Using One Marketing Strategy to Unite Thousands of Independent Franchisees

IB LisaH 101326 Full AUDIO: Most brands obsess over their website, but what if the real visibility problem is everything happening before a customer ever gets there? I sat down with Lisa Hake, CMO of Winmark, the world's largest resale company with over 1,750 franchise locations, to talk about how her team is transforming the way their franchises show up everywhere customers and AI are searching, and why consistent data across every location is the new front door. Let's get into it. Lisa, thanks for joining us here in New York and at Envision. Corps. Give us a quick overview. What's your role? tell us a little bit about your organization and how do you help customers find your business? Okay, so I'm the chief marketing officer at Winmark. Winmark is the resale company. So we're the largest resale company really in the world. We have five different brands, about 1,750 locations. So we have Play-Doh's Closet is our largest brand, Played Against Sports, Once Upon a Child. And then we have two smaller brands, Style Encore and Music Around. and my job in the company is to help both create demand for our brands, build our brands. I was really I was brought in not it's a year ago today, actually. And my job is to help really transform marketing. Our franchisees have operated in a very fragmented approach. You know, they're very locally owned businesses. It's very important for them to be part of their communities. and build relationships within those communities. But we have opportunities to really transform marketing, do more with our scale, you know, leverage our size and scope. And so I'm coming in helping to figure out ways to generate demand for our brands, but also ultimately drive traffic to our stores and help grow that. Hell happy anniversary. Thank you. Yeah. But that's Serendipitous. It is. So what's the single biggest shift you've seen in how customers actually find and engage with businesses like yours, especially over the last years? And if possible, how are you even seeing that in the hard numbers? Yeah, I would say, well, we're definitely seeing it in that customers are discovering our stores so many different ways. It used to be easy, you'd put a Google listing out there, they'd find your website. They'd find that information and they would show up. And now many times they are showing up before they even get to our websites. Our website isn't even that important anymore. It's more the information behind it and how we're feeding not just Google, but all the places where our customers are searching and increasingly AI, which we've been talking about so much lately. But yeah, I think it's about just kind of changing our metrics and our success success metrics and ultimately. Looking at store traffic and how we're driving that. Three of our brands are e-commerce brands too. And so it's a lot about like are we driving them to our e-commerce sites as well. It's so fragmented now, across all of the channels, but even now, even just the mean discovery sites is used to be Google, but now there's many AI engines that are coming up as well. And so Yes. and you even kind of hit on it there. Like websites are less less and less for the the end customer in many ways and more about how do you get your information out. To the AI to find that detail so it can be passed on through the AI. Exactly. And for us, it's about trying to figure out how we drive more consistency in our information that we are storing and sourcing and and publishing out there across all our 1750 locations and ensuring that it's consistent. And we have found in many ways it has not been consistent. or our franchises are running a business. They're running, they're, you know, they're focused on what's happening in those four walls of their stores and they're not update, you know, they're not going to every single search directory and updating their store hours. And it's just so important. It's we can have a great advertising campaign, but if our customers can't find our stores or if that store information is wrong, it's either not driving them to our locations or it's putting a bad taste in their in their head about us because of that experience they have. Yes, exactly. so you're touching on it here with the number of locations you've got, but you have a number of sub brands within Winmark as well. Yeah. So you're managing listings for four different brands, each with hundreds of franchise locations in the thousands. That are individually owned. What makes that different from just managing one brand at scale? well In any franchise organization, there's complexity because we have thousands of owners, individual owners who are responsible for their locations. They've invested a lot of money in these locations and they're trying to drive a profit and they really care about their individual location, their individual community. and so there's a lot to it. They're very independent and we have to not just tell them what to do and we have to help them understand kind of what's in it for them. And it's very complex in our category because we're a resale brand. So we need customers to sell us their product. We need their gently used clothes. We need their quality sports equipment that they're done with for the season. we need that inventory. And so there's the complexity of both the messaging that we deliver around sell to us as well as buy from us. and so it gets really complex, not just for our franchisees, but for us to ensure we have like the right message, the right information, all of that. And how do we convince franchisees to take the actions we need them to take in order to get that information out there and make sure it's consistent across all of the places and spaces people are searching? Have you had a moment in this work where you found a big fixable problem that you didn't know existed before, somewhere where you thought, how did it get this bad? Yeah, and and actually X helped us discover it. and so that is with Apple Maps. So our franchisees are very, very focused on their Google