Franchise Advisory Board | Expert Franchising Advice for Franchise Leaders

Join franchise and multi-location marketing expert, Mark Jensen to learn from his experience managing a $1M per week PPC budget across 1,800 locations of Extra Space Storage. Key things we discuss are:- How the PPC landscape is shifting in the past 3-6 months- What are some of the challenges in managing multi-unit and Franchise PPC marketing?- What are some PPC best practices that can improve success?- What should franchise marketing practitioners be monitoring and measuring in their PPC campaigns and why?- How you can tell if you're paying too much and/or not getting much from your outsourced or in-house PPC partner- How you can tell if you have a solid PPC marketing vendorWant a transcript of the podcast? Here you go!Dave Hansen (00:02):Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the advisory board podcast. I'm Dave Hansen, the host today. We've got an exciting character with us. His name is Mark Jensen, AKA Marcus T. He's also, he's been a semi famous punk band entrepreneur, semi famous - also one of the early managing partners over get found first. A pretty well known SEO PPC firm and he's been managing a ton of you know, very large multi-unit PPC campaigns for groups like extra space storage. So I wanted to bring him on early in the podcast series because he's kind of a witch in this space of PPC is known it and tracked it for many years and and multi-unit multi location PBC is a totally different animal than running it. Just one campaign for one side. So Mark, thanks for joining us.Mark Jensen (00:55):Yeah, absolutely.Dave Hansen (00:57):Yeah. Anything you want to add, any color to you before we jump in? Any content?Mark Jensen (01:02):You know, I've been in internet marketing now for about eight years. Had a lot of exposure to all the different channels in digital marketing, including running that agency, which I think kind of helped me think more like a business owner in this. So going in and, and running this large account for extra space storage that I, gosh, I think we're spending about 52 million a year on 1800 locations. Yeah. Having that business hat when you're working with accounts this size, it's, it's been really helpful and I hope through our discussion I'll be able to kind of highlight some of those nuggets that I've been able to find.Dave Hansen (01:37):Yeah. Good. Well, we're gonna, we're gonna pull them out of your brain, so thanks for, thanks for doing that. Hey, so talk, let's, let's just start kind of high level, like what's changing? So PPC is always changing. That's the one thing that never changes with PPC is it's always in a state of flux. Thanks. why don't you share a little bit with us about, about what you've noticed changing in the last maybe, you know, 90 days, six months,Mark Jensen (01:58):Okay. Yeah, I mean, first off at caveat, this was saying when we talk PBC, it's almost exclusively Google, right? If you're not on being, you should go there. That's got a generally lower cost for Claire. She can get a, you know, a good conversions there, but it's just not the volume. Like PPC is ubiquitous with Google right now. So we'll kind of reference it by that. The first thing I'd say is covert, right? That's on everybody's mind right now. So much negative news right now. So let me give you some, some potentially good news is it's not the nail in the coffin for every single business out there. I've seen a lot of companies really thriving right now. Thinking of like home renovation or, Oh gosh, like mold removal, these different projects of things people are finally starting to get out on these places are actually increasing in volume right now. So what I'd say is that, Hey, not all industries are impacted the same and not all locations are impacted the same. So something you should do if you're having somebody manage your account is going and ask them, Hey, is there opportunity to actually take advantage of this right now? And not in a slimy way but just like, Hey, there's more interest so let's lean in.Dave Hansen (03:16):Yeah. And you know, just a thought to share on that, cause I've got an interesting insight. One of our partners, they generate leads for home service companies and at a very large scale and one of their directors, and I will keep this I won't share any details of who shared what, but they shared that actually HVAC, plumbing, several the home services way up emergency plumbing was way up. Like people are flushing like napkins and paper towels down the toilet, I guess.Mark Jensen (03:44):Right. Which is why we are discovering our ineptitude and using our own household things.Dave Hansen (03:49):Yeah. Like, well that works in the office toilet, I guess it doesn't work. People are doing, but they're spending more time in their homes. And I'm glad you brought it up because it's an area that we do a lot of work in the client, the other, but that, that niche of, I'm in my house constantly