February 11, 2025 • 16 mins
Winning Franchise Owner Buy-In for Digital Marketing Investments
In this episode of the Vera Shafiq podcast, host Vera Shafiq delves into innovative strategies for garnering franchise owner enthusiasm and commitment towards digital marketing. She emphasizes using AI-powered storytelling, interactive dashboards, and gamification to demonstrate the value of digital investments. Vera discusses the importance of personalized marketing plans created via AI tools, connecting real-time data through dynamic dashboards, and injecting fun with gamified challenges. These methods aim to overcome skepticism, providing transparency and compelling evidence of ROI, ultimately fostering a collaborative, innovative culture among franchise owners.
00:00 Welcome to the Podcast
00:30 The Challenge of Franchise Owner Buy-In
02:12 AI-Powered Storytelling
07:54 Interactive Dashboards for Transparency
11:31 Gamification: Making Marketing Fun
14:01 Final Thoughts and Actionable Steps
15:23 Closing Remarks
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Vera (00:16):
Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Vera Shafiq, your guide intothe wild, wonderful world of
franchise marketing innovation.
Today, we're flipping the scripton winning franchise owner buy
in for digital investments.
So I know this is a topic that'spretty top of mind for franchise
marketing professionals,especially CMOs.
(00:37):
And that is how to get franchiseowners excited and engaged about
investing their hard earned cashinto digital marketing
initiatives.
And instead of the usual chartsand case studies today, I want
to explore some tech driventactics.
Using AI powered storytelling,interactive dashboards, and even
(00:58):
gamification to demonstrate howdigital investments drive
qualified leads and growth.
So imagine if you could bring apersonal side to your
franchisee's digitalinvestments.
To life before their very eyesand showing and telling them how
their marketing investments aremoving the needle for their
business.
(01:19):
I think this would really getthem enthused and excited to
participate.
So, you know, getting past thatskepticism and doubt that we
often hear from franchise ownersregarding the effectiveness of
local marketing is a bigchallenge.
And a nut that we really want tobe able to crack.
A lot of times we will see thatfranchise owners do not want to
(01:41):
invest in digital marketingbecause they can't see the value
behind it or they're skepticalor they don't understand
marketing period.
So it's up to us to be able togive them the tools and the
visuals and the story.
to show them what they'regetting themselves into.
So I think today, what I'd loveto do is go into detail on how
(02:05):
you can implement these types ofstrategies step by step.
So let's dive right in.
So let's start with AI poweredstorytelling.
This is about tailoring a uniquestory for each franchise
location.
And with the help of AI tools,this task that used to be
(02:26):
mammoth, really daunting is nowtotally doable, right?
So we can use AI to help us tocraft a unique customized
marketing plan, essentially forevery single franchise owner.
That dives deep into theirspecific local nuances.
(02:46):
And I think there are a fewsteps that we can take to get
there.
So step number one, gatheringyour historical data is going to
be key.
Now this needs to be done,right?
Regardless, but back before AI.
This would have been a majortime consuming task for us to
(03:10):
do, and probably not a feasibleone really in terms of return on
our investment in terms of time.
But now that we have AI, I thinkthe first step is we can gather
our historical CRM data.
We can gather everything that wehave on local market insights,
competitor data at the locallevel.
(03:30):
So who are the pesky localcompetition?
The social media sentiment thatcomes from the local social
media ad platforms and yourdigital campaigns, all of this
data is likely sitting somewherein your systems.
So it's sitting in your CRM,it's sitting in your ad
platforms, on your researchfolders, on SharePoint or shared
(03:53):
drive, somewhere in yourinternal enterprise systems or
maybe in your reviews platforms.
So right now, I think the timehas come to locate the data and
then feed it into yourenterprise level AI platform.
So the location of all this datamight seem like a daunting task.
(04:13):
But trust me, I think the timeand effort you put into this is
going to reap rewards for yearsto come.
So I highly recommend investingin this effort.
So once you've located the datapoints that I just mentioned,
what we want to do is feed theminto your enterprise AI
platform.
