How to Utilize Personalized Customer Data for Franchise Marketing

What’s in a name? Often, a simple, personalized marketing message with the reader’s name can sway them toward a sale (or at least push them further down the funnel). Nowadays, however, it takes strategic personalization efforts to drive sales, particularly for franchise networks in saturated markets.

Addressing a potential or returning customer by name is a great place to start. However, the goal is to not only speak directly to that customer profile but also make customers feel seen and heard to move them through the pipeline seamlessly. The concept of “personalized customer data” means so much more than calling someone by name—it can go so far as to tell marketers who their audience truly is, which is an essential asset in a competitive marketplace. 

The Value of Personalization in Franchise Marketing

Collecting and analyzing personalized customer data allows marketers to tailor their messaging to highly specific audiences and determine who to target to be as effective and efficient as possible with their outreach. By tracking the habits and behaviors of various audiences, franchise owners can more easily classify users to optimize marketing efforts. The resulting segmented groups are often referred to as “custom audiences.”

Zero- and first-party data can be powerful tools to improve leads and sales, particularly for franchises, as they enable better personalization and engagement for your customer base. After all, how else would you obtain and measure this information? Having the right technology in place enables timely and efficient collection of necessary data, plus optimizes it for analysis and application.

Leveraging Personalized Data in Local Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

One way franchises can better target their customers is by using the user’s location to create tailored pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Multilocation marketing and local advertising often necessitate this. If a user grants permission to their web browser to collect location data from their device, franchises can gear marketing messaging in that direction (literally). This type of personal customer data enables the enterprise to easily connect the customer with their closest branch, provide special discounts, or put them in contact with a local representative.

Franchise Marketing Trends Driven by Data: AI

Nowadays, one can’t talk about data without mentioning AI. Regardless of your attitude toward its use, its impact on marketing—and business in general—is undeniable because of its high capacity for collecting and contextualizing data sets. One way that franchise marketers can leverage this trend is by employing AI algorithms to analyze vast customer data and develop personalized marketing campaigns based on those insights, including: 

• Personalized emails

• Targeted advertising
  
  
• Customized offers

AI can also analyze customer feedback, reviews, and social media data to generate valuable insights into customer sentiment, behaviors, and preferences. The use of AI may seem impersonal at first (after all, it is artificial), but when implemented the right way, these tools can supplement human interactions and boost franchise marketing efforts through advanced levels of personalization.

Franchise Marketing Data: Considerations

Setting up the proper channels to get information about your target audience is one thing, but optimizing these channels for a positive user experience and maintaining effective campaigns takes a bit more strategy. When collecting personal customer data and developing messaging based on that data, keep these considerations in mind:

Prioritizing Privacy

Naturally, when it comes to gathering personal data, many users are concerned about the privacy and security of that data. What are you doing with it? Who has access to it? And for how long? 

To mitigate these concerns, franchise marketers must understand that following standards and complying with local and federal regulations is the bare minimum when protecting personal data. All businesses, including franchises, should ideally establish an internal data policy that prioritizes privacy and sets a standard for data use. Often, creating a privacy policy requires individual owners to consult with legal counsel, but most franchisors and corporations will have existing legal support to ensure compliance and transparency.

Ensuring Data Quality

Especially when using digital forms to gather data, be sure to employ tools that will block spam submissions, or at the very least validation tools that ensure submitted information is as useful as possible. This helps to avoid bot traffic skewing your data sets. Depending on your method of acquiring customer data, ensuring data is scrubbed or reviewed by a human may also be necessary to maintain data quality.

Tactful and Purposeful Retargeting

Ensure the audience categories you build have a purpose and align with your targets, timing, and overall industry. Think strategically when implementing campaigns so that the messaging fits with each channel and message. Be mindful of placements (where ads are shown) and the types of websites and content where the ads will be featured. In other words, be purposeful but considerate, particularly when dealing with sensitive subjects.

For example, a franchise network of wheelchair and mobility aid suppliers must be especially cautious of how they address and advertise to their audience. Similarly, substantial retargeting isn’t recommended for franchises that perform crime clean-up, as this would be insensitive after a traumatic event.

Stay Ahead in Your Market with the Right Data

Leveraging custom audiences based on first-party data can improve the efficacy and quality of campaigns. It enables franchises to truly understand the intentions and behaviors of their audiences so they can tailor campaigns to fit those parameters, making their customers feel seen and heard.

Keeping tabs on industry trends and looking into customer concerns also enables franchise owners to maintain marketing efficacy, as they can better anticipate user behaviors and purchasing preferences. For one, privacy and consent to collect data are significant concerns for today’s consumers, so the ability to address that concern while still gathering actionable intelligence is a considerable advantage. 

For all the tools you need to establish predictable lead generation and stay ahead in your market, download Mastering Lead Generation: A Comprehensive Guide for Franchisor Marketing.