the franchisees align their local media buying and planning efforts with that of the nation brand - dramatically amplifying any message. Isn't this what we should all strive for?