Rogue Franchise Websites – A Dangerous Venture
Let’s think about this – a franchisee, for one reason or the other, decides to build a rogue franchise website. They hire a local developer to build the website but not according to the online brand compliance required by the franchise. Now there are two cases—either the franchisee has done a good job in building the website or a bad job—in either case, it will hurt the business’ reputation and cost it revenue. But how is it exactly damaging your company?
A Poor-Quality Website is Costing You Leads
The case of the franchisee making a poor-quality website is obvious. The customer clicks on the website and, instead of landing in a familiar place, seems to have entered a place where everything seems off. The colors, the logo, the content – everything is unusual. Either the customer thinks the website is hacked or thinks that the brand is not what they thought it was, or in case of a new customer forms a poor first opinion of the brand and bounces from the website. Everything a franchise works hard for—their brand reputation, the message they want to give to the customers, the leads they work hard to collect—all things are lost because of a rogue franchise website.
You Are Competing for Leads with a Better Website
The second case is trickier because it doesn’t seem bad at first. The rogue website is done well and attracts good search traffic. But then you find the website of the larger organization seems to be competing with the rogue website for search traffic. This means more people are going to the rogue website than the main site, and your website will rank less on Google as your traffic goes down. Google might even devalue your entire domain for publishing duplicate content with the rogue site.
Overall, leaving rogue websites up? Bad idea. Simply speaking, it is costing you leads, customers, and money. It might seem like only a few customers or leads in the beginning, but as you know, numbers pile up quickly, and the cost to the company becomes huge in a couple of years. Therefore, rogue websites must be taken down efficiently as possible.
How to Deal with Rogue Franchisees?
Before you go and assemble your ‘Franchisers Protect Brand Reputation’ squad (the name could use some work, I know. I am taking suggestions) and get ready to fire on the website, you have to think, ‘why did this franchisee go rogue? And what can I do to prevent it from happening in the future?’
