5 AI tools for multi-location franchises to elevate your marketing

As technology continues to evolve, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a game-changer, offering a plethora of tools and solutions to elevate local businesses’ marketing efforts. This is especially true for marketing leaders of multi-location franchises, who bear the responsibility of orchestrating cohesive strategies across diverse locations.

Marketing AI tools for multi-location franchises

In this blog post, we’ll delve into five cutting-edge AI tools for multi-location franchises that are poised to reshape the way local businesses approach marketing. From enhancing communication to automating tasks, these tools are designed to give local businesses a significant edge in the competitive market. 

Let’s explore how AI is revolutionizing the marketing landscape for franchises, bringing unparalleled innovation and efficiency to the table.

1. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is an AI-powered language model designed to understand and generate human-like text. It’s a breakthrough tool that can comprehend context, respond coherently, and assist with various written tasks. Marketing leaders for multi-location franchises can leverage ChatGPT to enhance their communication, strategy development, and customer interactions.

With some guidance and training, ChatGPT can become an invaluable AI-powered marketing assistant for franchise brands looking to improve the efficiency, personalization, and performance of their marketing efforts. It offers a powerful new channel to engage customers and drive results.

Examples of how to use ChatGPT for franchises

For franchise marketing leaders, ChatGPT offers endless possibilities to optimize and automate critical marketing tasks. As mentioned in this webinar, you can train ChatGPT on your brand content and voice to create optimized social media posts, compelling emails, and data-backed ads tailored to your customers.

Some specific examples of how to leverage ChatGPT’s capabilities include:

• Summarizing customer feedback surveys to uncover key themes and insights you can integrate into messaging
• Crafting dynamic Facebook ads personalized to customers using their own feedback and preferences
• Building out entire StoryBrand messaging frameworks to map out customer journeys and brand narratives
• Streamlining franchisee training and onboarding processes. You can develop interactive training modules, conduct virtual role-playing scenarios, and answer common queries that new franchise owners might have
• Devising localized marketing campaigns. By providing AI-generated content suggestions, leaders can guide franchise owners in crafting compelling promotions that resonate with their specific communities. Evocalize makes this even easier by combining AI, your marketing channels, organization data, and all brand assets in one central place. You can learn more about how local digital marketing can scale across all your locations here. 

The important thing is to give ChatGPT context on your brand by training it with your website content, brand guidelines, marketing assets, and other information sources. This enables ChatGPT to produce on-brand, strategically sound content optimized for your goals.

Paid vs Free Version

Free Version: The free version of ChatGPT offers basic access to its powerful language capabilities. Users can engage in text-based conversations, draft content, and generate ideas, making it a valuable asset for individual franchise owners looking to kickstart their AI journey.

Paid Version: Subscribing to the paid version, such as ChatGPT 4, offers enhanced benefits like general access during peak times, faster response rates, and plugins. For $20/month, we recommend trying it out at least for a month because you get access to all the plugins. We have two of those plugins on our list below you can take advantage of.

2. Video Insights Plugin

Next on our list of AI tools for multi-location franchises is the Video Insights plugin. It integrates directly with ChatGPT to provide helpful video analysis capabilities. For example, you can automatically generate transcripts and summaries of YouTube videos.

To use Video Insights, you need a paid ChatGPT account (or ChatGPT 4). Once enabled, the plugin lets you simply paste any YouTube video URL into ChatGPT. Video Insights will then process the video, extract a full transcript, and provide a concise summary of the key points.

Examples of how to use Video Insights for franchises

As Dan Monaghan demonstrated in this webinar, this makes it easy to efficiently analyze industry videos, thought leader content, and other relevant footage without having to watch the full videos.

Specific uses for marketing leaders and franchisors include:

• Quickly researching and understanding competitors’ YouTube video content
• Identifying key talking points from thought leaders as inspiration for your own content
• Summarizing customer testimonial and brand videos to inform messaging
• Creating summaries of your own videos to repurpose content across platforms
• ​​Pull transcripts of external industry or conference videos to quickly gather intelligence on trends and best practices

The time savings from not having to manually review and take notes on videos can add up. Video Insights automates the process so you can focus on strategic marketing decisions. It’s an excellent example of how AI plugins augment ChatGPT’s capabilities.

Paid vs Free Version

On top of paying for ChatGPT 4, Video Insights also paid plans that mostly depend on how many videos you plan on analyzing per month. 

On the free plan, you can process 15 videos less than 45 minutes in length per month. If you want access to Vimeo, more videos (40 videos), and longer video length, it might be worth upgrading to the Advanced plan.

