We recently met with a prospect who happens to be in the franchise business.  They are evaluating overhauling their brand to address some PR challenges they have faced the past year. Before we can help them or think about how to integrate social media tools into their business processes, we need to learn more about them. In order to brainstorm and strategize, we need to establish a baseline of performance, process, and expectations. We put together the following agenda list for our first meeting together. If you are thinking about creating a social media strategy, you should probably make a list like this first. Please keep in mind these questions were created for a company who is recruiting franchisees so if this is not applicable to you then please replace “franchise” with “customer.”  Also, this high-level starting point was created for a specific company in mind – depending on certain factors, the questions you ask would be different and we would drill deeper upon getting the first layer of questions addressed.

1.  Messaging

• What is the message you are trying to convey?
• What is the brand identity you want created? What are your brand attributes?
• When people hear (your company name), what do you want those people to think?
• Is your primary purpose to recruit new franchises, engage with existing franchises or make the general public aware of the company services?

2.  Resource availability

• What resources are used today for marketing and customer/franchise service?
• Do you have a resources available to write blog posts, update Facebook, tweet or, comment on forums?
• Do you resources fully understand the online landscape? Are they aware of how to identify, engage and manage top influencers?
• Do you have the tools and metrics you use to monitor and measure progress?

3. Customer engagement

• How do you address customer/franchise service today? Do you have an 800 number? Email?
• Are you prepared to appropriately engage with negative sentiment?
• Do you have a process to respond digitally to requests/comments?
• What is your expectation regarding timely responses?
• Who is authorized to satisfy customer issues?
• What are your current crisis management procedures?

4. Marketing

• What marketing are you doing today?
• What is your marketing mix?
• Are you participating in online marketing such as Pay Per Click, Banner Ads, Facebook ads, etc?
• What marketing support do you provide to Franchises?
• Do you offer promotions/discounts/contests? If so, how often?
• Do you sponsor anything?
• How much of the marketing budget are you willing to give up to social media marketing or is your budget going to be increased to add it to existing traditional marketing and franchise acquisition?

5. Franchise/Recruitment Support

• Do you include online marketing as part of the marketing support to Franchises?
• Do you offer a specific site/resource portal/discussion board for Franchises?
• How are you targeting/recruiting Franchises?
• How often do you pro-actively check-in with Franchises?

We hope this helps give you a jump start to considering how you can adopt social media in your business model. As always feel free to give us a call if you want to learn more or leave a comment!

~ Lisa & Kristi