Franchise Development Teams “Lean In” To LinkedIn for Franchise Lead Generation
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
February 14, 2024 – Signs from a number of metrics (time spent, monthly active users) and media reports are that we may have reached “peak” social media as measured by postings, monthly active users and time spent. The Wall Street Journal posits in a recent article that users are doing a lot more lurking than posting these days and foresees more of the same in this election year, along with mounting concerns about privacy.
Research firm Gartner forecasts that some 50% of consumers will significantly limit their interactions with social media by 2025.
But go ahead and try to name the “number two” B2B (business to business) social media platform behind LinkedIn. It is number one and the only significant platform in the category. And franchise systems have found it to be an effective way to generate and nurture prospects, generate sales, and recruit talent.
LinkedIn has twice the visit duration of short video monster Tiktok, and the lowest bounce rate of all major social media platforms.
Audience measurement company SimilarWeb shows declining Meta traffic in the third quarter of 2023, with U.S. Instagram app monthly active users dropping for Instagram by -8.2%, while the Facebook app was down -3.8%.
Traffic for LinkedIn, however, has grown over the past several months. Compared to the top consumer social media platform, LinkedIn can be “small but tasty” for franchise development leads if one is willing to invest the time and money. Again, from SimilarWeb, some stats for LinkedIn compared to the leading social media platforms:
While it is the smallest in monthly visits, the average visitor lingers longer per visit than on Tiktok. And it has the lowest bounce rate of the competitive set. A low “bounce rate” is very desirable – it means the visitor intended to land where they clicked, rather than going back or clicking elsewhere within a defined period of time.
Meanwhile, in FranchiseInsights.com surveys conducted in December 2023, one third (33.3%) of U.S. franchisors expect to spend more on LinkedIn for paid lead generation in 2024, and another 14.5% expect no change. Only 11.4% expect to reduce their Meta spending “somewhat” or “significantly”, but 42% don’t plan to use it at all.
In 2024 33.3% of U.S. franchisors expect to spend more on LinkedIn for lead generation than in 2023.
As a footnote, the survey represented a cross-section of franchise development teams, from emerging systems to well-established franchises with thousands of units.
We will share more nuggets about optimizing your franchise development lead generation results in upcoming articles at Franchise Insights.
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Published on Wednesday, February 14th, 2024.