INTRO

The mosquito control industry is a high growth market, and thanks to public relations support from Mainland for more than seven years, Mosquito Joe has emerged as an industry leader with strong branding, best-in-class systems and the ability to grow rapidly nationwide. Mosquito Joe provides a service that makes outside fun again by allowing people to enjoy their yards and eliminating the worry of mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas.

PROBLEM

When Mosquito Joe partnered with Mainland for media relations support in 2013, the mosquito, tick and flea control solutions brand was a young startup with one corporate location, eager to kickstart its franchise sales growth. With the goal of creating a safer and more comfortable atmosphere in clients’ own backyards, the brand offered a widely-needed service that had the potential to catch like wildfire throughout the country. The brand just needed a little help getting its stories in front of a wider audience.

SOLUTION

To add appeal to a wider audience, Mainland focused on the people behind Mosquito Joe, ranging from corporate staff to local franchise owners, to give life to the brand story. During the peak season, Mainland hits the media hard to capitalize on topical news and seasonality, but also found creative ways to ensure consistency of media throughout the year, focusing on offseason second jobs, interesting people stories, plans for expansion and more.

RESULT

In the past seven years, Mainland assisted Mosquito Joe in growing from zero franchise units to more than 335 open territories. The expertise to recognize when and how to tell Mosquito Joe’s story has resulted in a collective PR value of more than $7 million and Ad value of more than $2 million with well over 600 secured placements, including major media outlets like Entrepreneur Magazine, Fox News, Good Morning America, the TODAY Show and many more more.

HOW MAINLAND WON

“We had shown more of a business setting on our franchise development website,” McQuillan said. “From a graphics perspective, you’d see people in front of a Hand & Stone building or you’d see people at the front counter. We weren’t really showing the experience.”

Prospective franchisees who now visit the brand’s franchise development website immediately sense that zen vibe the brand so desperately wanted.

“Now you see someone who is absolutely and completely relaxed, with a half-smile, getting a massage or facial,” McQuillan said.

Then there was the user experience (UX) aspect. Buttons with clear calls to action such as “Let’s Talk” and “Download Brochure” were added to the franchise development website’s homepage, allowing prospective franchisees to easily request more information.

The Hand & Stone team have also benefited from the website redesign. One major change made by Mainland was giving executives the ability to make changes to the website’s slider.

“Mainland gave us the ability to make changes on the fly,” McQuillan said. “For example, Hand & Stone was featured as one of Forbes’ “Best Franchises To Buy” in 2019. Forbes is a really incredible publication that everyone knows about, including investors, and it’s the kind of news we’d want to put on our franchise development website as soon as possible. Thanks to the changes made by Mainland, now we can.”

Above all, the brand wanted to humanize its website and portray the backstories of its franchisees. Hand & Stone prides itself on maintaining a franchise system filled with interesting and accomplished entrepreneurs and wanted that to be reflected on the new franchise development website. By putting 1851 Franchise stories on the website and making them easily accessible, the brand could target people who might be interested in franchising or in passing along the information to a prospective franchisee.

“We didn’t have any real stories on our website and by partnering with Mainland, we saw an opportunity to deliver this,” McQuillan said. “Now when you go to the Newsroom section of the Hand & Stone franchise development website, you’ll see all of the things we wanted to portray.”

Powills is thrilled that the collaboration between Hand & Stone and Mainland has yielded such successful results for the spa brand.

“Hand & Stone’s development team has done an amazing job at closing more deals with a lower budget than the majority of franchise brands with similar growth goals,” Powills said. “While we thought there was a gap in the content and the structure of their site, we didn’t predict that it was that wide, given their ability to close. That is a testament to the strength of their sales process. Today, the Hand & Stone site is rich in best practices to help drive educated leads and has already led to even more deals.”