Below is a summary of the assorted methods we use to promote, advertise, and market Click IT products, services, and solutions to generate traffic to our company store. ("Traffic" means walk-ins and phone inquiries. From these prospective customers, we derive our sales.) Remember, marketing and promotions is an on-going effort and must be maintained and monitored on a constant basis. Make sure your organization designates a team of responsible people, who can keep the activity going based on the budgets you set.

Who has the Responsibility?

Franchisees' are taught the basics of promoting, marketing, and advertising in our classes since the responsibility for this function in running their businesses remains with them. Still, Click IT Corporate will assist franchise owners and their staff with the tasks associated with setting up their initial campaigns, within the limits of our franchise agreement. There may be extra costs involved, so please be aware of this as you evaluate and plan what avenues your organization will take. Please also let us know if you would like more assistance with this once you have completed the classroom sessions concerning this subject. We will do our best to accommodate your needs.

Web Presence

As an added benefit in being a Click IT franchisee, Click IT Corporate handles all the local web presence for our franchisees, as well as our national web presence. We use an assortment of proven SEO techniques that are also available to franchisee customers. (See https://shop.clickitgroup.com/product-category/click-it-e-marketing/ for a list of Click IT's eMarketing products and services.) Some, not all, of this is paid for through the brand fund, depending on the services you subscribe to. Our goal is to be able to afford nothing the best in marketing services for our franchisees, however, some of what we suggest in marketing avenues will obviously fall under your marketing budget, which is independently set by you, at the required minimum.

Word-of-Mouth is the Best Advertising of ALL

It is no secret that the best advertising in any business today is word-of-mouth. Maintaining a stellar reputation is essential to the success of a Click IT store in any location. At our headquarters, we work very hard to make sure we maintain an A+ Better Business Bureau rating while also making sure we get nothing but 5-star reviews from customers.

In order for a new Click IT franchise store to get started in their area, there needs to be a steady stream of advertising dollars spent during at least the first year; and then based on that experience, advertising can be budgeted based on experiencing and studying the results. Below is a further discussion of how we advise our franchise owners to spend their budget in this category

Pay-Per-Clicks or Impressions

Click IT franchisees are required to spend at least $1,000 a month (or 2% of their revenue) in advertising, which is a requirement in our franchise agreement. Managing this assures that enough traffic is generated to their new store.

Below is a list of the most active avenues we recommend a franchise spend on advertising, based on our actual experience:

1. Google ads - Google Ads: https://ads.google.com/Tracking: It is imperative that you have a way to measure the effectiveness of any campaign you conduct. We also have used Tracking Phone Numbers, but we don't recommend it for many reasons.

2. Bing advertising

3. Search Engine Optimization - This is by far the most cost-effective way to promote your business, but it requires a degree of skill and expertise. We help our franchise owners get started by using optimization techniques that favor their location. Learn more about the type of SEO plans offered by Click IT by going here. (Of course, all these services which we will sell and perhaps use for your own store, are provided by corporate to our franchisees at big discounts.).

Click here for a list of keywords we use in Pay-Per-Click campaigns.

Web Pages

We have a very effective method we use to help search engine results favor local franchise stores by their location. As mentioned above, Corporate will manages all aspects of the Company's websites, including the franchisee websites. (To view all Click IT websites, go to https://clickitgroup.com/divisions/). Franchisee\'s websites are created independently, based on the main websites, yet with an emphasis on their unique locations, which are sub-domains of Click IT's main domains. For instance, the sub-domain Oshkosh.clickitcomputer.com is an independent website from the main company website found on the domain Clickitcomputer.com. It emphasizes the location of Oshkosh Wisconsin so people in this location will find the local Click IT Computer website when searching in that area using keywords relating to the subject matter. The main purpose of structuring the franchisee\'s websites in this way is so that the franchise location's pages are optimized for each unique location, resulting in a very favorable search engine position for each location. (Most franchises, by the way, don't know how to optimize for their franchise locations, and so we believe that we offer our franchisees a unique service by taking care of this aspect of their advertising using our specialized knowledge.)

Our goal in creating a website around every service, product or solution, is so that we dominate the front page of a Google search. For Example, click on the image on the right. You can see that Click IT dominates the page. So too are we striving to dominate a page for a keyword or phrase used by someone looking for what we do.

Additional Advertising Avenues

YEXT- https://www.yext.com/s/435633/account/settings

• This is a central web portal for managing web presence.
• Cost is approximately $500 a year, paid annually.

Thumbtack - http://www.thumbtack.com/profile/services/wMTCsLKMOUpukg/#/edit

• This service charges per lead. Emails are sent when they find a lead.  We also maintain a profile of Click IT here.
• The cost is between $2 and $5 per lead.

GetFilix / ComputerRepairMan - http://www.getfelix.com/apps/#reputation

• We get leads from this site having to do with computer repair.
• Cost is about $50 per month.
• NOTE: This service was closed.

Yellow Pages (YP) - We pay $38.77 per month

• Personal Account: http://www.yellowpages.com/
• Advertising: http://adsolutions.yp.com/

Angie's List - The cost is under $100 a month for the plan you need, but more expensive plans are available as well.

• https://office.angieslist.com

 

Manta - https://www.manta.com/ng?rl=nav-login&rld=%2F#!/member/login

• We pay $41.93 per month for this listing. I think it competes with Yext, so we may be double paying. This control panel and cost seems to be better than Yext.

Google Ads - Previously Know as Adwords -

• We spend $1,000 a month
• A link to more information will soon be available.

Customer Relations Management:

Our recommendation is that you use Customer Relationships Management (CRM) software to keep track of all your leads. While we know that SalesForce s the most commonly used, there are many others such as Sugar CRM. We prefer Hubspot out of all the CRMs we have tried. Click here to learn more about Hubspot.