now I'm out on my deck working and my decks, crap, I want to replace my deck or I want to do redo my floors. We can need to get new carpet. Like we have seen an insurgence, a resurgence of leads flowing into, you know, painting, plumbing, HVAC, all sorts of, all sorts of places where a lot of business owners I think are, had been pulling back like, Ooh, save money. I'm afraid. And so what's happening to the competition for those clicks?Mark Jensen (04:25):Right. It may not be the time for us sturdy for, for a lot of companies right now. Absolutely. the little tidbit out there like addressing covert in your ads could actually be a good move right now too. So if you're, or you've got somebody managing this, look at cleanliness, leaning into no-contact, things like that, those are performing really well right now.Dave Hansen (04:47):Hmm. A question for you. I have somebody who told me that if you referenced coronavirus or covert in your PPC ad copy that Google's blocking those, is that right?Mark Jensen (04:58):Hmm. Say I'm not, I'm not sure. Yeah. The only ways I've seen it lean into is not specifically naming Cove it, but just addressing the, the value adds that accompany wants to bring to the table,Dave Hansen (05:11):Which is frankly a better psychology of marketing anyway. Stop talking about the, you know, features, benefits, talk about just the benefits of the value that you bring. So yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Yep. Sorry to put you on the spot. Cool. So any other trends that you are seeing right now as far as how people should be using or are using PBC?Mark Jensen (05:31):Yeah, you know, I love the good buzzword. So let's let's say a couple of big data AI automation that's been around. That's great. Wow. Who's not excited, bright. Now I don't know. But yeah, I'd say that those are still still top of mind. Google's rolled out some of these automated, Ooh, machine learning features in the past, but they're getting better and they're getting better. This is the way that, that things will be moving is automation. And I think one of the things that we're going to start seeing is a difference in how campaigns are being made. And this should be changing already. It used to be when you would create a PBC campaign, it would be extremely broken out, right? You go and you look at anything that was built and you know, four or five years ago, it's going to be very, very intricate. With these automated technologies, they need a lot of data, right? So if you're super broken out, you're actually minimizing the data that this machine learning can grab. So it may not be super popular with some people that want all that control, but having more condensed builds will actually benefit this type of technology more. So that's what I'm going to expect to be seeing is more and more consolidation, fewer keywords, fewer ad groups, things like that. And really leveraging some of this automation in exciting ways, honestly.Dave Hansen (07:01):Yeah. Well I come, I have a background in that a little bit. The natural language processing machine learning space for being an inflation. And if you want to train an engine, I've seen, I've seen engines that can translate patents in certain languages as well as humans, but they are very specific content in a very tight, tight content domain, but lots of volume flowing through it. So that makes total sense. Right? Exactly. Yup. Very cool man. Yeah, well I've got a couple of, I got a couple of questions for you, Mark, since you're the expert, if you're ready to be on the hot seat. Yeah, race yourself. So let's, let's shift gears back to multi-unitbecause that's kind of the focus of what we want to talk about today. And there are a lot of people that run franchises that are running a dealership, programs that have hundreds of locations. And this is a big challenge for a lot of them. I've talked to them, they've told me I was what you think of this. So talk to me a little bit about challenges. Like, how is it different? Like what, why is it challenging to run PPC campaigns for multi-unitfranchises or otherwise? Otherwise,Mark Jensen (08:01):I think one of the, especially as you start getting bigger and bigger and your portfolio gets larger it can easily become unmanageable. And this is especially true if you've grown over the past few years. Things that you're not thinking about is standardization, right? You're, you're just getting off and you're excited and you're building this business. So what you're going to have is you're going to kind of have this Frankenstein account. Now what I don't want to do is just lean into, yeah, that's really tricky to manage. But also it's really tricky as a business owner to know what in the world is going on when you can't do good roll up reporting, like what products are doing well, what services are doing well, what regions are doing well. All these things are a little tricky if you don't have good standardization and taxonomy. So it's kind of a crazy one. It wouldn't seem like high impact, but