So that could be IBM Watson,Google cloud AI, Microsoft Azure
(04:36):
AI, any enterprise AI platformthat you're using as a brand.
That's capable of processing andfinding patterns in your data.
And the reason I say use anenterprise level system rather
than a chat GPT is because a lotof this data that you're going
to be feeding in is proprietary,and it's going to be pretty
sensitive.
(04:57):
And you probably want to stayaway from uploading that type of
data to a, you know, publiccloud platform such as chat GPT.
So you've got your data points,you've uploaded them to AI.
Okay.
The next thing that you want todo is develop templates that the
(05:17):
AI can use to createpersonalized narratives or
stories for each localfranchisee.
So, a sample template for eachindividual franchise location
could include slides for numberone, who their target audience
is and what their money zipcodes are.
Two, how much brand and categorydemand there is in their local
(05:40):
market.
Three, who the top localcompetitors are for what weather
and event related opportunitiesare present in their local
market and when they occur, andthen five, what their local
reviews and social mediasentiment tells us.
Right.
So that could be a sampletemplate.
(06:01):
And then the final section ofthe template would be the unique
customized marketing plan forthat particular franchisees
location based on the findingsin the previous sections.
So once we've put that templatetogether, we can then have AI
create a customized marketingplan for every single
franchisee.
based on the data that we've fedit at the local level.
(06:25):
And this personalized strategywould really highlight the ways
in which the franchisee can winmarket share from its local
competitors.
And I think this would be reallyexciting to show and present to
franchisees.
The best way to do this is touse some kind of dynamic
presentation software, such as aPrezi or a Power BI that allows
(06:46):
us to visualize the data andreally display these AI
generated stories in a visuallyengaging way.
And my pro tip here is I loveusing gamma.
ai for fast tracking the slidedeck creation process.
So if you haven't tried gamma.
ai yet, I really, reallyrecommend it.
(07:08):
In the presentation deck, makesure to include interactive
elements so that franchiseowners can see how.
Changes in local data mightalter their specific narrative
in real time.
Right?
So really kind of going into,Hey, this is your local market.
These are the competitors.
These are the mom and pop storesthat you're competing against
these are the events that arehappening in your local area.
(07:32):
And here are the days and timesthat they're happening that are
really influencing.
Business, so by harnessing AI tocraft personalized data driven
stories, you can make your pitchnot just informative, but
compelling and uniquely tailoredto each owner's market.
(07:54):
All right, next up, let's talkabout interactive dashboards and
live attribution tools that willoffer undeniable transparency.
Here's how to set this up.
Choose the right platform.
So evaluate and select adashboard platform such as
Looker Studio or Tableau orPower BI or any specialized
(08:14):
marketing dashboards, such asDatorama, Domo, Funnel.
There are a lot of choices outthere and I think.
First of all, you need to pickthe correct platform for your
needs.
Make sure that the platform thatyou select can integrate with
your digital marketing channels,such as Google, Meta, Bing, any
other programmatic channels thatyou use, as well as your CRM
(08:36):
system for real time updates.
So that's the key.
Now, once you've selected yourplatform, you need to set up a
real time data feed so that youcan connect your ad accounts,
your website analytics, and yourCRM database.
To the life data in yourdashboard.
The best way to do this is touse APIs and automation tools.
(08:59):
I think the most success thatI've seen doing this is using
something like a Zapier or amake.
So these are two platforms thatwill allow us, you could pick
one or the other, but I woulddefinitely say one or the other
would be ideal for thisscenario.
Zapier or make to ensure thatthe data is being updated
continuously.
(09:19):
into your dashboards so thatevery click impression
conversion is being captured inreal time and being tied into
your CRM data.
So we can see how everything islinked to actual real time sales
or bookings or appointments orwhatever your major KPIs are.
(09:42):
You want to make sure that thosedashboards are built for clarity
and so that they clearlyillustrate the flow from digital
spend Right.
So that hard earned cash thatyour franchisees are spending
all the way through to qualifiedleads.
So we need to be able to usevisualizations like funnel
charts, time series, graphs,heat maps, whatever the platform
(10:04):
has the better, right?
