What You Need to Do After Posting Your Business or Franchise For Sale on a Website

A number of people list their business or franchise for sale advert on website and this is as far as it goes. They sit back and wait for the enquiries and in some cases, the enquiries don’t come and they don’t know why.

So you might ask the following questions:
1.How do I know if my business or franchise for sale advert is working?
2.What do I need to do to get my business/franchise for sale advert to perform?
3.What do I need to change?

How do I know if my business or franchise for sale advert is working?

Every business and franchise is different and enquiries come through at different times. But there is usually a standard views to response ratio that gives a good guideline that you can go by. This may vary slightly from website to website, but the average is around 1-2 responses for every 100 views, i.e. 1-2%. Also remember that this is an average baseline to go by.

I have seen response rates up as high as 15% and as low as 0% all depending on the content of the business/franchise for sale advert, but 4-5% is definitely achievable with the right content, images and category mix.

What is classified as a Response?

A response is when someone either fills in their details in the enquiry section and sends it through as an e-mail or clicks on the button on the website to find out your phone number to make a call to request more information. This information is usually provided by the websites in your account.

i.e. E-mail Enquiries + Phone Clicks = 1 Response

What if I have my contact details on the business/franchise for sale advert?

If you place your contact details on the advert, it will mean that the figures that you get from the website won’t be as accurate, because most people will use these details to contact you directly, rather than through the enquiries and phone click areas, but as long as you keep track of where your enquiries are coming through from by asking them, you should still be able to get an idea on if the advert is working.

How do I know if I am getting enough views?

Every business/franchise for sale website is different and works in regards to the traffic/people who view the website. Most of them work the same in the way that they list the newest businesses or franchise for sale at the top of the list, which pushes the older listings down as each new one comes on. Because of this reason you will receive the most views in the first few days. The next busy period of views will happen as Google finds your Business/Franchise for sale advert and then starts listing it on searches, starts listing the advert directly to save time searching through lists.

To confirm the average number of views per advert per day, ask the website people. This way you have a guideline to work off for statistics.

What do I need to do to get my Business/Franchise for Sale advert to perform?

The first question that you need to ask yourself is if your advert isn’t performing is:

What is it about my advert that isn’t performing?
1.Is it that I’m not receiving enough views, or
2.Is it that I’m not receiving any or enough responses?

If you aren’t receiving an average response rate of at least 1-2%, then you need to work on improving your response rate.

If you are receiving enough responses, but you aren’t getting enough views, then this is where you need to work on.

If you aren’t receiving enough views or responses, then you may need to look at writing the advert all over again. To do this look at the other article about writing a business or franchise for sale advert at this link /blogs/2013/05/writing-adverts-for-businesses-and-franchises.php

What do I need to change?

Once you have asked the questions above and you have an answer, work on changing the following areas;

Not Enough Views

This can be the result of the heading, sub heading, first image or category.

Heading – it doesn’t catch their eye and want to read more.

Image – it is too complicated or may turn them off looking at the listing.

Sub heading - it doesn’t sell the type of business and make them open the listing

Category – People who are looking in this category aren’t looking for this type of business.

Not Enough Responses

This can be the result of the category, images or content.

Category – People who are looking in this category aren’t looking for this type of business.

Images – The images don’t get the client excited or tell enough about the business or franchise opportunity and what it can offer them.

Content – The content may be a number of things that is stopping people from wanting to enquire, please read the next heading for tips.

What if my advert is performing but not in all locations?

Here is an example below of 8 listings of the same advert, but in 8 different locations. As you may know, some businesses can be sold in a number of locations. This snap shot was taken after a couple of weeks and it shows that it is obtaining some good response rates in 6 of the 8 locations, including 1 location that has a response rate of over 11% so far.

This means that the advert is performing well, but the categories need to be reassessed for the other 2 locations as highlighted by the red arrows.

This requires fine tuning of the categories. If the response rates on all listings are below 1% for all listings, then the advert isn’t working at all.

How to Fine Tune the Content of your Business or Franchise for Sale

These are just a few things to look for that can help you fine tune the advert for the better.

1.Too wordy and/or jumbled together (people take 1 look and thing it is too hard to read),

2.It talks too much about the business and not enough about the opportunity and what the person gets out of this,

3.It has too many negatives in the content (it talks too much about the hard stuff that they may have to do in the business like marketing, advertising, finance, etc…) although people know they have to do this, they don’t like being reminded when they are skimming through listings.

4.Not enough excitement or emotion in the text to make people excited about the opportunity.

It is important to make sure that you can gain enquiries from your advert before changing the advert to improve quality, but these points can also work for you.

You can include some of these points in your business or franchise for sale advert to fine tune the advert to help improve the quality of your enquiries. i.e. If you are selling a professional or business service as an example, the ideas of including finance, terms, etc… may reduce the enquiries, but it may improve the quality of your enquiries so that you aren’t wasting your time or theirs.