How I use TikTok to generate franchise sales for Australia’s largest franchise, Jim’s Group.
In the dynamic landscape of digital marketing, businesses are constantly searching for innovative channels to reach their audiences and drive growth.
Enter TikTok – a social networking platform that has taken the world by storm.
it’s a social media phenomenon that offers an expansive audience and a unique way to connect with potential franchisees. Yet, TikTok is more than just a platform for dance challenges and viral content. Its potential as a powerful marketing tool is only beginning to be fully realised and despite constant media reports it’s not going anywhere.
As CMO for the Jim’s Group, we have been leading the way in using TikTok to generate franchise leads and most importantly franchise sales from using the platform, how can I claim this?
I know from asking our franchisees in training every 3-4 weeks how they found out about us or what did they watch, they are now saying “I was scrolling through TikTok”.
I am astounded by the lack of use of this platform by other franchise brands here in Australia to generate franchise sales and whilst it’s great for us. It’s disappointing that other marketing professionals aren’t hammering it home to their leadership to use this platform.
Feel free to refer them to this article if you need any extra backing up, I will outline in this how I have grown the Jim’s Group account from 0 to 70k followers, with no paid ads only organic content, now let’s dive in.
Table of Contents
Why TikTok for Franchises? The Data for Your Boss
To help your boss understand undeniable impact of TikTok in today’s digital ecosystem, we need to delve into some of the statistics the platform boasts:
A Global Phenomenon: TikTok hosts a massive community of 1 billion monthly active users (MAUs), painting a picture of its broad global reach and potential audience size.
A Significant Share: With 4.8 billion internet users worldwide, an impressive 20.83% are using TikTok.
Among the 4.48 billion active social media users globally, 22.32% use TikTok regularly, underscoring its popularity and pervasive influence.
Captivating Content: TikTok users worldwide spend an average of 52 minutes per day on the platform.
This statistic showcases TikTok’s ability to captivate and retain users, providing ample opportunities for brands to engage and connect.
Exceptional Engagement: TikTok exhibits an outstanding engagement rate of 5.30% for accounts with over 100,000 followers. This figure outshines Instagram’s 1.10% and Twitter’s 0.30%, demonstrating TikTok’s superior capacity to foster interaction and engagement.
An Australian Perspective: In Australia, 8.5 million users are active on TikTok daily.
This figure underscores TikTok’s local relevance and the untapped potential for Australian businesses.
Taken together, these numbers represent the power and potential of TikTok as an essential tool in any franchise’s digital marketing arsenal.
If you still need more reasons to at least create an account, check out the below regarding TikTok Vs Netflix and viewing preferences.
Isn’t it just young people on there though? The age of the people who buy my franchise is 40 plus. Well, take a look at the below from the US and you can safely estimate it’s the same here in Australia.
Most of our franchisees in Jim’s Group range anywhere from 20 – 80 years old with most sitting in that 30 – 50 year age range and as you can see from above, a large number of the users sit in that age range.
Understanding TikTok as a Marketing Tool
TikTok in a nutshell is an amphitheater that encourages and rewards creativity, authenticity, and storytelling. It’s not the platform itself but the behavior it promotes that makes it truly remarkable.
Here’s the thing – people don’t buy goods and services; they buy stories, and relationships, and want to be entertained.
That’s precisely what TikTok offers.
Unlike traditional platforms that often favour polished advertising, TikTok creates a space for brands to break the mold, to be vulnerable, and to connect on a deeper, more human level.
For franchise brands, this presents an opportunity, a new frontier, if you will, to not just sell a product or service, but to weave a narrative, to build a tribe.
The question isn’t whether TikTok should be a part of your marketing strategy, but rather, are you prepared to embrace this shift, to be daring and authentic in your storytelling?
As with any marketing strategy, the magic lies in the execution.
To execute you don’t need expensive content production, however, if you can use a content agency like mine 🙂 that can make it easier.
However, I started the early days of our account just using my phone and holding it in front of Jim’s Group CEO, Jim Penman, and answering common questions I use to see on our franchise sales Facebook ads, here is an early example below, it’s very cringe but you have to start somewhere.
As marketers, a goal of ours especially in franchising is to promote transparency, and trust and actually get attention for the franchise opportunity we have available and TikTok is a great free way to do just this.
The Role of TikTok in Jim’s Group’s Marketing Strategy
Everyone thinks there is a ‘marketing team’ at Jim’s Group HQ and there really isn’t. It’s essentially myself and my in-house videographer Charles. I have only recently employed 3 overseas staff for specialist tasks such as graphic design, re-purposing podcasts into written content, and a fantastic short-form content editor. This is the entire marketing team for the brands I run which includes Jim’s Group, Jim’s Mowing, Jim’s personal brand, and the various divisions we own or are responsible for.