To visualize how the hard earnedcash is making its way through
the pipeline and landingqualified leads.
into the franchise owner'sbusiness.
You'll want to make sure thatyou include KPIs, such as cost
per lead, conversion rates multitouch attribution metrics, if
(10:27):
possible, that really show whichchannels are driving the best
results.
And then finally, you'll want tomake sure that you incorporate
filters and drill down options.
So the franchise owners canexplore the data specific to
their location.
Now, I know that a lot offranchise owners are not savvy
with using these types ofdashboards.
So I think when we give it to afranchise owner for their
(10:49):
consumption, we really want italready drilled down.
Showing their specific datalayers and making sure that what
they're seeing is very, veryspecific to their marketing
initiatives and their marketinginvestment.
And then I think key to this isto schedule periodic live
sessions where you walk thefranchise owners through the
(11:09):
dashboard, explaining how eachmetric ties back to their
investment.
So this level of real timeinteractive transparency, not
only builds trust, but itempowers franchise owners with
insights that they can exploreon their own.
And I think that's really key tosuccess in, you know, getting
that buy in.
(11:31):
Next up let's inject some funwith gamification.
So transforming the process intoa collaborative challenge that
drives innovation andengagement.
So here's a practical roadmap tothat.
Number one, you could design adigital marketing innovation
challenge.
Set up a quarterly challengewhere franchise owners can
propose and execute innovativedigital strategies tailored to
(11:54):
their local markets.
And then define clear objectivessuch as increasing lead quality
by a certain percentage or offera framework for participation.
The next thing you can do isdevelop a scoring system.
So create a points based systemwhere initiatives earn points.
Based on predefined metrics,like lead quality improvements,
(12:15):
engagement increases, orcreative campaign elements.
And you can use things likedigital badges or leaderboards
to publicly recognize topperformers.
There are tools out there thatcan help you create a custom web
portal so that you can trackscores and progress across all
of your franchise owners.
(12:36):
And then I think providingresources and mentorship.
So organizing monthly webinarsor roundtables where successful
strategies are shared andinviting digital marketing
experts to offer mini sessions.
on topics like creativeproduction or AI utilization.
You might want to also considersetting up a buddy system where
(12:59):
experienced franchise owners arementoring those who are new to
digital initiatives.
And then finally, rewarding andrecognizing.
So offer tangible rewards Thiscould be a marketing budget
bonus or a featured story on thecompany intranet.
Something that's going to reallyget people excited about
(13:20):
participating and excelling inthe program.
You can highlight case studiesfrom the challenge in your
broader marketing strategymeetings and turn individual
wins into collective learningmoments.
So this is all under theumbrella of gamification.
And I think this not onlyincentivizes participation.
But also fosters the spirit offriendly competition.
(13:42):
And so, you know, thetraditional pitch of, get into
your digital marketing, makesure that you're spending money,
becomes more of a collaborative,fun, engaging, community driven
experience.
And I think this can really helpthe cause.
So let's wrap up with some finalthoughts and actionable steps to
(14:04):
get started.
First of all, let's just remindourselves what we talked about.
Implement AI poweredstorytelling.
Integrate your CRM and localdata with an AI platform,
develop templates, and then usedynamic presentation tools to
generate personal narrativesthat resonate with individual
(14:24):
franchise owners.
Secondly, launch interactivereal time dashboards.
So if you don't already have it,choose a robust dashboard tool,
set up live data feeds from yourmarketing channels and CRM and
design interactive visuals thattransparently showcase the ROI
of digital investments.
(14:47):
Finally, roll out a gamifiedinnovation challenge.
So design a quarterly challengewith clear goals, a scoring
system and rewards.
Provide resources and mentorshipto encourage collaborative
innovation among franchiseowners.
And there you have it.
I think following those threesteps Could transform a standard
(15:10):
pitch into an immersive datadriven and engaging experience
that can win the buy in and alsobuild a collaborative culture of
innovation within your franchiseowner's system.
Well, thanks for joining metoday.
