How Can I Promote My NZ Franchise on Online Platforms?

In Short

• Use diverse online tools: Promote your franchise with websites, social media, Google Ads, and email marketing while maintaining consistent branding.
• Follow legal guidelines: Ensure your promotions comply with advertising laws and privacy requirements to avoid misleading or deceptive practices.
• Engage franchisees: Allow franchisees to contribute locally while ensuring all online content aligns with the franchise’s overall brand strategy.

Tips for Businesses

To effectively promote your franchise online, ensure your marketing efforts align with legal standards and privacy regulations. Maintain consistent branding across all platforms, engage franchisees in local promotions, and monitor online campaigns to measure success. Consider seeking legal advice to ensure compliance with advertising and data collection laws.

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Table of Contents

• Promoting Your Franchise
• Franchise Marketing Online
• Using Social Media
• Advertising Legally
• Email Marketing
• Privacy
• Key Takeaways
• Frequently Asked Questions

Promoting your franchise online is a great marketing strategy and can help expand your range of potential customers and franchisees. There are many digital tools available to help market your franchise. However, it is important to be aware of any regulations. This article will provide some background and explain how you can promote your New Zealand franchise on online platforms.

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Promoting Your Franchise

Marketing plays a significant role in the success of all businesses. However, for franchises, marketing can come with a unique set of hurdles for all parties involved. The franchisor will oversee any online promotions and general marketing in most cases. As the franchisor, you must decide what message or image you wish to portray to your customers. 

Additionally, your franchisees can have a role to play in your franchise’s marketing if they choose. For example, they may wish to promote their own local business, providing some personality behind the franchise. In contrast, they may find marketing a hassle, as it does not relate to the everyday running of the business. 

Franchise Marketing Online

As a franchisor, you may wish to manage online promotions at a corporate level. Although, you may choose to customise these promotions for local franchises. This might include:

• developing a website;
• creating online content;
• operating different social media portals;
• using tools such as Google Ads;
• email marketing;
• digital analytics and reporting;
• search engine marketing; and
• other online promotion methods.

It will be helpful to consider how each location may impact how you will promote your franchise, although this may not change how you market your franchise online. However, it is important to consider how customers will see relevant promotions from different areas.

Using Social Media

Using social media is a great marketing strategy for promoting your franchise. It can be an effective tool for generating leads to potential sales, depending on the demographic you are marketing towards. As a franchisor, you must maintain a cohesive brand across multiple social media platforms. Additionally, it would be helpful if you also accounted for different franchisees across different locations. If your franchisees manage their social media accounts, they should all maintain the same branding.

However, if you decide to engage in influencer sponsorships on social media, you must clarify which posts are sponsored. 

Advertising Legally

When promoting your franchise online, it is essential to ensure that your marketing strategy adheres to relevant laws, regardless of the format or platform. In particular, you must not:

• engage in generally misleading or deceptive advertising;
• make misleading or deceptive statements in your advertising;
• provide unsubstantiated claims; or
• employ unfair sales tactics, such as bait advertising.

These practices relate to the content of your promotions, and how you display them for customers. All claims you make about your products or services need to be true. Otherwise, you risk misleading your customers and receiving heavy fines.

Email Marketing

As a franchisor, you may also promote your franchise online through email marketing. It is important to note that New Zealand has specific laws and rules for emails a business can send to its customers. Therefore, if you send marketing emails to your clients, you need to be mindful of these laws. Notably, you cannot send your customers unsolicited commercial electronic messages, as these will qualify as spam. You can avoid these emails becoming spam by ensuring that you have:

• your customer’s consent to send them marketing emails;
• your franchise’s name and contact details in every email; and
• a way to unsubscribe from future emails.

Privacy

Regardless of what method you choose to promote your franchise online, you need to protect your customers’ privacy. As a franchisor, you must include methods within your franchise that will maintain the privacy standards of your customers. Additionally, these standards must align with the requirements of any applicable law. 

Many online advertising methods require personal information from your customers to be useful. Therefore, as a franchisor, you need to ensure that:

• your customers know that you are collecting their personal information and why;
• you only collect accurate information;
• you have an easily findable and understandable privacy statement; and
• customers have a contact for privacy-related concerns.

Key Takeaways

As a franchisor, you will likely oversee the general marketing of your business and may choose to do so online. However, your franchisees may also wish to contribute to any online marketing and customise certain advertisements to suit their location. 

If you need help promoting your franchise online, our experienced franchise lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 0800 005 570 or visit our membership page.

Frequently Asked Questions