Aussie Pooch Mobile recently took out the number one spot in the Marketing category of this year’s Topfranchise Awards organised by 10 Thousand Feet Research and online marketplace SEEK Business.
B&T sat down with Aussie Pooch Mobile’s marketing manager, Tracy Sullivan, to chat about the strategy behind their success.
Why have you focused on online locally?
With 174 locations around Australia, traditional forms of newspapers and magazines don’t have the impact they used to. We have evolved to focus on SEO and social media, really focusing on owning the local presence.
What is your approach to localised control of social media?
We are really big on helping our franchisees develop an organic presence online so we get the franchisees themselves to do the social media. We provide them with tools and tips, highlighting the do’s and don’ts of how to successfully manage and maximise their online presence.
We create pages for them across all our social media platforms, so they can focus on content and engagement. We regularly check franchisees posts to make sure that everything is within our brand guidelines and direction.
We are also lucky that people love photos of dogs, which are regularly in the top five of what people search for! So, our franchisees naturally want to keep posting as they get great feedback.
Google is really dominant in local search. What do you do to be seen in Google searches?
We target Google AdWords and are conscious about having the right content from an SEO perspective. We also have a big focus on localised Google reviews. We recognise that potential customers look at reviews before deciding to use us, so it’s just another reason to make sure that we provide amazing customer service. To that end, internally we hero our franchisees with an internal customer service award and we take the feedback from customers very seriously.
So, what role do traditional forms of marketing still have to play on a local level?
Although we put a lot of work into our online presence, we still take local listings in the Yellow Pages, and one of the best areas that has worked really well for us are shopping centre displays. We have a pop-up display and give people the opportunity to enter their details to win a hamper. We also take bookings and provide discounts if they book on the day so we tend to get a lot of bookings this way.
Any other tips for companies trying to make the most of localised teams?
A big philosophy for us is to keep it small. Think about what you would do if you were just starting a business for the first time. So, we keep it simple for franchisees around what’s achievable for them on a regular basis.