Rogue Franchise Websites: Don't Let Your Franchisees Damage Your Brand

by Dacia Egurrola

A digital marketing strategy is a must for any business. People want to easily find you and the internet is the first place consumers look to find the products or services they are searching for. If you’re a franchisor, you likely have a professional franchise website for your company. But what about your franchisees?

Individual franchises also need to market themselves locally online. People are searching for local solutions to their needs, and if you haven’t considered a digital marketing strategy for your franchisees, they won’t be found online. Enter rogue sites.

Basically, this means your franchisees found an alternative to your lack of an “official” local online marketing strategy. They probably hired a cheap website development agency to set up a site for them—and with a separate URL.

Some franchisors may think that rogue sites aren't a big deal and that they can even be beneficial to a business—(there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?). But what are the repercussions to consider?

The danger of rogue franchise websites

Lack of brand compliance

Every franchisor’s nightmare is brand misrepresentation. This is one of the big downfalls of rogue sites. If your franchisees are working on their own to get an online presence, you run the risk of having no brand continuity and sending a mixed message to your customers. From the wrong logo to the wrong content, rogue sites could damage your franchise company’s image online.

Poor quality

Just having a website isn't good enough. It needs to fulfill certain expectations for visitors. In the search for a cheap solution to an digital marketing need, your franchisees go to a vendor who helps them set up a site that is lacking in this department. For example, a website needs to be optimized for mobile devices. A cheap site won’t be usable enough for customers to want to stick around and learn about your business.

Missing out on leads and sales

Now, let’s put two and two together. Imagine you’re a customer that stumbles upon a site that’s not usable, with a cheap design, no clear call to action, and that doesn’t have the right information. These kinds of sites scare potential leads away, which means conversions are being lost.

People want to know if you’re a trustworthy company, and a poor website can leave a bad first impression about your company. What could have been a great opportunity to gain local clients becomes a waste of time that brings in mediocre results.

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How to discourage rogue franchise websites

1. Provide your franchisees with a digital marketing strategy

Providing an option for your franchisees to market themselves online is the best way to eliminate rogue websites (since that’s the reason why franchisees build them in the first place). By offering assistance—either with a website builder, building them in-house, or by hiring a web development agency—you gain control of your brand online.

Plus, by training franchisees and letting them know what to pay attention to in their digital marketing, they’ll be able to customize their website and make it fit their local audiences.

2. Maintain brand compliance

Create guidelines on online brand compliance and distribute them to your franchisees. Guidelines should specify the layout and design of a website, types of content to include, and the proper use of the company logo. The key is to give franchisees just enough flexibility to customize the content of their website (phone number, specific services or products offered, etc.), while you still remain in control of the main messaging of the site and brand.

3. Provide ongoing support

You should always be available to provide support to your franchisees. Your franchise’s digital marketing efforts shouldn’t be taken lightly, and if you want to have positive results, you’ll need to monitor what your franchisees are doing and be there to offer assistance.

RELATED: 6 Tips to Market Your Franchise Locally