Primero Steps In to End CMS Frustrations for Sport Clips Canada

 

Webtreepro Streamlines Marketing Initiatives, Boosts SEO Rankings and Site Traffic
 

At a Glance

Established in 1993 USA & Canada Customer since January 2014
  • Sport Clips Canada is part of one of the fastest-growing franchises in North America.
     
  • A new solution was required to replace their existing user-unfriendly CMS, which was causing problems for both franchisees and corporate alike.
     
  • The new platform needed to not only address existing pain points but also enable new capabilities and growth for Sport Clips Canada.

 

Additional Benefits

  • One central portal for resources
  • Simple CMS editor functions
  • New store websites with default content can be created in minutes and custom features can be set up from a single location using dynamic content
  • New store locator automatically includes location-related features (such as map and directions) whenever new store websites are created
  • Configured Sendy as email marketing program via Amazon Web Services, integrated with automatic daily updates from the Salon Ultimate Point-of-Sale system
  • Implemented a process so that all sites can be encrypted with SSL
  • Digital assets management: images, documents, and video
  • User permission control
  • Integrated knowledge base

Background

A national hair care franchise with more than 1,800 locations, Sport Clips Inc. was established in 1993 and started franchising in 1995. The sports-themed haircutting franchise is ranked by Entrepreneur as one of the Top 10 “Fastest Growing Franchises,” coming in at #36 on the “Franchise 500” list. The franchise has been named a “Top Ten Best Franchise” to buy by Forbes. In 2012, the franchise expanded into Canada, and today the company boasts 44 franchise locations in the Great White North.

As a fast-growing company – 125 new stores opened in 2017 alone – Sport Clips is well aware that that ‘if you build it, they will come does not apply to the franchise industry. Rather, success hinges on franchisees’ ability to connect with local communities by establishing and maintaining a strong Web footprint, local search visibility, and local relevance.

How to go about effectively addressing multiple locations spread out geographically – where brand consistency is vital? One thing was clear: Sport Clips Canada’s (SCC) current CMS just wasn’t cutting it.
 

The Case for Change

“It’s too complicated.” “I don’t have the IT resources to figure this out.” These were familiar refrains coming into SCC headquarters. In fact, management was noticing that many franchise owners were simply throwing up their hands, and not participating in marketing campaigns at all. For those franchisees who were participating in outreach efforts, HQ marketing staff had to go into each individual franchisee site and manually customize the content per location – and go in and take it down once a campaign was over (often late at night on the end date). Adding to these frustrations, SCC’s contacts at the existing CMS provider were not supportive – when they could be reached at all.
 

Primero to the Rescue

Thanks to a decades-long working relationship with Primero (that includes their current handling of Sport Clips’ corporate web repositories), the choice to turn to Webtreepro as a replacement for their current CMS was an obvious one for SCC.

Primero replicated the design of the Sport Clips US website and then ported the current content over to its Webtreepro CMS platform. In Webtreepro, SCC found the answer to the pain points they had been experiencing – and then some. Not only did Webtreepro solve the functionality and support problems that came with the old CMS system, but it opened the door to exciting new features that have directly led to improved SEO rankings and increased site traffic. Thanks to Webtreepro, it is now easy for SCC to apply metatags and keywords. Primero also made it possible for SCC to seamlessly publish uniform customer reviews on its franchisee sites, aggregating star ratings feeding from other sites, including Facebook and Google.

The new system allows Sport Clips HQ to completely control content based on regions, all while empowering franchisees to take charge of their own marketing campaigns. These franchisees, known as team leaders, have reported that they are more comfortable with Webtreepro than the previous system – and are taking advantage of all it has to offer. This independence is music to HQ’s ears, as it frees corporate marketing to focus on other tasks. In changing over to Primero, corporate budgets have been similarly liberated: Webtreepro comes in at about half of the cost of SCC’s previous solution.

 

In our customer’s eyes

“Primero is far more than a CMS platform – the company, product, and people are exceptional in every way.”

Mark Schiffner, CEO


Smooth Sailing Ahead

Implementation was a painless process in which the next steps were communicated to SCC well in advance. Primero team members were personally involved in every task, often working before and after business hours to ensure that the switch over went live on time – and without issues.
 

 

“When franchisees are happy with the technology and support that the parent company provides, they are far more likely to advocate these positives to others. This is how franchises grow. Simply put, you have to have reliable, feature-rich technology that works, and Primero has given us that and then some. They are a true partner in every sense of the word.”

Mark Schiffner, CEO

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