If you are ready to put thesetactics into practice, I
encourage you to experiment,share your successes and
(15:32):
continue pushing the boundariesof what's possible.
I'm Vera Shafiq and this hasbeen the Vera Shafiq podcast.
If you enjoyed today's episode,please subscribe, share it with
fellow innovators and leave areview.
I'd love to hear your thoughtsand any creative strategies
you're trying in your markets.
Until next time, stayinnovative, embrace the data and
(15:53):
let's make a difference with ourmarketing.
Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Vera Shafiq, your guide intothe wild, wonderful world of
franchise marketing innovation.
Today, we're flipping the scripton winning franchise owner buy
in for digital investments.
So I know this is a topic that'spretty top of mind for franchise
marketing professionals,especially CMOs.
(00:37):
And that is how to get franchiseowners excited and engaged about
investing their hard earned cashinto digital marketing
initiatives.
And instead of the usual chartsand case studies today, I want
to explore some tech driventactics.
Using AI powered storytelling,interactive dashboards, and even
(00:58):
gamification to demonstrate howdigital investments drive
qualified leads and growth.
So imagine if you could bring apersonal side to your
franchisee's digitalinvestments.
To life before their very eyesand showing and telling them how
their marketing investments aremoving the needle for their
business.
(01:19):
I think this would really getthem enthused and excited to
participate.
So, you know, getting past thatskepticism and doubt that we
often hear from franchise ownersregarding the effectiveness of
local marketing is a bigchallenge.
And a nut that we really want tobe able to crack.
A lot of times we will see thatfranchise owners do not want to
(01:41):
invest in digital marketingbecause they can't see the value
behind it or they're skepticalor they don't understand
marketing period.
So it's up to us to be able togive them the tools and the
visuals and the story.
to show them what they'regetting themselves into.
So I think today, what I'd loveto do is go into detail on how
(02:05):
you can implement these types ofstrategies step by step.
So let's dive right in.
So let's start with AI poweredstorytelling.
This is about tailoring a uniquestory for each franchise
location.
And with the help of AI tools,this task that used to be
(02:26):
mammoth, really daunting is nowtotally doable, right?
So we can use AI to help us tocraft a unique customized
marketing plan, essentially forevery single franchise owner.
That dives deep into theirspecific local nuances.
(02:46):
And I think there are a fewsteps that we can take to get
there.
So step number one, gatheringyour historical data is going to
be key.
Now this needs to be done,right?
Regardless, but back before AI.
This would have been a majortime consuming task for us to
(03:10):
do, and probably not a feasibleone really in terms of return on
our investment in terms of time.
But now that we have AI, I thinkthe first step is we can gather
our historical CRM data.
We can gather everything that wehave on local market insights,
competitor data at the locallevel.
(03:30):
So who are the pesky localcompetition?
The social media sentiment thatcomes from the local social
media ad platforms and yourdigital campaigns, all of this
data is likely sitting somewherein your systems.
So it's sitting in your CRM,it's sitting in your ad
platforms, on your researchfolders, on SharePoint or shared
(03:53):
drive, somewhere in yourinternal enterprise systems or
maybe in your reviews platforms.
So right now, I think the timehas come to locate the data and
then feed it into yourenterprise level AI platform.
So the location of all this datamight seem like a daunting task.
(04:13):
But trust me, I think the timeand effort you put into this is
going to reap rewards for yearsto come.
So I highly recommend investingin this effort.
So once you've located the datapoints that I just mentioned,
what we want to do is feed theminto your enterprise AI
platform.
So that could be IBM Watson,Google cloud AI, Microsoft Azure
(04:36):
AI, any enterprise AI platformthat you're using as a brand.
That's capable of processing andfinding patterns in your data.
And the reason I say use anenterprise level system rather
than a chat GPT is because a lotof this data that you're going
to be feeding in is proprietary,and it's going to be pretty
sensitive.
(04:57):
And you probably want to stayaway from uploading that type of
data to a, you know, publiccloud platform such as chat GPT.
So you've got your data points,you've uploaded them to AI.