Join me and online review and business reputation management guru, Mark Spencer from Consumer Fusion as we discuss reputation management best practices for franchise, multi-site, and small business. We address:- The impact of your online reputation on your business- How do Google reviews tie into your organic search traffic - What's the best way to respond to negative reviews (Google reviews, Facebook Reviews, Yelp Reviews, etc.)- What should you look for in negative reviews that can help you get them removed- How to monitor your online reputation effectivelyWant to read the transcript? Of course... here you go. Dave Hansen (00:01):Hey Mark, thanks so much for joining us. Hey, guys, this is Dave Hansen from ClientTether, and this is our first podcast video casts with, Mark over at... In fact, Mark, I don't want to introduce you. You introduce yourself, you'll do a much better job of it. Please.Mark Spencer (00:17):Hello, my name's Mark Spencer. I'm with Consumer Fusion. Consumer Fusion is an all-in-one reputation management, solution along with, some local search and, local listings along with some organic social media. So thanks for having me Dave. I appreciate you having me on for your inaugural, podcast.Dave Hansen (00:36):My pleasure. You guys are a good partner and I love your content. Every time we talk I learn new stuff and that's why I thought I've got to have Mark or Brynn - one of the two of you join me cause you're kind of experts and have a lot to share. And I love that you guys are willing to share like your social posts, things like that. Often, I'll read it and say, Oh, I didn't know that and I'll share it to my network. So thanks for being great content contributors.Mark Spencer (00:58):Thank you. I appreciate you sharing them.Dave Hansen (01:01):Yeah. Well, and so one of the things you didn't say that I'll, add as well is you guys also do negative review removal. We'll talk more about that. But that's kind of an interesting topic today. A lot of people have a lot more time on their hands. I mean, before we jump too far into anything, do you mind maybe sharing a little bit about what are some of the trends you're seeing in reputation in the industry right now? Things that people ought to be aware of.Mark Spencer (01:24):Yeah. The thing is, is here at consumer fusion, we're not here to make a bad company look good and we're not here to remove negative reviews that belong there. Um, but we see a trend of third party experiences. Um, especially with Covid-19 going on right now. , we see a lot of tattle tellers, a lot of people, , seeing that non-essential businesses are out there, not staying at home and then taking pictures and then uploading those and tagging that business and writing a negative Yelp or Google review. And so with that, we see we're trying to hold these brands and help them get through these, these challenging times so to speak as we roll these out.Dave Hansen (02:01):Yeah, that's interesting. I guess now we have an answer to one of my questions, which is what are all these people doing with all their extra time? But I guess that's a, that's part of it. And I think fans. Hey, well tell me a little bit about, I thought it'd be fun to start, with just an experience you've had with the crazy or like a funny, , negative review, removal of reputation experience. You guys have tons of these aren't bad, but what are some of the, what's something you've seen recently that was, was really interesting?Mark Spencer (02:27):, there's a few crazy ones. Oh. Um, consumer fusion. Shoot, we've been around just under 10 years. Um, and how we started was brand. You mentioned Brynn, she's the founder and CEO. So it's a woman owned company. Um, my dad's a retired dentist and one of his ex employees went online to his Google business page and wrote, um, saying that he doesn't pay his employees and it was just a bad firing. And my dad took it like it was okay and she didn't. So she went online and said, Hey, he doesn't pay his employees. And there's a lot of patients, , that saw that and he lost some patients because of it. So Brynn, who was, we were dating at the time said, Hey, let's look into it. So she read the terms and conditions of that, of Google. And one of those terms and conditions, and we'll touch base a little bit on later, is you can't write about your ex-employer.Mark Spencer (03:15):Um, that is one of the terms and conditions and Google, Yelp, Facebook, they don't have the manpower to police the reviews. And so we went out and we disputed it. Um, disputing has changed over the last 10 years. But, , she went into disputed it and it finally came down and ding, ding, ding. Um, my dad was part of a rotary club, , with plastic surgeons and lawyers. And that leads me right into a couple crazy, um, first time things that we've seen in regards to the negatives that we've been able to remove, um, in the medical field. , first one was, , there's