Boft franchise promotion: how we’ve found customers in 27 countries
Boft is an international chain of automatic photo printing machines represented in more than 140 cities around the world. The company manufactures the machines and software on its own. It works both for B2C, attracting users to print photos, and for B2B, selling franchises.
The client approached us with the task to ensure a steady stream of franchise applications in the operated countries via targeted advertising.
Boft had experience of targeting advertising campaigns already but there was no advertising specialist in the team, so no one on the client's side could analyze the results properly.
We had to set up systematic work on advertising campaigns to attract more applications. We considered a lead as a user who made first contact with the company through filling in a form on the website.
At the start, we analyzed the foreign market and realized that Boft had few direct competitors in selling franchises. No one was promoting franchises in digital channels, so we had no examples or guidelines for popular creatives and approaches. We started out with our experience and market research as a baseline.
The advertising campaign was planned for Facebook and Instagram. Before launching, we’ve made the CJM up until signing the contract.
The main audience is middle/upper-level managers, entrepreneurs and those who are interested in investment.
We focused on people with above-average incomes who have "spare" money to start a small, quick-return business.
To find audiences, we used targeting with interest and behavioral extensions, as well as our own user database.
The layouts were provided by the client, and our team worked out only the offers for them. All the creatives were made with general and clear offers.
In the offer we described: the essence of the proposal, how much money would be needed for the investment and how long it would take to pay back the investment.
We tested different formats: static, carousel and video. In the end we left only static images. With video format, users actively clicked it, but no action was made on the website.
We had originally planned to run a campaign to applications on the website. But the launch period coincided with the introduction of advertising restrictions due to Apple’s IOS 14.5 update. The client did not have a verified domain and the pixel was not set up, so while the installation and prioritization of advertising events was going on, we decided to test the audience by traffic target.
We have divided all countries of presence into three groups by region:
- Latin America
- Europe
- Asia
As a result of the test run, ads were only aired in the countries with the cheapest impressions and clicks. Countries with more solvent populations were left without impressions due to the high competition in the advertising auction - we did not get any results for them.
For example, we ran ads in all the countries in the Asian region, but most of the shows were only for Saudi Arabia. In Japan and South Korea, there were almost zero impressions.
The results of the test period confirmed that we needed to optimize the ad for the conversion goal. We additionally segmented the campaign by geographical parameters: we grouped the countries according to the close CPM value that we were able to establish in the first week of impressions.
Grouping of countries in the advertising cabinet
The results in each of the groups:
In Latin America, we’ve received many low-cost leads, but their quality was unsatisfactory. Many people were just interested, and only a small amount made it to the manager's call.
In Asia, users actively clicked on the ads, but they left fewer applications and their cost was higher than in other groups. Conversion from an application to a call was also low.
Europe had the best results, but there were many countries in the sample, so we further divided them into three groups according to CPM:
- Expensive
- Medium-priced
- Cheap
After several months of working on campaigns, we decided not to show ads in Latin America and Asia. The leads were low-quality and at an unreasonably high cost. The released budget was allocated to separate testing of advertising in Japan and the USA.
1. Why did we choose Japan?
Japan was in the same group as South Korea and because of its high CPM, it had fewer impressions. We saw great potential in Japanese users. We wanted to get more representative results and see if applications and conversions into calls would come from there.
As a result of the test campaign, we realized that the Japanese were interested in the offer, but not ready for serious action. Further research and adaptation of the campaign was required, but we did not have the necessary amount of time and resources.
2. Why the US?
In the US, the client was renewing ties with partners who had curated franchises there. Also, US users are some of the most solvent in the world, they are very active and interested in investing money in profitable investment projects.
Despite the very high CPM, the US audience performed impressively:
But the campaign did not last long because the client's business plans changed.
After all the additional tests and optimizations, we only left the European countries, obtaining the best ratio of cost per lead to quality of the application.
The ad shows were in expensive countries and were held during the Christmas season. During this period, the advertising auction is severely overheated. By this time, the CRM database was replenished with new ad contacts, and we decided to use it to build a Look-alike audience in Europe. As a result, we managed to get quality leads from CPL
In the six months that we have been working with Boft, we have come a long way, full of experiments. But we have managed to find the best regions to get the highest quality leads and prove that targeting advertising is suitable for such a difficult niche as franchise promotion.
Our observations over the course of the project:
- Before launching in another country, you need to study the market not only about advertising peculiarities, but also about the mentality, the well-being of the desired audience, their interests, and to understand in what language it is best to run the advertisement. This will help in creating personalized creatives that will lead to a purchase.
- It is better not to split budgets in campaigns. Our case is an exception, we have tested a lot to see which countries will have the cheapest and highest quality leads.
- Users in Europe do not like storytelling and long texts. It is important for them to know about the product immediately and to understand what it is all about.
Client’s feedback
We approached Nimax with a task to increase the number of quality leads from the USA, Europe and Latin America. We were receiving about 80 applications a month - enough leads for the sales department.
The Nimax team held regular meetings to discuss indicators, course corrections, and various hypotheses were put forward and tested. We did a lot of testing and covered many countries that could be a new market for us. Thank you to the team for their work and expertise!