Why Use Franchise Lead Generation Web Portals?
Why use franchise lead generation web portals?
Because the portals produce the most leads for your advertising dollar.
Over the last couple of years I have witnessed more and more franchisors doing their own paid advertising on the internet. While most of these franchisors choose to supplement the advertising on franchise lead portals, some actually discontinue using franchise lead portals all together. I think this is shortsighted on the part of the franchisor for many reasons. Granted, I am biased, but my bias comes from years of experience.
What all franchisors—and for that matter prospective franchisees—should realize about franchise lead generation portals is that one of the industry’s greatest strength is getting prospective franchises to take a look at franchise concepts that they would normally never have thought to inquire about. The best lead generation portals—and I obviously count Ad Engine along with the other Landmark Interactive companies—make sure that all of their advertisers are getting leads. And not just the household names like Subway or Aamco. Sure, we all can generate leads for the big name franchisors, but there are only so many of those to go around. Moreover, many of the bigger names may have capital and geographical requirements that shut out an otherwise-qualified candidate. That is where we, as an industry, are so much more cost efficient than one who may be doing his or her own PPC advertising.
There are literally thousands of keywords that I manage in our campaigns every day. We have the skill and expertise to monetize these keywords in such a way that we can provide leads to our advertisers that they could not have come close to getting had they done it on their own. The reason for this is very simple: The method franchisors who are not on a web portal use to get leads is though PPC campaigns by either buying generic terms or buying brand-specific terms.
As to the former, millions of dollars are being spent each year by the franchise web portals on generic terms. Consequently, the cost of these terms is fairly high, and small, to middle size franchise concepts usually cannot produce an acceptable ROI from advertising solely in this manner. As to the latter, buying keywords that relate to one’s brand is only effective if the franchisor has a commonly searched upon name. It has been my experience that the vast majority of franchises sold over the past five years are not the result of the franchisee knowing the exact brand that he or she wanted when they began to search. Rather, they probably had some idea of what industry they wanted to work in and then spoke with a lot of different companies both within and outside of that industry. The very reason it may be cost efficient to do one’s own PPC advertising is because no one is searching upon the terms. And while that may be cost efficient, it does not generate any leads.
Every week brings about an advertiser who decides that he or she can produce more leads by doing their own paid search campaigns. Sometimes, they are able to successfully do it. More times than not, however, that same advertiser comes back to Ad Engine for some level of advertising exposure. We do not think that we are smarter than the advertiser or know their business any better than they do, but we do have model that has proven to be very effective. And it has done so for the biggest of franchises all the way down to the smallest and most obscure.
Stated simply, we don’t know how to make pizzas, nor do we know how to sell pizzas. That is your job. What we do know how to do is make people consider buying a pizza franchise who may have never have considered it before
About the Author
Garth Snider is the President and General Counsel of one of the largest franchise lead generation firms online. He has a degree in finance and banking from the University of Georgia, and a J.D. from Emory University. Garth Snider has experience in commercial litigation as he had practiced for the law firm named Griffin Cochrane and Marshall from the year 1998 to 2003. He is presently the President of Ad Engine which is an online company providing lead generation services for franchises and small businesses. For more information about Garth Snider and his lead generation firm, browse through http://www.ad-engine.net or http://www.franchiseopportunities.com