This means that I have to be very hands-on in my role and implement the strategies myself, which I think I do a decent job of with the limited resources I have.
With Jim’s Group, my marketing strategy is about 3 overarching goals:
- Ultimate transparency for our franchise offering.
- Building Jim’s personal brand as it’s our great USP
- Educating the public that you can make millions in-home services.
The role of TikTok is just another way to deliver the above goals and I do this with various different content formats which all try to serve a different purpose and convey different messages to align with the 3 points above.
Types of Content I Use On The Platform with Examples
With franchising, it has a massive problem due to transparency and trust due to the numerous franchise scandals in Australia with various site-based publicly owned brand conglomerates, unfortunately, these scandals have tarred franchises as just money-grabbing enterprises.
Unfortunately, there are numerous franchise brands in Australia that are just this, however, at Jim’s Group we are definitely not and have to try and demonstrate this with our video content.
Here are the different content types I post on our account regularly and why.
Podcast Clips
We have a Jim’s Group Podcast and Jim’s Mowing Podcast where I interview franchisees and franchisors (Master Franchisees) about their stories.
These are more for the middle/later in the funnel however, to get people to listen to these, I use ‘nuggets of gold’ from the interview and have them made into short-form clips that I then post on TikTok.
If someone scrolls through the feed, has a Jim’s Group podcast clip goes into their feed where the opening line is “I was working at Maccas making $60k a year and within two years of Jim’s Mowing I was turning over $460 grand a year” that definitely plants the seed for someone to consume more of our content or go to the website or YouTube to consume more before making an enquiry.
For these clips, your franchise needs a podcast. If you don’t have one, start one now and interview your franchisees!
Franchisee Interviews/Testimonials
We do a lot of franchisee interviews/testimonials about being a Jim’s franchisee and to get mileage out of these, we will find a ‘hook’ in what they say and cut a clip from that point and post it.
Q & A with our Founder, Jim Penman
A very simple one, take a frequent question about your franchise or even use a comment from a video and ask someone in your business to answer it, very low effort and can deliver huge results, see below.
Entertainment/Challenges with Staff
With Jim’s, we embrace the memes and love the culture around them. I try to do something lighthearted every now and again, especially on TikTok where it’s expected by your audience which is great for those with a sense of humour.
Giveaways and Competitions
Really low-cost way to build your accounts and get some engagement onto your account in the early days. We even got national PR with our ‘Jim’s Jabs‘ merch giveaway which went absolutely viral and led to our DM’s being unmanageable for at least 2 months!
How-to
Not exactly a franchise lead-generating service, however, people use TikTok as a search engine to search for ‘how to build a business for example’ and you can have content appear for this or use it for service promotion just like the one below.
Re-purposed Day-on-the-road
We do a day on the road VLOG style videos occasionally which go for 30 minutes plus on YouTube, what a waste just having it there! So, we make numerous clips for TikTok from that day which then leads people to find out the longer form piece online if they are interested.
#ASKJIM
#ASKJIM is Australia’s longest-running franchise brand livestream, how do I know this? I don’t but I have been doing it since 2019 so I presume it is. See below for some viral clips from this Livestream. If you do livestreaming for your brand, cut these up and post them on TikTok with some editing.
Timelapse/#Oddlysatisfying/UGC Content
Not exactly, franchise inquiry generating but a great way to get eyeballs on your account.
Our franchisees produce daily pieces of UGC content on their accounts which we will use for our own to promote our services. Great for reach and awareness of your services.
Feel Good/Community
We have some great stories and moments that we capture on our phones or in the community. These should be shared far and wide, including on TikTok!
Training
Don’t hide your training! A big mistake I see franchise brands do is to put nothing about their training online and they believe it’s some magical thing not to be shown. This is wrong and lacks transparency, our training clips make people feel more comfortable and give them a taste of what to expect.
My Favourites
I have so much I could share in the article as examples however, head to our TikTok account and check out everything as there is a lot I couldn’t fit in however, here are some of my personal favourites.
From the examples above, you’re probably thinking I can do that and you would be right, you can. It’s nothing special I do, it’s just a matter of seeing what other brands/sporting clips/personal brands are doing and applying some of this to our Jim’s Group brand with the overall goal of increasing transparency and trust in mind.
The examples I have shown above, aren’t going to generate a franchise enquiry straight away, it’s designed to get someone first of all aware we ‘Jim’s Group’ exist and second that it’s something that can help the person watching change their life situation for the better.
