Have you ever thought about an online reputation management strategy for your franchise location? It’s something to consider when your franchise name is being talked about online. The ultimate goal is to achieve a 5-star rating and a good reputation. So, what are your franchise locations doing about their online reputation? If you’re not sure, set up a strategy for them to track their reviews, respond to their customers, and analyze their review data.
Where to start: Be aware. It’s the best place to begin. They say ignorance is bliss. In this case, if you’re not sure about your online reputation, you’re assuming it’s good. Get a sense of your franchise location’s current online reputation. Start by searching the top review sites — Google, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Zomato. Take a look at their social media accounts — Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Also, check third-party delivery apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Deliveroo. It’s important to know what is being said about your franchise locations across all platforms.
Now that you are aware of your franchise location’s presence online, you can start focusing on reviews. Make sure your franchise locations are aware of their positive reviews. Educate them on how to harness the benefits. Positive reviews are the cheapest form of marketing.
Leverage negative reviews. It’s okay to get negative reviews. Bad reviews build trust between the customer and the business. Negative reviews are an opportunity to win back a potential lost customer. Encourage your franchise locations to respond to every negative review and start a recovery plan.
Should I respond to every review? The answer is yes. It is very important that your franchise locations start responding to their reviews. Have your franchise locations begin with negative reviews first to address problem areas. Positive feedback is just as important to respond to. Customers want to be heard and recognized for leaving feedback. Make sure they respond on behalf of your franchise brand to stay consistent across the entire franchise network.
Brand loyalty is rising in 2022. It’s important to remain consistent with your company’s corporate values. Make sure your franchise locations follow the guidelines when responding to reviews, posting on social media, and running marketing campaigns; consistency is essential.
Retaining customers is the easiest way to increase sales and build customer loyalty. In turn, this improves customer feedback and your company’s positive online presence.
Make sure your franchise locations have social media accounts for their specific sites. Your franchise locations should respond to customers via Instagram direct messages and Facebook messages. This is an important part of customer communication. Your franchise locations should be active on their social media, creating content for their followers. Ultimately, their followers become followers of the entire franchise.
This will happen when you notice one of your franchise locations has few or no online reviews. This is also a problem. Therefore, they need to generate customer feedback. QR codes can be used in areas like tables, the back of menus, receipts, and fast-food boxes to request feedback. Once a customer scans a QR code, they can be directed to a dedicated landing page to leave their feedback.
It’s important to be aware of the performance of your franchise locations. Some locations may perform better than others. By looking at data trends, you can identify issues and see where these locations are underperforming. It is useful for your company to know where improvements can be made based on insights from reviews.
Your franchise location should also be aware of their restaurant’s performance. They should check their ratings on various review platforms. It may be helpful to know how nearby competitors are performing. Performance measurement reports give your franchise locations the benchmarks they should meet.
Add an ORM (Online Reputation Management) strategy to the agreement to avoid the worst-case scenario—where a bad story spreads about one of your franchise locations.
In the future, include an ORM plan in the franchise agreement. You can have peace of mind knowing there is consistency across all parts of your company.
Fortunately, a tool like Localyser exists to automate all of this. Localyser is designed for multi-location brands. The tool provides a neutral solution that consolidates all franchisee data into a single ready-made report exclusively for the franchisor.
Localyser makes it easy for franchise owners to track reviews, communicate with customers, generate feedback, and gain insights from trends.
Localyser will create brand-loyal templates for your franchise locations to respond to reviews consistently. Set permissions to grant specific access to different parts of the company.
Localyser can help. Contact us today to learn how easy it is for Localyser to manage restaurant reviews across multiple websites and more.
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