You’re in charge of evaluating marketing in Franchising. How do you make sure you’re doing it right?

1 Define your goals

Before you start evaluating your marketing campaigns, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. Depending on your industry, target market, and growth strategy, you may have different goals for your marketing, such as increasing awareness, generating leads, boosting sales, or building loyalty. You should also set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives for each goal, such as increasing website traffic by 10% in six months or achieving a 20% conversion rate for email subscribers in a year.

2 Choose your metrics

Once you have your goals and objectives, you need to choose the appropriate metrics to track your progress and results. Metrics are the quantitative indicators that show how well your marketing activities are performing, such as impressions, clicks, conversions, or revenue. You should select the metrics that align with your goals and objectives, and that are relevant for your franchise model. For example, if you are a service-based franchise that relies on online bookings, you may want to focus on metrics such as cost per lead, lead quality, and booking rate.

3 Collect your data

To collect your data, you need to have the right tools and systems in place to capture, store, and analyze the information from your marketing channels. You may use different tools for different purposes, such as Google Analytics for web analytics, Mailchimp for email marketing, or HubSpot for CRM. You should also ensure that your tools are integrated and compatible with each other, so that you can have a holistic view of your marketing performance and avoid data silos. Additionally, you should establish a consistent and standardized way of reporting your data, such as using dashboards, spreadsheets, or graphs.

4 Benchmark your results

To evaluate your marketing performance, you need to compare your results with your expectations and with your competitors. Benchmarking is the process of measuring your performance against a set of standards or best practices, such as your own historical data, your industry averages, or your top competitors. Benchmarking can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses, as well as the gaps and opportunities in your marketing strategy. You can use tools such as SEMrush, SimilarWeb, or Socialbakers to conduct competitive analysis and benchmarking.