There is a real lack of authenticity and transparency in franchising video content, just search other brands and you will see what I mean. TikTok is great because content on that platform is not expected to be polished, videos that aren’t polished tend to do far better because people using the platform want to first of all be entertained.
Quantity is a quality when it comes to TikTok!
When exploring the TikTok platform, there’s a somewhat counterintuitive concept you need to grasp: in this realm, quantity can be a quality all on its own! Yes, you read that right.
Unlike other social media platforms where carefully curated, high-budget content might rule the roost, on TikTok, frequent and consistent posting can actually work wonders for your brand.
TikTok’s unique algorithm is designed to offer new creators a chance to shine. When you first dip your toes into the TikTok waters, the platform extends a welcome by giving your initial posts a little extra push, offering them increased visibility to a larger audience.
This can serve as a golden opportunity to grab the attention of potential followers and make a significant first impression.
However, while these first few posts are critical, they’re just the start of your journey. The real key to TikTok success lies in volume. It’s about keeping the momentum going by regularly and frequently posting engaging content.
The more videos you post, the more data TikTok has to understand your content and optimize its reach. Each video serves as a new opportunity to resonate with different segments of your audience, which can lead to increased engagement, growth, and virality.
It’s like casting a wide net into the sea of TikTok users. The wider and more frequently you cast, the more likely you are to catch a larger number of viewers and reel in potential followers.
So don’t be afraid to create and post more content; embrace the mantra that on TikTok, quantity indeed has a quality of its own!
How to get started with TikTok?
Go to TikTok and create an account, it’s that simple. Or get your agency to do this for you.
It’s really that simple, you then need to decide if you want to do organic content or use paid ads on the platform with a lead form (Yes, you can do that) or a little bit of both. Our budget with Jim’s is very limited, so I don’t do any paid ads on the platform unless it’s for special occasions.
If you want to know the ins and out’s of the platform there are plenty of great YouTube videos, How-To guides online and of course, TikTok creators who only post about how to go viral on TikTok, see below for references.
Agency/Consultant or Do-It-Yourself?
It all depends on budget and how corporate your business is. At Jim’s, we’re not corporate at all and despite our size don’t have many resources so it’s far more efficient for me to just do it myself, and I have achieved decent success with that.
Compare our account to Airtaskers for example, see below:
Airtasker is a public company, use an agency for its account and our Jim’s Group account is 10 times the size, so it shows that you can do a far better job in-house if required.
However, if you do not have time but the money, use an agency or there are plenty of good consultants who could use UGC creators to help build the account.
Personally, I like to know what I am doing first before outsourcing it, so that’s why I chose to run it myself.
Are there lead forms?
Yes, you can run lead form ads and add these to your video with only very minimal details captured. It’s impossible in Jim’s to use as we can’t capture a full address so don’t know which franchisor to allocate it too, however, if you do not have this problem you can use a lead capture form.
The downside to this is quality of the enquiry will not be as strong with this, however, a solution is direct people to your landing page or a franchisee quiz landing page with in-video CTA’s or link in your bio.
Why don’t more franchise brands use TikTok for franchise leads?
Personally, I think it’s because they don’t understand it or just think because my kid uses it my prospects don’t. I also believe franchise marketing in Australia anyways, is 10 years behind other industries due to an older profile in many leadership positions who still rely on old-school franchise enquiry generation.
There is such great opportunity with new owned media and many companies still don’t wake up to the fact that you can hire a full-time content creator internally and post daily on multiple channels to generate great B2B leads which we do.
My data to back this up is simply looking at the Jim’s Group number growth compared to similar franchises since 2019. It simply does not compare, so we must be doing something right.
My Top 5 Tips for Using TikTok to Generate Franchise Enquiries
- Just start! Stop thinking about it or waiting for a 30-page strategy you probably won’t implement anyway. Create the account and start posting.
- Educate or Entertain – Your content should fall into those 2 areas.
- Post multiple times a day – You need to find out what works for your account and what your audience wants to see more of.
- Powerful hook people like to hear about money – Anything about earnings, fees, etc…always draws people in.
- Be controversial – I post content that I know will get engagement from rival business owners, it helps really boost our videos and brings people into our profile who might not of discovered us otherwise.
Wrapping Up
Every training, people are buying franchises because of seeing a video from Jim’s on TikTok and then researching more on YouTube or websites. It’s helped us reach a whole new bunch of people who may have never become franchisees with us.
I don’t know the exact number of sales but I estimate it’s at least been the first piece of Jim’s content that 100 new franchises have seen before coming into our extended Jim’s Group funnel.
If you enjoyed reading this or want me to help you with this, drop me a message via my contact form.
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