With most franchisors having internal marketing departments, you will be well aware that this task has been highly labour-intensive until now. Over the past few years, and especially the last few months, there’s been a rise in artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
Siri and Alexa aside, many franchisors already use AI in their marketing efforts in the form of chatbots. But apart from this, what will be the impact of AI on digital marketing for franchisors? In this article, we take a closer look.
Table of contents:
The back- and front-ends of AI in digital marketing
Before we get started, it’s important to note that AI in digital marketing for franchisors can come in the form of a back-end operation or a front-end operation.
On the back-end side, franchise marketers can use AI to develop customer profiles, forecast demand for products and even buy programmatic ads.
On the front-end side, AI can help franchise marketers deal with the customer-facing side of things to boost the customer experience. In turn, this can have highly positive effects on strengthening the franchise brand and increasing sales.
Using AI in marketing for franchisors
With the back-end and front-end of AI in franchise marketing being clarified, let’s take a look at how AI can be used in franchise marketing. If you’re thinking about ChatGPT only, you’re in for a surprise because there are dozens of other AI tools that can be integrated into your marketing operations to streamline them and make them more efficient. As such, here are just a few of the things you can do with AI for your franchise marketing efforts.
1. Generate images and music out of text
Generating high-quality images is possibly one of the most important aspects of complementing a marketing campaign. Whether it’s an image that is used to support your blog articles or used on your website or landing pages, images can now be personalised and tailored to your audience. The same goes for jingles and music. All you have to do is provide the textual prompt to ensure that you get the right output.
2. Gain deeper insights into customer behaviour
One thing that all businesses have in common is the need to clearly identify and understand their customers. With AI, this is now a faster and more efficient possibility. This can be achieved through analysing discussions between customers and your chatbots or even sales calls to determine whether customers are more likely to purchase from you, what they are more inclined to purchase and how much they are willing to spend.
3. Create personalised experiences
Another area where franchise marketers will benefit from AI is in creating personalised customer experiences. This means different versions of landing pages, images and content on social media and on blogs that are tailored to different customer personas and others.
4. Analyse large amounts of data quickly and accurately
No more teams needed to help you crunch the numbers when AI can help you determine things such as customer preferences, purchase history, online behaviour and customer behaviour. As such, this ties into creating personalised experiences through targeted product recommendations, personalised offers, customised content, etc.
5. Automating routine tasks
Marketing, especially franchise marketing, consists of many manual tasks that are routine and mechanical. However, someone has to do it. For example, there is manual data collection and data entry and this can waste valuable time and resources. With AI’s solutions, this means you can free your team up to perform other more high-level and complex tasks and leave repetitive tasks to the machines. It is also possible to incorporate AI with your customer relationship management (CRM) system to help you streamline operations.
6. Make pay-per-click advertising more effective
Pay-per-click (PPC) adverts can now be created with a more personalised touch in a matter of seconds. And when your ads are more targeted and personalised, their effect on your audience is that much greater.
7. Personalise websites
It is also possible to use AI to help you personalise your website and your multiple landing pages. This means including text that caters to a particular customer segment, using appropriate images generated by AI, etc. All this can help improve the user experience (UX) of your target audience when interacting with your website.
8. Content creation
Content is at the heart of every franchise marketing department. You use your content to touch the hearts of your audiences – whether prospective franchisees or potential clients. With AI like ChatGPT, you can easily create personalised content and personalised content suggestions, as well as strengthen your social media copy and marketing efforts. It’s also possible to incorporate AI in your email marketing efforts for greater and stronger impact. AI can also be used in conjunction with your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts.
9. Understand your customers’ preferences
AI can offer real-time customer support 24/7/365. Many organisations are already using this option through carefully trained chatbots that learn as more data is fed into them through real customer conversations. Some studies have shown that these chatbots and real-time customer support improve customer service and lead to greater organisational efficiencies. This is also a great way to better understand customer preferences and predict their behaviour.
10. Optimise pricing strategies
We already alluded to the fact that AI can help improve your pricing strategies so that you more accurately target customers in the price bracket that they’re comfortable in. As such, your personalisation of deals can help you win over more customers as you make your products or services more affordable to a wider group of people.
How will franchise brands benefit from AI in their digital marketing efforts?
Apart from all the ways mentioned above about how AI and its incorporation into your franchise marketing efforts can help, there are many other reasons to use AI. Here is a short list of just a few of the benefits you and your franchise marketing team can enjoy:
- Cost-effective communication
- Increased efficiency
- Improved personalisation, and
- 24/7 availability
What are some of the best practices when using AI?
Of course, AI should always be taken with a pinch of salt. This is because it is on a continuous learning curve and the process is constantly being revised and updated. Sometimes, there will be errors in the AI and you and your franchise marketing team need to be prepared for these. As such, here are some best practices related to what you need to bear in mind when incorporating AI in your franchise marketing efforts:
- Train your chosen AI tool effectively
- Don’t hesitate to use human oversight over processes and activities
- Focus on personalisation
- Train your team for optimal AI use, and
- Implement security measures to avoid data breaches and issues with confidentiality.
Concluding remarks
With AI here to stay, it’s important that you take the right steps to implement the right AI tools in your franchise marketing efforts. Once the process is complete, you and your team will be able to enjoy all the rewards and benefits that come with streamlined and more efficient operations that offer more personalised customer experiences.
Of course, like any piece of technology, you need to be aware of drawbacks and potential pitfalls. However, when implemented and used correctly, AI can save you and your team a lot of effort, time and resources.
