In an age where everyone from your grandmother to 7-year you are online, it’s a no-brainer that the Internet is playing an important role in the business world. When it comes to franchising, is the World Wide Web to help or hinder the industry?

PROS

The most obvious benefit of using the Internet to benefit your franchise is that putting your name out there. In marketing, you need to advertise in places where most people will find it – so if people are online, which brand name you need to go. The trick in this arena are well familiarized with the demographics and what they use online platform. Are consumers up often? Twitter? Whatever it is, it’s where you need to.
The primary benefit of advertising on the Internet is that you can reach such a wide audience. As opposed to billboards, radio ads and television commercials, you don’t have to hope people will drive down a certain road or tune in to a specific station at a specific time. Because of sharing capabilities on the Internet, if people like your advertisements they can easily pass them along to their family and friends — effectively multiplying your audience. It’s kind of like someone being able to pick up a billboard and take it home to show their family, essentially.

Another primary advantage of advertising online is that it’s infinitely easier for customers to contact you. With traditional advertising, people who see your ads will need to remember what number to call or where you are located. If they’re driving by a billboard, they won’t be able to write down your info — meaning they’ll likely forget your company’s name by the time they get home.

CONS

The first con of using the Internet to market your franchise is that the online world is competitive. If you pay for a billboard, for example, it’s yours — competitors can’t take your space just because their billboard is flashier or more clever. With online searches, however, it’s all about who does it best. If you want your page to rank high in search engines, you’ll need to pay for good SEO marketing. If you want your videos to go viral, they’ll need to be more creative and memorable than your competition’s advertising.

If you’re looking to open a franchise, performing an online search might seem like the easiest and quickest way to browse your options. However, you might end up just seeing the franchises with the best advertising budgets that worked their way to the top of the search results — not necessarily all the franchise options that are personally best for you. This is one area in which traditional methods have an advantage over the Internet. Using franchise brokers to help you find the perfect franchise fit has a clear advantage over an Internet search because the assistance is personalized.

Katie Hawkes is a freelance blogger for Profit Street, an online resource of expert franchise brokers.