business profile. You know, that they feel like is their front door. In and in many cases it is it is, right? But in this fragmented world where people are searching and that information is being used behind the scenes and fed into LLMs and and other places. what we discovered was most of our franchisees, I think was like around 80% of our Apple Maps locations, have never been touched, have never been claimed. All of the hours were the same. Like eleven to five AM. It was just some maybe standard thing that they had in there and never been updated. And so as we started digging in and claiming those locations, we really called it kind of a land grab to get in there, claim those locations. So that we could sync them with yX, we could automate it with our hours syncing so our franchisees can go to one place, update their hours, update their special holiday hours, and have it automatically synced so that it was showing up properly in Apple Maps. Cause the customer experience is horrible if they think the store is closed and it's not, or they think it's open and it's not. And so ensuring that we have that consistent, constantly updated. And making it easier for our franchisees has been a huge unlock for us. Were that was there any way you were able to measure the differences that that had or just a general kind of sense of n great to have all of our information together? I would say we are measuring it now in terms of that visibility and we're using the scout data in YEX to help show franchisees how we are improving their visibility. not just in Google but in AI in general. And then it's just more like general feedback from franchisees too on them telling us how much easier it is and telling us around how customers are actually finding them from from their Apple maps. So on that point of getting franchise owners to do anything that isn't really directly tied to necessarily their next sale is is notoriously hard. But I've I've heard it from many, many, many other situations as well. They're trying to run their day-to-day. They feel they are not marketers themselves. it can feel like a distraction almost or or something that's taking away for them running their individual location. So how do you get 1,000 independently owned locations to cooperate on something like listings transfers or data updates that sound very mechanical? Yeah, it's not been easy. so I'll give you that. It's a lot about not just telling them to, hey, we need you to Transfer your Google business primary ownership to us. It's not that. We have to tell them what's in it for them. And in reality, our franchisees have had such ownership and such independence. and they many of them hold that that Google business profile as like a key asset as part of their business. And so how do we convince them that by transferring ownership to us, it's gonna be better for them? And so we started with Scout data before we even had our listing synced. we started with Scout so we could show franchisees the real data. We could sh we could speak to it in their language that they understood. and we showed them the importance of, you know, being in that map pack and and you know, having your organic listing be number one in your space and showing franchisees where they actually were. And helping them understand why and helping them understand that by syncing, by doing this, that we can help support them and we can support them longer term too. So that, you know, once we get to that bulk verification, which we're not there yet, and I just don't know why it can't be easier, but we're getting there and I think helping them understand and see that progress and see how, you know, once we can help ensure that. Their listings are accurate and complete and we're helping them understand what they need to do to make it better and to improve their visibility, not just in organic search, but more and more we're talking about the AI visibility too. It's helping them understand and kind of connect those dots. So you mentioned there that this is your actually your third time using YX software. What have keeps you coming back? I would say that it is Well, obviously it's the results, right? I used YX for the first time back when I ran marketing for Geek Squad, part of Bus Buy. They had very little visibility because they were part of a big box retailer. So when it came to mobile search and trying to find like computer repair near me, Geek Squad wasn't showing up. We immediately were able to see results in that once we started creating listings, created pages in 10 pages, all of that, which was great. Moving over to Great Clips. Same thing. We were immediately able to show that we could drive more traffic to our salons by by using by syncing our listings and managing reviews and all of that. so the results is key, but I think it was mostly the team. The team's very curious, they want to help solve problems, very, very responsive to our needs when something wasn't going right, helping us find solutions. And I would suggest the access to People like you who are actually developing the product and being able to feel like you're making an influence on the solutions that are being brought to the table, I think it is is huge. And also, I would say the focus on AI visibility and getting ahead of it because no one knows what to do there. And there's just so much being pushed on us and Being able to lean on an expert who's trying to help figure it out at the same time is really helpful. So when a franchise opens a new location or changes its hours or closes, what does that process look like for making sure search engines and AI services know about it quickly and correctly? Well, for us, it used to be very manual. We would tell the franchisee they needed to create a Google business profile, they need to create an Apple business account, they needed to do all these things. And many of them didn't. or many of them maybe did it years ago and they don't know they've never even accessed it for the last five years. And it's just kind of run behind the scenes for them. So for us it's a it it was about like starting fresh. I mean