3. Midjourney

Midjourney is one of the leading AI platforms for generating stunning images and artwork. It leverages generative AI to turn text prompts into beautiful visuals.

Major studios are already using Midjourney to design graphics, characters, and scenes. The technology is also valuable for marketers looking to create custom branded imagery and engaging ad creative.

Examples of how to use Midjourney for franchises

Some specific examples of how franchise marketing leaders could apply Midjourney include:

• Designing social media posts, ads, and banners that visually represent their brand identity through custom illustrations
• Creating product images from different angles tailored to campaigns and audiences
• Producing data visualizations to make reports or infographics more engaging
• Automating image creation for location-specific ads and assets with localized details
• Testing different artistic styles and aesthetics for ad creative
• Generating visuals for presentations, websites, emails, and more

With the help of plugins like Photorealistic (which we will talk about next) that can craft optimal prompts, nearly anyone can leverage Midjourney to design high-quality images. This makes producing on-brand creative content at scale far more achievable for franchises.

4. Photorealistic Plugin

Now that you know a bit about Midjourney, you can take those images to the next level with the Photorealistic plugin for ChatGPT. It helps generate optimized prompts for creating high-quality AI-generated images and art. And then works great in Midjourney.

After enabling in ChatGPT, the Photorealistic plugin allows you to describe an image you want to create. It will then intelligently craft a detailed prompt designed to get the best results on AI image platforms like Midjourney.

Examples of how to use Photorealistic for franchises

For example, you can give Photorealistic a simple description like “lion walking through the African plains” and it will output an in-depth prompt considering optimal art styles, lighting, colors, camera angles and more for stunning photorealistic results.

For marketing uses, Photorealistic makes it easier for brands to:

• Craft prompts for consistent branding, imagery, and tone of voice
• Quickly create on-brand social media images and ads with custom illustrations tailored to campaigns
• Have ChatGPT auto-generate multiple prompt variations to choose from to refine the visuals
• Design visually appealing headers and graphics for blog posts, emails, reports, etc.

If you really want to see some amazing images created through Photorealtic prompts, we recommend this article. 

Rather than manually optimizing prompts through trial-and-error, Photorealistic leverages AI to do the heavy lifting and help non-designers generate beautiful marketing visuals with ease. It’s a powerful asset for creatives and non-creatives alike.

5. ElevenLabs

The last on our list of AI tools for multi-location franchises is ElevenLabs. ElevenLabs provides state-of-the-art voice generation capabilities powered by AI. It allows users to turn text content into human-like audio files. On the homepage, you can type up to 333 characters and then select one of their pre-made voices. In seconds, you can download that clip. Try it out!

Examples of how to use ElevenLabs for franchises

Dan Monaghan explained in this webinar how ElevenLabs makes it simple for brands to convert their existing written content into podcasts, audiobooks, training modules, and more. You can clone your own voice or use ElevenLabs’ realistic computer-generated voices.

Franchise marketing leaders could leverage ElevenLabs in the following ways:

• Turn written blog posts into shareable podcast episodes to reach wider audiences
• Create audiobook versions of training manuals, guides, and other educational materials for franchisees
• Produce branded podcasts that engage customers and position thought leaders
• Add voiceover narration to brand videos and advertisements
• Provide automated text-to-speech for phone systems and interactive campaigns

The text-to-speech functionality makes scaling audio content cost-effective and efficient. ElevenLabs also helps ensure brand voice consistency across mediums. It’s a versatile tool for franchises exploring new multimedia formats to connect with customers.

Paid vs Free Version

As of August 11, 2023, ElevenLabs has six plans to choose from. The free plan gives you 10,000 characters per month and three custom voices. You’d also need to add attribution to ElevenLabs.

If you need a commercial license, we recommend the paid plans. The “Creator” plan is $22/month and provides 100,000 characters per month (which is about 2 hours of audio). You can check out all the plans and pricing here.

Wrap up of AI tools for multi-location franchises

From ChatGPT’s ability to generate personalized content and assist franchise owners, to Video Insights’ seamless analysis of video content, Midjourney’s creative imagery, Photorealistic’s stunning visual prompts, and ElevenLabs’ transformation of text to audio – these AI tools for multi-location franchises are a testament to the boundless possibilities that technology brings. 

The synergy between human creativity and AI’s computational prowess promises not only efficiency but also an opportunity for local businesses to forge deeper connections with their customers. As we look toward the future, it’s evident that embracing AI tools will be a strategic imperative for marketing leaders and franchise owners alike. 

By integrating these tools into their arsenals, local businesses can harness the power of AI to navigate the competitive landscape, tell compelling brand stories, and unlock unparalleled growth potential. 

The future of local business marketing is here, and it’s AI-powered.