Social Media Marketing at the Local Level: Our Town America

We asked a dozen franchises how they're using social media at the local store or unit level. This is the third in a series based on the responses we received. This is from Brittany Johnson, marketing executive at Our Town America.

1) What are you doing with social media at the local store level now, and what are your plans for 2018?

Our Town America is a service-based brand. We help local businesses acquire new customers by helping them reach out to new movers in their area by way of direct mail marketing with a technological spin. We run social media on a national level, and encourage our local franchisees to follow suit locally. For 2018, we will put a strategic social content calendar into place to ensure that we are keeping our clients (sponsors) engaged.

2) How are you educating your franchisees about the value of social media marketing, and how do you get them to actively participate in it?

We educate our franchisees on the value of social media marketing from the get-go. From their very first franchise training as a new franchise owner to weekly corporate-franchisee conference calls and annual conventions, we are constantly educating our franchisees on the benefits of social media. If all franchisees share the multiple resources we provide on a local level (national and local media coverage, press releases, blog articles, and downloadable content offers), they will see an uptick in ROI, increased loyalty, and higher spend.

3) How do you train your franchisees to work with new platforms and channels?

We provide new franchise training, weekly corporate-franchisee conference calls, and an annual convention. We have an in-house marketing executive who is always available to answer questions from franchisees.

4) How do you enforce brand standards at the local level?

We provide downloadable customizable marketing materials on our CRM. We also allow zees to make materials on their own, as long as they run it by us to ensure it meets all brand standards.

5) How you integrate social campaigns into your overall marketing strategy?

See above. We also now have the ability to integrate with brands' POS systems. While we already offered tracking through our mobile app, the ability for our program to be POS-friendly has been a hit with big brands who want to track the program through their personal system.

Brittany Johnson is marketing executive at Our Town America. Contact her at 800-497-8360 x229.