Okay.
The next thing that you want todo is develop templates that the
(05:17):
AI can use to createpersonalized narratives or
stories for each localfranchisee.
So, a sample template for eachindividual franchise location
could include slides for numberone, who their target audience
is and what their money zipcodes are.
Two, how much brand and categorydemand there is in their local
(05:40):
market.
Three, who the top localcompetitors are for what weather
and event related opportunitiesare present in their local
market and when they occur, andthen five, what their local
reviews and social mediasentiment tells us.
Right.
So that could be a sampletemplate.
(06:01):
And then the final section ofthe template would be the unique
customized marketing plan forthat particular franchisees
location based on the findingsin the previous sections.
So once we've put that templatetogether, we can then have AI
create a customized marketingplan for every single
franchisee.
based on the data that we've fedit at the local level.
(06:25):
And this personalized strategywould really highlight the ways
in which the franchisee can winmarket share from its local
competitors.
And I think this would be reallyexciting to show and present to
franchisees.
The best way to do this is touse some kind of dynamic
presentation software, such as aPrezi or a Power BI that allows
(06:46):
us to visualize the data andreally display these AI
generated stories in a visuallyengaging way.
And my pro tip here is I loveusing gamma.
ai for fast tracking the slidedeck creation process.
So if you haven't tried gamma.
ai yet, I really, reallyrecommend it.
(07:08):
In the presentation deck, makesure to include interactive
elements so that franchiseowners can see how.
Changes in local data mightalter their specific narrative
in real time.
Right?
So really kind of going into,Hey, this is your local market.
These are the competitors.
These are the mom and pop storesthat you're competing against
these are the events that arehappening in your local area.
(07:32):
And here are the days and timesthat they're happening that are
really influencing.
Business, so by harnessing AI tocraft personalized data driven
stories, you can make your pitchnot just informative, but
compelling and uniquely tailoredto each owner's market.
(07:54):
All right, next up, let's talkabout interactive dashboards and
live attribution tools that willoffer undeniable transparency.
Here's how to set this up.
Choose the right platform.
So evaluate and select adashboard platform such as
Looker Studio or Tableau orPower BI or any specialized
(08:14):
marketing dashboards, such asDatorama, Domo, Funnel.
There are a lot of choices outthere and I think.
First of all, you need to pickthe correct platform for your
needs.
Make sure that the platform thatyou select can integrate with
your digital marketing channels,such as Google, Meta, Bing, any
other programmatic channels thatyou use, as well as your CRM
(08:36):
system for real time updates.
So that's the key.
Now, once you've selected yourplatform, you need to set up a
real time data feed so that youcan connect your ad accounts,
your website analytics, and yourCRM database.
To the life data in yourdashboard.
The best way to do this is touse APIs and automation tools.
(08:59):
I think the most success thatI've seen doing this is using
something like a Zapier or amake.
So these are two platforms thatwill allow us, you could pick
one or the other, but I woulddefinitely say one or the other
would be ideal for thisscenario.
Zapier or make to ensure thatthe data is being updated
continuously.
(09:19):
into your dashboards so thatevery click impression
conversion is being captured inreal time and being tied into
your CRM data.
So we can see how everything islinked to actual real time sales
or bookings or appointments orwhatever your major KPIs are.
(09:42):
You want to make sure that thosedashboards are built for clarity
and so that they clearlyillustrate the flow from digital
spend Right.
So that hard earned cash thatyour franchisees are spending
all the way through to qualifiedleads.
So we need to be able to usevisualizations like funnel
charts, time series, graphs,heat maps, whatever the platform
(10:04):
has the better, right?
To visualize how the hard earnedcash is making its way through
the pipeline and landingqualified leads.
into the franchise owner'sbusiness.
You'll want to make sure thatyou include KPIs, such as cost
per lead, conversion rates multitouch attribution metrics, if
(10:27):
possible, that really show whichchannels are driving the best
results.
And then finally, you'll want tomake sure that you incorporate
filters and drill down options.
So the franchise owners canexplore the data specific to
their location.
