5 Things Marketers Don't Want You to Know

If you worked with FranchiseHelp between 2014 and 2015, you probably already know me. I used to be your Account Manager (hi!). Since then I’ve been bouncing around, and finally landed in the Marketing department. Maybe next year I’ll get to try being a Dev.

If you’ve ever spoken to me or any of our Account Managers, you’ve probably asked some perfectly reasonable questions that somehow never had satisfying answers. I can tell you that when your Account Manager says “hang on, let me ask my Marketing team,” they aren’t blowing you off. They really do turn around and ask. And when we answer them “I dunno man,” they don’t like it any more than you do.

So if you’re wondering whether your Account Manager is staging an elaborate coverup for all the weird stuff the Marketing team gets up to behind the scenes, allow me to re-answer some of the most common questions I got when I was the one talking to you.

1. Where do these leads come from?

All over the internet! People arrive at our site via search, banner ads, social media ads, emails, etc. Our ads typically link to our Quiz, though sometimes we link them to specific other pages on the site like the page for Food Franchises. They pick a franchise, we confirm their info, you get a lead!

You know where they don’t come from?

They don’t come from contact info lists we bought off a stranger on the internet. They don’t come from some other website where we promised them a free iPad in exchange for their contact info. They don’t come from an army of interns who sit in our office typing in made-up contact info (they’ve got cooler stuff to work on). They aren’t even recycled info that we got a year ago for a different brand. It’s all disappointingly un-nefarious.

2. Aren’t Facebook leads super low quality? They’re just messing around on the internet. I only want search leads.

So, I get the argument here. People who are actively searching for “buy a franchise” on Google are higher intent than people who are on Facebook and happen to see an ad for FranchiseHelp.

The great thing about Facebook is, we can be a lot more specific about which people to show ads to. We can pick the types of people most likely to be great franchisees and target them directly. It’s so cool. You don’t get that kind of control on search.

We’re adding new lead sources all the time, because old sources never work as well today as they did yesterday. Every single one has features and drawbacks, but a good mix is the best way to keep things running smoothly.

3. Why is lead volume so low right now?

I dunno, man.

Most of the time, volume goes down because we spend less on advertising. But there are tons of other variables, some that we can anticipate (it’s the end of the month and there’s fewer franchises available, so we slow down traffic) and some that we can’t (everybody happened to pick today to go to the beach instead of researching franchising online). 

Sometimes we honestly just tried something new and it didn’t work.

4. Is there anything you guys can do to boost my volume?

Yeah, totally. And we’re already doing it. Marketers spend every hour of every day trying to boost your lead volume. That is actually our entire job.

But seriously, sometimes your leads will be inexplicably slow. We probably already know about it, and we’re trying to send you more without impacting your lead quality.

5. Speaking of quality….

Yeah, we know. Quality is a huge deal.

We work super hard to figure out what kind of people might want to open a franchise, where they are on the internet, and how to communicate with them. But even if we get that all perfect, people will still visit our site who have no business opening a franchise.

They think they want to open a franchise but don’t realize that we’re absolutely serious when we say you need $100,000 to make that happen. They want to do research without talking to anyone so they never pick up the phone. They were doing so many things on the internet at once that they forgot that oh yeah, they totally did request information on that cool franchise brand.

It sounds trite to say this is unavoidable, but in a very real sense it is. If you want to talk to more than a few people per month (and the data says you should), then you’re going to have to wade through some unqualified people to get to the gems.

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So there you have it, straight from the Marketer’s mouth. The funny thing is, I probably could have answered all these questions back when I was an Account Manager. I know the current Account Manager can do it because I hear him answer them every day. But I always secretly believed that there we things the Marketing team was keeping from me, and if I knew them it would explain EVERYTHING. I know my clients always felt that way.

Turns out the major secret is just “I dunno man, the internet is hard. We’re working on it.”