I've used YX in my previous two two companies over the last gosh it's been 16 years probably. And so right away when I joined when Mark I knew that this was what we needed to do to help make it easier for our franchisees. I sat in franchisee training and heard what we were asking franchisees to do in terms of all the setups they needed to do to get their store open. And I knew there was a better way. And so I think the process now is so much more streamlined, you know, through YAX, we're able to sync it right away, get those listings all established, get all that information accurate and complete. And then show franchisees that, you know, it's done for them. So absolutely. So AI as a marketing channel is well a lot about what we've been talking about as well, but AI is also an efficiency tool. How have you guys been leveraging into AI to help you stay on top of things, to help run your franchises more efficiently? Yeah, good question. I mean, I think that it's a conversation we have consistently within our company. A lot of marketing when you're in a franchise or a lot of marketing support when you're in a franchise world is about helping franchisees answer their questions, help them know what they need to do next in terms of their market local marketing tactic tactics, help them understand what we're doing for them from a system level and how we're benefiting them by being part of a bigger brand. There's a lot of questions that come in constantly. And, you know, we have a very lean team. but we have people who are just answering franchisees questions every single day, answering emails. We've been focused on AI in terms of how can we help get those answers to franchisees immediately. They can just ask it, ask a chat bot and it can answer it for them, pulling in all the knowledge that we already have within our systems. And I think we see huge opportunities to actually implement that with, you know, pull in a lot of this data that we have from YEX too to help answer those questions immediately for our franchisees. It hasn't been easy because we need we identified it early on, we needed one owner. We needed someone to manage and guide the AI to get it right because it's never right from day one. And how do we hold someone accountable to helping us solve this and show them the benefit to them and their career and their you know, what's in it for them too to to help us achieve this. Yeah. I mean, I think you hit on something there of AI's never quite got it right the first time. that sure the technology's improving, but it it's kind of the double edged sword back to AI as a marketing channel. Is it it doesn't always have it right. Right. and so that is so much about what you're trying to do as well is like how do you make sure that it then has all of that information so it is getting it right more often. Right. so just being aware of it, being able to feed it that information. AI is an efficiency tool for you and your marketing team. How have you guys been l leaning into things there? Yeah, I think it's mostly just leveraging a lot of the platforms like we use with YX, like we use with, you know, some of the other channels that we implement within our internal, our own harness and and how we're leveraging and feeding that, you know, knowledge base all the time so that we can be more efficient and that we can manage that efficiency. over time and showing the team that when we get more efficient because they're not spending all these times with these mundane tasks or creating reports weekly or or answering franchise's questions all day long, that it frees up them to be more creative, to do what they really, you know, went to school for, have the experience to do, help, you know, unleash their ability to be more strategic and proactive. And it's really fun to see. Yeah, absolutely. It's such a It's such a new time, with all of these capabilities and technology. I e even for me personally, just building product, I think of it as kind of the same stages of transfer that went from on prem software to then web two point and then that we're going through a whole other generational kind of shift in technology and capabilities here. Yeah. And everyone's at different levels of understanding and openness to it as well. So how do you motivate those who want to learn? and just dig into it and get moving on it and then showcase their success and what they've been able to accomplish and how it not only made their job easier, but it enabled them to do things that are much more value add. Yeah. not just to the business, but to their own careers and their own lives and their own experience. So that's what I've been very focused on is just really like running with those who are excited about it and just letting them go. Yeah and figure it out. And then using that as kind of the you know the examples to others to be like, hey, you gotta get on this train. Like it's moving fast. Very similar to train processed how we're doing it internally as well. That's great. So you kind of touched on this one, especially as you guys are implementing things, but what actually breaks for a brand or for your customer when the AI agent doesn't have the right data at the right moment? Bad, bad experiences, right? And not only for our franchisees, because if If we're leveraging AI to help answer a question for their business and tell them what actions to take and it's not right, which has happened, right? And so we still have to have that human in the loop at this point to be auditing those things, to be following up, checking to make sure that we are, you know, guiding our franchisees in the right way. And but then from a customer standpoint too, if you know, if a if a store says it's open, And they're bringing in all these clothes that they packaged up to go sell to the store. And they show up and it's the store's closed or they say they're not accepting buys. That's a really bad customer experience. So the nice thing is now we have a lot of the insight and data, especially through the X reviews data, that we're able to really monitor that and act fast and and find when