Now, I know that a lot offranchise owners are not savvy
with using these types ofdashboards.
So I think when we give it to afranchise owner for their
(10:49):
consumption, we really want italready drilled down.
Showing their specific datalayers and making sure that what
they're seeing is very, veryspecific to their marketing
initiatives and their marketinginvestment.
And then I think key to this isto schedule periodic live
sessions where you walk thefranchise owners through the
(11:09):
dashboard, explaining how eachmetric ties back to their
investment.
So this level of real timeinteractive transparency, not
only builds trust, but itempowers franchise owners with
insights that they can exploreon their own.
And I think that's really key tosuccess in, you know, getting
that buy in.
(11:31):
Next up let's inject some funwith gamification.
So transforming the process intoa collaborative challenge that
drives innovation andengagement.
So here's a practical roadmap tothat.
Number one, you could design adigital marketing innovation
challenge.
Set up a quarterly challengewhere franchise owners can
propose and execute innovativedigital strategies tailored to
(11:54):
their local markets.
And then define clear objectivessuch as increasing lead quality
by a certain percentage or offera framework for participation.
The next thing you can do isdevelop a scoring system.
So create a points based systemwhere initiatives earn points.
Based on predefined metrics,like lead quality improvements,
(12:15):
engagement increases, orcreative campaign elements.
And you can use things likedigital badges or leaderboards
to publicly recognize topperformers.
There are tools out there thatcan help you create a custom web
portal so that you can trackscores and progress across all
of your franchise owners.
(12:36):
And then I think providingresources and mentorship.
So organizing monthly webinarsor roundtables where successful
strategies are shared andinviting digital marketing
experts to offer mini sessions.
on topics like creativeproduction or AI utilization.
You might want to also considersetting up a buddy system where
(12:59):
experienced franchise owners arementoring those who are new to
digital initiatives.
And then finally, rewarding andrecognizing.
So offer tangible rewards Thiscould be a marketing budget
bonus or a featured story on thecompany intranet.
Something that's going to reallyget people excited about
(13:20):
participating and excelling inthe program.
You can highlight case studiesfrom the challenge in your
broader marketing strategymeetings and turn individual
wins into collective learningmoments.
So this is all under theumbrella of gamification.
And I think this not onlyincentivizes participation.
But also fosters the spirit offriendly competition.
(13:42):
And so, you know, thetraditional pitch of, get into
your digital marketing, makesure that you're spending money,
becomes more of a collaborative,fun, engaging, community driven
experience.
And I think this can really helpthe cause.
So let's wrap up with some finalthoughts and actionable steps to
(14:04):
get started.
First of all, let's just remindourselves what we talked about.
Implement AI poweredstorytelling.
Integrate your CRM and localdata with an AI platform,
develop templates, and then usedynamic presentation tools to
generate personal narrativesthat resonate with individual
(14:24):
franchise owners.
Secondly, launch interactivereal time dashboards.
So if you don't already have it,choose a robust dashboard tool,
set up live data feeds from yourmarketing channels and CRM and
design interactive visuals thattransparently showcase the ROI
of digital investments.
(14:47):
Finally, roll out a gamifiedinnovation challenge.
So design a quarterly challengewith clear goals, a scoring
system and rewards.
Provide resources and mentorshipto encourage collaborative
innovation among franchiseowners.
And there you have it.
I think following those threesteps Could transform a standard
(15:10):
pitch into an immersive datadriven and engaging experience
that can win the buy in and alsobuild a collaborative culture of
innovation within your franchiseowner's system.
Well, thanks for joining metoday.
If you are ready to put thesetactics into practice, I
encourage you to experiment,share your successes and
(15:32):
continue pushing the boundariesof what's possible.
I'm Vera Shafiq and this hasbeen the Vera Shafiq podcast.
If you enjoyed today's episode,please subscribe, share it with
fellow innovators and leave areview.
I'd love to hear your thoughtsand any creative strategies
you're trying in your markets.
Until next time, stayinnovative, embrace the data and
(15:53):
let's make a difference with ourmarketing.
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