a lot of pill poppers out in this world. Opiates are becoming a pretty big thing right now. And it's, it's a, it's a tough subject for a lot of people and pill poppy because that's what the doctors do is they just give them, Hey, this will help you out.Mark Spencer (03:58):Well, some of the medical doctors that we do work with, with reputation management, they get hit hard because they turn people away, , without prescribing them oxycodone or whatever. And then they get home, they get frustrated, they're already irritable and they, they go off and write. But the most memorable, memorable one that we've come across was, , a multiunit franchisee pizza place. , I don't wanna name names. Um, but it was not on their end. Um, but it was a Google post with a picture and it was a picture of a pizza pizza with a pubic pubic hairs sprinkled on the pizza, um, and, , in the cash. And it was like, Hey, I received this pizza. And then their second picture was after they ate a couple pieces of pizza, didn't know that Cuba care was there. They took a picture. Um, there was a picture of a penis that was written in Sharpie underneath the pizza says, you ate, you saw the picture of that.Mark Spencer (04:50):So then they started looking at the pizza and found it. Well, long story short, this was all drawn up. We found out that it was a bunch of drunk people that actually, um, wrote this and they were just looking for some free pizza, but we were able to remove it. It was a troll type of a review, and that's what we see trending. But it was, we've seen it all. , we've seen some crazy stuff that once again, we're here to keep reviews honest and help those small businesses and large corporations maintain a good online presence. So the houses, it's crazy.Dave Hansen (05:20):Wow. Yeah. People would go to no end for a free pizza, like five bucks. You know, like if you want to go get a Dominos or something. So ...hard times, I guess. So, yeah, I need to reroute those funds. , we, we've got, um, and you know, just, you know, and, and this, in this podcast and video, we're not, we're not condoning or condemning, you know, beer or pizza. I said these are okay to is neutral stuff, but, , the, , I wanted to ask you a little bit about, about reputation. You know, that's a very specific niche you guys are, and we'll come back to negative reviews, but tell us, talk to us a little bit about best practices and monitoring your reputation. So I mean, and, and, and also, you know, meaning good and negative, like what are some best practices that people should be paying attention to?Mark Spencer (06:08):Definitely address the negatives. And there are times that you can remove negatives. Um, I want to respond to the negative reviews. Um, the most important thing when a review comes across, whether it's both positive and negative, is making sure you have a business owner's response in a timely matter. Um, so with best business practice, I recommend never get emotional with your responses if it's a negative. And we at consumer fusion, we do have a platform that notifies you via text and email when you get any review, let alone if it's three stars or below. Um, but you want to pounce on that. And I mean, I'm by pounce on that is, , 90% of consumers read the business owner's response. And so it's important that you don't turn a negative into a double negative. And, , but you also want to go in there, devalue it, but reach out and let the, let the potential consumer that sees that negative to see that, Hey, they're reaching out, they're trying to rectify the situation, they're to giving phone numbers and emails and they're trying to reach out to make it.Mark Spencer (07:03):Right. So, , with that, I say the best thing to do is make sure you respond to reviews, both positive and negative. And I was talking negative. Let's talk positive. I mean, don't you say thank you when someone thanks you and says happy birthday day, you know, on social media. Will you say, Hey, thanks. Thanks. Thank you. I appreciate that having a great day. Do you want to do the same thing with your positive reviews and responding to positive reviews, acknowledging that these people take the time out of their day to write you a good review. You want to respond to it. And so there are platforms out there that can monitor your reputation. Um, , but ours is a little different because we're actually doing the manual work to be an all in one solution, which is , removing negative content that doesn't belong there. Customized our owner's responses and then the monitoring part of it. But there's a, there's a lot of , practices. So I recommend a monitoring service, um, and the third party to respond to that. You don't get emotional on the reviews.Dave Hansen (07:59):Yeah. And let's say you're a small business. Like I don't have budget to hire any sort of a service. I know some are fairly inexpensive too, but I mean, worst case they should have some sort of a process where they're, you know, a cou