There are about 5.5 million businesses that operate in the U.S. under the license of a brand, typically franchises like McDonald’s or 7-11 and even real estate groups like Century 21. Because of the nature of the franchise, advertising must follow corporate guidelines and be pre-approved, a process that can be costly and time-consuming for franchisees. In addition, many small franchisees can be faced with budgetary constraints that make the process even more challenging.
Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of LiveTechnology Holdings, Wayne Reuvers, described the typical process: “Branded entities and businesses selling branded products account for about $133 billion in media spend every year in the US. If I’m a Nissan [dealership] and I want corporate to support me, I have to build the ads, I pay an agency a fortune, it goes through the approval process and most get rejected, and then it turns around and I can run the ad.”
This is where LiveRetail comes in. Offering a free platform for these businesses to easily create and run compliant ads, LiveRetail removes this barrier by helping franchise locations drive higher sales, beating industry benchmarks consistently. Each location benefits from personalized creatives and messaging to effectively reach the target audience.
“We’ve turned this entire model on its head. We built a technology that allows us to onboard an entire brand – all of their stores, the brand details, the brand guidelines, the color, the items they want to promote, and everything else – in under four hours”, said Reuvers. Once this process is complete, LiveRetail can easily build a campaign for all the entities, prebuilding an ad for every product using the platform’s CreativeMatrix feature. The ads, compliant with brand guidelines, are sent to local entities. The ads can be posted for free on social media or can be run as ads using the hyper-targeted campaign that LiveRetail develops.
“Those who manage or run a franchise, whether they’re an owner or an operator, do not have time to build ads and the cost of getting a local entity to build ads is $400 to $4,000 but they still need to be brand compliant. We get rid of that by providing all the ads free to the entity, ready to run, and they look more professional than hiring a local agency. We remove the biggest barrier to small to medium-sized advertising spend on the internet, which is the cost of producing ads,” said Reuvers.
Within two clicks, a franchisee can share an ad on social media platforms like Facebook. They also have the option to subscribe to weekly posts on social media or run the creative as a paid ad. Paid ads can be sent to a hyper-targeted audience, ensuring it is seen by people most interested in the product or service being advertised. This is a game-changer for local franchises.
The company is using RegCF to raise capital, and one of the most attractive aspects of the exemption was the number of small business owners and entrepreneurs who are investors. They hope to develop strong relationships with the company’s investors, who in turn have the potential to be powerful brand advocates.
Seeking to simplify the creative process behind marketing, LiveRetail is creating innovative technologies aimed at reducing the cost and brand compliance burden for small franchisees and other branded entities. In turn, this will help these businesses drive more traffic to their stores and generate business.
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