things aren't connecting all the dots correctly and take actions or ask our franchisees to. Take the actions. So you touched on something there as well of like there's listings information, there's web pages, there's managing the reviews, all of this information feels more and more like they they used to be treated as individual marketing channels. And you would have distinct strategies for each. But with the advent of AI, it's really taking all of this data across all of the places where it can find it and it's doing its own synthesis and interpretation of how your business shows up as well. How are you finding are you finding more and more of the overlap between how you show up across all of these properties and having to keep them all in sync? my gosh, yes, absolutely. And I think that the YX Scout data helped us uncover a lot of that because franchisees, you know, they have in their mind what they need to do or what actions they need to take, being able to use that data to show them that, hey, you've only responded to 30% of your reviews and it takes you an average of 15 to 20 days, like giving them that hard data, asking them to make change and to prioritize certain things, and showing that relative to their local competition gets them very competitive and want to take action. And then to be able to follow through and show them that it made a difference, I think is is huge. It it empowers my team to feel like they can make a difference. It empowers the franchisee. To know what they need to prioritize in their business. There's nothing like a little internal competition when you know who your direct competitors really are to help spur spur you into action. Yeah. And a lot of times, because we're in the resale business, very, very fragmented retail business, a lot of mom and pop shops, you know, very few direct competitors. It's mostly mom and pop shops. So when we can show them who their competition is, a lot of times they didn't even know. Right. Interesting. And so we're or they just assume like, they're not in my category or that's not my true competition. And to show them that this is what the customer is seeing when they're they're searching and here's who's popping and here's what they're doing that you're not doing, really helps them take action. So you just joined us here at Envision in New York. Any takeaways, any aha moments that you had from it? Okay, well, I'm kind of embarrassed to say this it shows I'm a marketer, not a technical person, but I would say my first aha moment was I learned what the word harness means. I'd never heard that before, and now I've heard it like a hundred times in the last 24 hours. So so that was cool. I feel like maybe a little more leaning edge when it comes to that. But no, just the whole idea of the harness and then being able to leverage it to solve problems, to be able to get answers and to integrate all of that, not only from a centralized communications platform and like how we're getting the data, but like leveraging the team. To all add to it and figure it out and ultimately provide direction to each and every one of our individual stores that might be very different from store to store, I think is really exciting. I also just love connecting with all the different people and brands and like-minded people. It gives me so much energy and inspiration for all the things we can be doing, which of course I want to do all right now, but all the things that we can be doing, but just the benefits and seeing those real life applications of what it means to the different businesses. I'm very excited for the harness from a product perspective, especially, of the number the capabilities that it's going to open up for us. That's I've been able to load in individual customers' data, the the story that we can actually start to tell through the data and make it very customized, very personalized. So it's very obvious what the where the real problems are for your business as opposed to just a set of numbers that we're showing kind of to everybody the narratives that have come out of out of this new capability to get it again tailored either at for your level as a CMO, but we can also take that same information and tailor it down to an individual franchisee. I'm so excited to start getting this rolled out to everybody because I think it's really going to change how people understand that what is actually happening as well and make it easier to access. Yeah. How to grow their business and then w yeah, yeah, what actions to take and what it delivered. I think that's gonna be just immeasurable. Yeah. So a year from now, what does winning look like for you, for your team in this space? well we're just implementing all of the yX, you know, features and benefits and and getting our franchisees to take action. We are really transforming marketing into a more centralized approach. Like I said, leveraging our scale and size. of our retail brands to show up co more cohesively. In a year from now, I would say that at least for our three biggest brands, which is Plato's Closet, Plate Against Sports, and Once Upon a Child, I want to be showing up more cohesively. I want to be able to show them that when we do work together, when we are syncing all of this data and focused on the biggest priorities and helping them, whether it's with automated review response or showing up and how we can gain more visibility within the content on our local pages. I want to be able to show them how we've went how we've won together and how we've driven more traffic to their stores, incremental traffic to their stores. That's the most important metric they care about. That's what we care about. and how can we prove that through the actions that we've taken? and if we can get there within the next year, I'll be very excited. excellent. Lisa, thank you for joining us. Thank you for coming to Envision. Thank you for joining us in New York as well. And great to have you on here. Thanks for having me. It's great. Awesome. That's a wrap on this episode of the Intelligence Brief. 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